“Danny Kaye Will Tackle Dramatic Role”
Times Daily – Nov. 14, 1981
By: Vernon Scott (UPI Hollywood Reporter)
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Danny Kaye is a temperate man who rarely demonstrates undue excitement
about his work, but his starring role in “Skokie,” a CBS-
For the second time in his long career, Kaye has played a straight dramatic role,
portraying a middled-
He plays Max Feldman, a prosperous Skokie, Ill., businessman who becomes involved in the controversial 1978 proposed American Nazi party march to be held in a Skokie park.
Although Feldman is a fictional character, the people, the places and events of “Skokie” – to be telecast Nov. 17 – are well documented.
Kaye, a Jew, was absorbed by the story’s conflicts which involves the liberal-
All the participants in the incident, pro and con, are involved, including a militant
group of holocaust survivors, the U.S. government, the American Nazi party, the Anti-
What fascinates Kaye most is the absence of a resolution to the principal question posed in “Skokie.”
“The line between legality and emotionality is difficult to define,” Kaye said. “This is a country of free speech, but does that include Nazis?”
Kaye’s question is not altogether rhetorical.
In one scene, the quiet, passive Feldman stands up in temple to defy the Anti-
Kaye, as Feldman, delivers an impassioned speech, recalling his youth in Germany when passive German Jews, including his entire family, were gassed to death in concentration camps.
“We filmed that temple scene in Skokie, where all of the picture was produced,” Kaye said.
“I thought all the people seated in the temple were extras. But as I finished the scene there was a deathly silence. Tears were streaming down the faces of the others. I thought I had done well to move the extras to tears.
“Then I discovered that 90 percent of them were actual holocaust survivors with numbers tattooed on their arms. I was stunned.
“These people say, ‘Yes, America is the country of free speech. Yes for civil rights leaders. Yes for the Ku Klux Klan. Yes for communists. But Nazis!’
“This is the conflict of legality and emotionality. How do you react if you saw your mother, father, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles killed? You can’t expect people to react unemotionally.
“As a Jew, I don’t know if playing the role of Feldman affected me any more than it might have someone else. I’m not a holocaust survivor. I wasn’t born in Germany but I feel as strongly about the whole era as if I’d been born there.”
Kaye was suggested for the role by writer Ernest Kinoy, who recalled Kaye’s effectiveness in his only other dramatic performance, in “Me and The Colonel.”
The emotional challenges of the role and the intellectual implications of interpreting the First Amendment appealed to Kaye.
“I’m at the point in my life where I want to stretch a little bit instead of doing things I’ve done before,” he said. “It’s taking another step.”
“It was so unlike anything I’ve ever done, it intrigued me. It was slightly dangerous. I hope it comes off the way we think it should.
“Playing drama is not a difficult transition for me. Comedians who really take from life itself know there’s always an underlying drama in anything that’s funny to begin with.
“I’m sure everyone’s had the experience of being at a very sad or dramatic function and finding something comedic underlying the procedure. By the same token, in anything that might be terribly funny there’s an underlying platform of something very sad.”