“Laughter’s The World Language”

The News and Courier – Nov. 8, 1964

HOLLYWOOD – Danny Kaye’s technique is like a Chinese egg puzzle—layer upon layer of song and dance, impersonations, and pantomime. These are the things the Danny Kaye show is made up of. He operates on the theory that the essence of comedy is basically the same all over the world. “If they laugh at you in Las Vegas,” he says, “they’ll laugh at you in Vladivosiok. People are grown up children some more adult than others but they all speak the common language of laughter.”

Danny is a lifetime perfectionist who can’t break the habit. He knew when he took on a weekly series that he would be trying to accomplish in five days what would ordinarily take months of polish. “When I started the series,” Danny told me, “well-meaning friends assured me it couldn’t be done. They said there wasn’t enough time. It wasn’t until after we got all those Emmys that my nerves finally settled.”

This season, having wound up a sensationally successful first year, he comes back with some of the people who worked with him before and some new faces. Danny’s dressing room at the studio is equipped for living as well as working. When he isn’t around the studio he goes “out.”

Going out for Danny means he gets into his plane and is off wherever the mood strikes him. He first became interested in flying when Red Skelton let him operate the controls on his plane.

“I’m working on my instrument rating now. I took an eight-hour written exam for it the other day,” he said. “Five per cent of the people pass, averaging from 72 to 76, which is the passing mark. I got 90. Now I have to pass the oral and flight tests. I flew an hour and a half on Saturday morning before we did the show. Then, when I came back, we had a run-through at 1 o’clock, then a dress rehearsal, then the show. After that I took six people home with me and cooked a Chinese dinner for them.”

When Danny mentioned cooking it brought to mind a question I had been meaning to ask him. “What’s this about you sneaking into a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco to do a bit of cooking?” I asked.

“Oh, I’ve been cooking for a long time,” he said. “I started on Chinese cuisine a couple of years ago. Some people play golf or paint, I cook. It’s expensive, but it is fun. A friend of mine owns one of the finest Chinese restaurants in San Francisco. I learned to cook there under Chef Ming, the dean of all Chinatown cooks.”

Danny makes such delicacies as lobster with black bean sauce, shark fin soup, chicken wings, sweet and sour pork, beef and onion rings, Chinese salad, and 1,000-year-old eggs. He says he knew he was a success as a cook when his daughter, Dena, who is 17, asked him to make a Chinese dinner for her friends.

All of his early successes were done in collaboration with his wife, talented Sylvia Fine. This series is the first thing he’s done without her. “She’s now dividing her time between New York, London, and Hollywood. She has a play coming on this season and will do a second one,” he told me.

Danny has proved his theory on comedy all over the world. He’s made kings and queens forget the weight of the crown.

He’s caused prime ministers and cabinet officers to give out with belly laughs.

He has brought smiles to the faces of homeless children, and he’s ridden across language barriers.

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