“Oh, Danny Boy!”
The Pittsburgh Press – Dec. 27, 1963
By: Inez Robb
NEW YORK – Ever since I sat next to Danny Kaye at a Christmas party, I have been wondering if there was a book in “the woman who sat next to Danny Kaye at dinner.” Regretfully—and mercifully I have come to the conclusion that the answer must be in the negative.
It was enough to fill my wassail bowl to overflowing just to be at the same party with Danny Kaye. Lots of women of my indeterminate age are made for Cary Grant. But I am a Kaye buff.
So when I found that my hosts, Constance and Tio (Dr. Milton) Berliner, had seated me on my idol’s right, I couldn’t have believed more fervently in Santa Claus if my name were Virginia.
I must be brilliant. I must be scintillating! I ordered myself. I must be so fascinating that when he returns to Hollywood, Danny will say, “I met the most fascinating, brilliant, scintillating woman at a Christmas party in New York. Let me see now, what was her name?”
He’s much younger and better looking in person than on the screen, I giggled to myself. So slim, and what an air of elegance! Yes, that’s it—elegance. Oh, I must be brilliant.
“How do you like our weather, the white Christmas and all?” I heard myself burbling. Help me, help me! I prayed, or next thing I know I’ll hear myself asking if he’s read any good books lately.
Then, pulling out all conversational stops, I asked him how he kept so thin—no stomach.
“I don’t eat regular meals,” he explained, as he made short work of the first course, a cold lobster. “I just eat when I feel like it, several times a day, and only a little at a time.
“And if I had to choose only one kind or type of food for the rest of my life, I’d take Chinese food over all other entries. Best food in the world,” my idol said as he lighted into the American roast chicken.
“I do a lot of cooking myself,” he went on. “I love it. My spaghetti is a real poem. But my heart is with the Chinese cuisine. You know the essence of Chinese cooking, when a dish is on the fire, is to keep stirring everything with the same motion you use to toss a mixed green salad.”
“Yes,” he went on, “you constantly mix cooking Chinese food just like you do a salad.” And Danny gave a vivid demonstration of a man mixing a salad or keh jup chow haah kow.
“For Chinese cooking you need a wok,” Kaye continued. “You know, that kind of a Chinese cooking bowl with deep sloping sides. I have one.”
“How fascinating,” I yammered, looking at Kaye’s dinner partner on the left, Miss Rise Stevens, and silently pleading for help.
“How are you on mau gwooh ghuy pien?” asked Miss Stevens, rising to the call to arms.
As you can see, it was a brilliant evening that Danny Kaye is not apt to forget, surrounded as he was by beautiful women, wit and won ton soup. And, as I said later to Miss Stevens, it was clearly my evening.