“Kaye, Lucy Team Up”
Danny To Give Only Show Of Year Tonight
The Miami News – Nov. 11, 1962
By: Harold Heffernan
Hollywood, Calif. – Five years ago a “friend” of Danny Kaye was quoted widely as saying the comedian feared to appear on television because he wouldn’t be able to take it if panned by critics.
That was 1957 – not a good year, apparently, for self-
Danny returns to television for his annual appearance tonight in a one-
“I never was afraid to appear on television for fear I’d be criticized,” Danny said, as he lounged in his comfortable Beverly Hills home. “Heck, I’ve been criticized, panned, put down, and knocked out by critics before. It’s all part of show business—the lumps with the roses.”
He paused, assembled his thoughts, and continued: “About that time I was very interest in a project that seemed far more important to me than making a lot of money or clowning it up for people who were well fed, healthy and had a great deal else to laugh about apart from me.”
Danny was referring to the U.N. Children’s Fund, for which he is “ambassador at large,” and for which he has traveled 240,000 miles in the past few years to bring a little sunshine to children in countries where laughter is as rare as one good meal a day.
“I believe the world’s children are the most important part of the world’s future,” he continued. “Unless we adults face up to that we might as well all pack up and go home. If we want, we can give these kids a better world than we’ve known.”
Sylvia Kaye, Danny’s accomplished dark-
“I’ve been rehearsing it off and on for four months now,” said Danny. “It’s got a lot of new material in it, but basically I’m a ‘tumler’ in it. A ‘tumler” is a word coined when I was working on the ‘Borscht Circuit’ in Upper New York. It means a person who manufactures tumult.”
And Danny still thinks he made the correct decision in appearing on TV only once a year. “Of course my financial adviser doesn’t agree,” he grins. “But who needs money when you’ve got friends?”