“Who Is Sylvia? What Is She? – Danny Kaye’s Inspiration”
The Miami News – Nov. 6, 1945
By: Dorothy Raymer (Miami Daily News Amusement Editor)
“Who is Sylvia, what is she . . ?” Ben Johnson’s cello refrain kept echoing in the back of my mind as I talked to Sylvia Fine Kaye, wife of Danny Kaye, now in Japan entertaining isolated groups of GIs.
Sylvia won’t admit it, but she’s the counterpart of Napoleon’s Josephine, of Lord Nelson’s Lady Hamilton. Every great man has had some woman behind him as inspiration. Danny Kaye, top entertainer, comedian and movie star, has Sylvia.
She’s a soft, low-
Mrs. Kaye is on brief vacation in Miami stopping at the Versailles hotel before she rejoins Danny in New York along about Nov. 12, when he returns from his tour of the Pacific area.
She wanted to go with him, desperately. “I cried buckets of tears, but he was adamant. ‘No women on this tour,’ he said. So just my husband and Leo Durocher went on the trip.”
“They were scheduled to appear in the Philippines, then possibly Japan. Evidently the first section of the trip was a success, because they went on from their original destination. The last letter I had from Danny was dated Oct. 20. He and Leo wanted to hit the most remote spots, to help amuse the boys who hadn’t had much entertainment. Danny was set to visit the European theater, but he wanted to go elsewhere. ‘Send me some place where it is hard to travel,’ he kept saying. That’s why he omitted women from the Far East trip, including me.”
Sylvia said she was not only an entertainer’s widow but also a golf and baseball lady hermit. “Danny is mad about both sports. I know he can enjoy them to the fullest when unencumbered, so I stay home.”
Danny and Sylvia met at a little theatre group gathering in N.Y., over five years ago.
“We had gone to the same high school and lived diagonally across the street from each other but never met during those years. Not until 1940. The director of a little theater group called me up to ask for some lyrics. I’m the lazy type and had never written them down. I had to go there and play the numbers in person. Star of the show was Danny . . . and that’ show we were introduced.”
In the winter of 1941, Danny came to Florida. Sylvia got a phone call from him asking her to come South and marry him. She said no at first. But a bad case of bronchitis set in. “So,” she said smilingly shyly, “my doctor advised Florida sunshine . . . and my heart took up the advice. I came down and we were married in Fort Lauderdale by a justice of the peace. We had to wait while he finished his dinner. There was an old dog in the parlor who snored while he slept. But it’s still romantic.”
Sylvia writes all of Danny’s music and lyrics. She entered college at only 15 and was graduated before she was quite 20. His major subject was music, so she taught piano lessons after graduation and was doing quite well at it. During a summer camp job in the Pennsylvania Poconos, she discovered that she could write and compose. Then came the time when everything seemed to go stale, so she took a job selling soap for the Rokeach Co.
“I tried out for a salesgirl for Macy’s, but some mathematical requirements tripped me up. I couldn’t pass the test. I knew I would get into a rut teaching piano, so I started demonstrating soup for $12 a week. If sales went too low, I even bought soup myself. Of course there was no profit in that. So when I was offered a job as pianist for the theater group . . . for a salary of exactly nothing. . . I still couldn’t lose. I would be doing something I liked. . . so I took the offer. That was my lucky day . . . and how I met Danny.”
She has the patience he lacks to work out numbers which are suitable. Artistic in
temperament, she still has the quality of persistence and steadiness, doing most
of her work in the wee small hours of the night when all is quiet and concentration
is possible. Sylvia and Danny are an example of two artists who have found the key
to harmonious living through like interests. The next time you see the dynamic Danny
on the screen or stage, or hear him over the radio . . . remember the quiet, good
humored girl behind him. That’s lovely, long-
Though this article mentions that Danny and Sylvia met in 1940, other sources have listed their marriage as occurring in January 1940, not 1941.