The Dick Cavett Show
(1971)
with Danny Kaye
Visit the gallery Danny Kaye . . . Television Appearances for screencaps
The following is a transcript of the Danny Kaye interview on
The Dick Cavett Show in 1971.
The program recently aired on TCM during their Danny Kaye marathon.
DICK: Every movement is a picture of grace. I mean of Danny, not of Grace.
DANNY: I wouldn’t say that if I were you, Dick. Do you remember?
DICK: Yes, it’s funny to see you with two feet like that.
DANNY: That’s the first thing you said to me when I came on the very first time on the show.
DICK: I know. I felt awful about that.
DANNY: Nah, you shouldn’t have. It was all right. Richard said to me—
DICK: Richard.
DANNY: “Mr. Kaye,” he said. That was the way he opened the whole thing. He said, “Does it ever bother you when people refer to you as a graceful man?” I said, “No, not really. I think people have grown up now. And I don’t think there’s any strange connotation about that at all.” That was on a Thursday night. Friday night I busted my leg.
DICK: (British accent) Is it possible that I jinxed you?
DANNY: (British accent) Well, I don’t know. It oh so happens that I have always been sure-footed as a fleet little bird and I came here and you and all your naïve innocence, strangely warm and affectionate, had said, “Do you get embarrassed when people refer to you as a graceful man?” And there was a maniacal look in your face as you said the line, and the next thing I knew I was in a hospital being tranquilized.
DICK: (another accent) Yes, I have peculiar powers, you see.
DANNY: (same accent, joking about Dick) My brother, also, he’s from Hungary.
DICK: No, I don’t think I’ve ever jinxed anyone else like that so I don’t, I don’t think it’s a—Is it true that you were just crocked to the gills that night and that’s how you…?
DANNY: It is absolutely true because one of the great, great secrets in our profession—see you read stories about the fact that I don’t drink, you know, and I don’t smoke very much and I eat health food. That isn’t really true; I drink a great deal.
DICK: Really?
DANNY: No, not really.
DICK: I mean, you’re about to reveal that you are…
DANNY: I am—there’s no way in the world that I can go on and do a show without having at least a quart and a half of whiskey.
(Dick laughs)
DANNY: (starts using a drunk voice) You think I’m sober now. Do you honestly think that I came on here without having anything at all to imbibe on?
(Dick and audience laughs)
DICK: You are a little… You know now that you mention it, you are a bit, a bit tanked. No, you’re not, but that is convincing, that is the stare that you get from a person.
DANNY: Well, you know what’s marvelous about that? They never really can look at your eyes. It is always in the hairline and always over in the corner. Yeah, you’re doing it now. Yeah, now look at me, Dick. There.
DICK: We’re both, our gaze is both are missing about here.
DANNY: You can’t even look at an audience. You look at an audience and it’s like…
DICK: Are you tempted just for fun some night to see what would happen? I mean to see how much control you could bring over your normal powers by just downing a bottle of booze some night and going on? Or have you done it?
DANNY: Yes, I did it when I was very, very young and I didn’t down a bottle of booze, I had two drinks. And I thought I was absolutely brilliant and I was pathetic. I thought I was performing like a dream. And nothing quite right seemed to happen, and I have never ever—and that was a hundred years ago—ever taken a drink since that day and—in other words, if I work at 7:30 at night, it wouldn’t occur to me to have a glass of beer at one o’clock in the afternoon. I would be absolutely terrified. Yeah.
DICK: What was wrong? Were you not facing the audience?
DANNY: No, I was facing the audience. I thought I was doing well, but--the people will say to me, “Well, I drive a little better when I’ve had a couple of drinks because I’m more careful” is nonsense. They don’t drive better, and they’re not in full possession of their faculties. And they probably hit somebody.
DICK: Say, not to change the subject… Is that the only time you’ve been mangled in your career is that thing with your leg?
DANNY: Oh, yes. The only accident I’ve ever had.
DICK: I had seen or read something years ago about you hurt making a movie or setting your hair on fire or—
DANNY: No, well I did all of that while I was in pictures because I was a lunatic. You know most people used to have their own stuntmen. And I was kind of, well I guess, you know, slightly conceited about the fact that I could do a lot of those things. I wouldn’t let anybody do the stunts for me.
DICK: You did all that zany stunts?
DANNY: Well, a lot of them, yeah. I mean the ones where I, you know, dove off the Washington Bridge into a tugboat was not really me. It wasn’t even a stuntman; it was a dummy.
DICK: Ah. I was going to say, it would have to be.
DANNY: But all the other things in movies, all the boxing I learned, and all the horseback riding and all the fencing and all the ball playing…I learned that and did that.
DICK: We’ve got uh—I don’t know if we can do it now, can we? We put together a tape of an awful lot of things that you did in films. I was going to ask you about them.
DANNY: Stunts?
DICK: Yeah. Yeah.
DANNY: Where did you get that?
DICK: Well, we perused, uh, and searched, uh, your archives.
DANNY: Yeah, but, but who did you ask about that? I mean, because those things—
DICK: The lady who has the key to your archives.
DANNY: Really?
DICK: Hm-mm.
DANNY: Marjorie archives?
DICK: (laughing) I don’t know. I guess we got them probably from the city library. I don’t know where we get these things.
DANNY: Are, are we going to look at the films?
DICK: We’re going to; you don’t have to look if you don’t want because I know some people don’t like to see themselves.
(Danny is face-forward, looking up at the monitors and eager to see the footage.)
DANNY: I don’t see anything yet!
DICK: Well it isn’t on there yet.
DANNY: Oh.
DICK: It looks more like—here it comes now. Watch this, this is really…this is you in a whole lot of—
DANNY: Do you want me to explain as we go along?
(Footage starts)
DICK: Oh there’s sound on it.
(Various footage is shown from Danny’s movies: The Court Jester – Danny swinging on the vine; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – fighting on the office’s window ledge & being Captain Mitty on the ship; The Inspector General – playing the violin; The Kid From Brooklyn – boxing; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – shuffling the deck; Merry Andrew – up on the trapeze)
DANNY: You know what’s funny about that? When we were doing the cards, they brought a fella in to do the cards.
DICK: To photograph his hands?
DANNY: Yeah, a magician. And for some reason, he got nervous, you know, and it was a movie camera and he kept not being able to do the trick. And I finally wound up doing the trick. Now in the boxing, before you can really learn to do anything clumsily, you’ve got to learn how to do it fairly well to begin with. And I worked for weeks with boxing instructors and punching bags and all that to be able to clown when we were doing the thing in the movie. You know the trapeze thing?
DICK: Yeah.
DANNY: How would you grab—
DICK: Surely that wasn’t you.
DANNY: Yes, yes!
DICK: That was you?
DANNY: Yes. Now how do you grab a trapeze?
DICK: I don’t know. I was on a trapeze once when George Clinton was on.
DANNY: You remember how you held it?
DICK: I just took it like this. (fingers up, thumb out)
DANNY: No. That’s wrong.
DICK: Should I take it backwards?
DANNY: If you hold your hand like that, you’ve only got that much distance in which to catch the bar. Isn’t that correct?
DICK: Right.
DANNY: So they hold their thumb there (up instead of out) and they catch the bar that way as opposed to that way.
DICK: Why does that give you more—I don’t see where…
DANNY: Well you have all of this—
DICK: Oh and the thumb would block—
DANNY: That’s right. Then you’d have to get it exactly in this area and here you’ve got the whole palm to hit the trapeze.
DICK: That’s really great to know if someone on the way home suddenly has a trapeze coming at you.
(Danny laughs.)
DICK: Remember that you heard it here. Did you get to do that long rope swing in that thing we saw? (i.e. The Court Jester)
DANNY: Yes.
DICK: I’d love to swing on a rope. If there were a rope in here now, I would swing on it.
DANNY: (turns) Uh… Mr. Rope?
DICK: (laughs) There’s no—
DANNY: No rope, eh?
DICK: I wish there were.
DANNY: How about on one of the booms? (points up)
DICK: I don’t think that would be safe. Um, but I did swing on a very long rope one time in a gym and it was one of the most exhilarating feelings. I love rope swings, and if I had a rope here I’d probably do nothing but swing on it throughout the entire show. I can swing till the cows come home. If that quote were taken out of context—where were we Mr. Kaye? You’re giving me that strange stare.
DANNY: You would swing on a rope all day?
DICK: I would love to swing on a rope. Just love it. And when I saw that film—
DANNY: Are you a monkey?
DICK: No. I have no simian blood, but I do like to swing on a rope. Hey, you know that other thing influence you’ve had on my life aside from making it a terrific swinger as a kid on ropes was, uh, the fencing scene from The Court Jester. And you and Basil Rathbone fenced and my little friends and I, of course we were tiny at the time…
DANNY: (while audience laughs) Yes.
DICK: …went and we got fishing poles and took them apart and made—it’s a wonder we didn’t poke our eyes out. However, we made masks with screen wire and catcher’s mitts.
DANNY: And that put your eyes out?
DICK: No, but we did fence with them. It was fun.
DANNY: I had never held a sword in my hand in my whole life. And when we decided to do this film, they said, “Well let’s get a fencing instructor and find out…teach you how to fence. Well, for about a week I never had a sword in my hand, but they had a wall and a 2x4 and I would practice lunging. (Danny gets up to demonstrate) You see—
DICK: A 2x4?
DANNY: Yeah. There was the wall, and they put a 2x4 and you had to stay in it. Now if you lunged and bent your back, you’d be thrown off balance. So you had to learn to lunge with a straight back. And for a week I never had a sword in my hand, and then I finally came in one day and we had a foil. And we were practicing routines with the foil and we were doing that for about a week or more. And one day he came in and he put a sword in my hand and I knew instantly it was my weapon. It was a saber. And the saber has the same kind of technique as the foil except you can slash with it, as well. See with a foil it’s all basically in the wrist and thrust and parry. With a saber, you thrust the same way but there’s also cutting. And now Basil Rathbone is a marvelous swordsman.
DICK: He was supposed to be one of the two best—
DANNY: Really a marvelous swordsman. Ralph Faulkner was the fella I worked with, and we got this routine down to such a speed that Basil said, “Well maybe you ought to have somebody do that.” And they brought in a fencing double. And the fencing double couldn’t do it at the speed that the teacher was doing it at. So the teacher finally had to dress in Rathbone’s clothes and I did it with him.
DICK: So in the actual thing that’s not Rathbone even though he was a great fencer?
DANNY: No, Rathbone is in all the shots where we have a double shot. There is one shot actually where he is stumbling over and that you need a double for that. So it’s kind of interesting to see. Now in this part of the film that I think you’re going to see I was under a hypnotic spell. And when they snap, I would become the greatest swordsman in the world. And when someone snapped again, I didn’t know anything about fencing at all. So from one snap to another, one snap to another, I would become either the most marvelous swordsman you’d ever seen or I didn’t know anything about it at all.
DICK: The clutz of the saber.
DANNY: Saber clutz.
DICK: Yes.
DANNY: (Danny sings some bars of music) Saber clutz.
DICK: My very thought.
(Footage from The Court Jester is shown of Danny and Basil Rathbone sword fighting)
DANNY: What was strange in that scene is when we got into the courtyard, Rathbone had no notion of what I was going to do.
DICK: So when you lunged at him like that he really ducked.
DANNY: No, I didn’t have any notion of what I was going to do either, and we had a marvelous time. I scared the devil out of him.
