“TV No Challenge Says Danny Kaye”
The Montreal Gazette – Oct. 29, 1960
By: Sid Bakal
NEW YORK – (HTNS) – Danny Kaye, one of the few big names who hasn’t submitted to the lure of television other than a much applauded See It Now program three years ago, is finally going to take the plunge with an hour long special Sunday at 8 p.m.
You ask him why he’s delayed it—why not five years ago—why now?
He looks at you impishly and fires back his own question, “why not?” he says. “Look, you want me to make up a fancy story about how I’m doing a TV show now because I feel this is the right psychological time for me, that I’ve spent years studying audiences and I feel they’re now ready for me. That would be a lot of bunk. The fact is that there isn’t any real reason. Five years ago, I didn’t feel like doing a television show—now I do. It’s as simple as that.”
Kaye also nullified printed reports that he had previously stated he would never do TV. “That’s bunk too,” he retorted. “I have said that I should never consider it on a weekly or regular basis and I still feel that way, but that’s how I feel today. How do I know how I’ll feel five years from now. Maybe I’ll be doing a morning show from 7 to 8. Ten years from now, I may decide to get out of the business and get into another one—one I’m not even aware of now.”
Kaye paced the floor, not nervously, but in animated fashion as we talked about the subject of comedy.
“Why is a comedian funny?” he repeated my question. “How the hell do I know. I don’t know what makes me funny and you not. It’s like taking a hundred different people, telling them a story and asking them to repeat it. Some will tell it funnier, some less so and others will repeat it as conversation. What makes things funny? Maybe it’s because there’s some tragedy in humor and some humor in tragedy.”
New, Old Stuff On Program
As for his special show which will be seen on CBS (and CBC), Kaye has this to say, “I’ll have new stuff and some of my old standbys. I think it’s foolish not to do some of the numbers with which I’m identified. We’ll tape it but if it goes good, and I decided it might be better as a spontaneous live show, that’s how we’ll do it.”
Kaye brushed off the proposition that this might turn out to be an expensive operation.
“Money matters and business matters don’t interest me,” he said. “I’ve got people
to do these things. They book me into a spot, I just want to know when it is, where
it is and then I start figuring out the best way to entertain this audience. All
this talk about how much money I’m going to get, box office grosses, dum-
“I’ll tell you another challenge. I took a year off recently before I played Las Vegas a couple months ago. I just wanted to relax, think, reappraise myself. Know what I did? I took up flying. No—don’t gloss it over. This is something I’m very proud of. Know why? Because it’s completely foreign to me. I’m a guy from Brooklyn, I have no technical background. This is a challenge, not walking out on a stage.”
“You hear talk about this challenge of going on TV. What nonsense! Entertaining is my business. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done. What difference is it whether you’re entertaining a night club audience, a theatre audience or a TV audience. It’s still show business.
“I said that entertaining is my business, but it’s not my whole life. It goes hand in hand in many ways because if you don’t develop as a person, it’s unlikely that your talent will either. Talent isn’t something you take out of a box; it develops, you nurture it and it grows.”