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: People always wonder how they can help when they see something as moving as that film like that. Do the Christmas cards help?
DANNY: Oh they help a great deal. I suppose there are a lot of ways to help, Dick, I also feel it would be presumptuous on my part to tell people how to help. What I do is try to bring back information about what UNICEF has done, what it has been doing, and depending on how moved people are or how seriously they consider this a threat to world peace, you know if the children don’t grow up in a healthy atmosphere…depending on how much they want to do about it, there are any number of ways. They can buy Christmas cards, which is an enormous source of revenue for UNICEF. They can send money, if they like. A lot of people volunteer...at this camp. It was an English doctor and an English girl who came as volunteers and stayed there for many, many months. There are people who work for UNICEF, who will call up the offices and find out what they can do. But we welcome any kind of help; we welcome all those people who want to help. And I think honestly that those people who do help should be highly commended because they are working for a marvelous cause.
DICK: I was asking you during the break… You must have to take shots for every imaginable disease when you go on that trip.
DANNY: Yes, I did.
DICK: How long does it take to get all those shots?
DANNY: Oh about 3 weeks.
DICK: You must be exposed to just about every thing communicable.
DANNY: Well you take cholera and typhoid and typhus and small pox and yellow fever and plague.
DICK: Plague?
DANNY: Yeah, well, we think of it as a Middle Ages’ disease but it still exists in some countries. So you have to take that. And here we are back again, going all around again, and I am absolutely delighted to do it. I think it is one activity in my life that has given me an enormous source of pleasure, has given me great satisfaction. And I suppose while I’m around I will still work for UNICEF because I believe implicitly in what it does.
DICK: We never said what it stands for; it’s International Children’s Emergency Fund.
DANNY: Yeah, well, it was born during the war. That’s how UNICEF was born. It was called the United Nations’ International Children’s Emergency Fund, and then shortly after the war it became a permanent part of the UN. And they now called it the United Nations’ Children’s Fund, but they still keep the initials.
DICK: That’s the compassionate side of you. Who do you hate?
DANNY: Ahh… Are there people in Hollywood that you just can’t stand?
DANNY: Not really. No, I don’t think I really hate anybody. I don’t get around them often enough to really get that upset with them. If I feel I’m going to dislike somebody, then I never see them again so it doesn’t develop into hate.
DICK: You stay behaved by…
DANNY: That’s true. I mean, life is too short and if somebody has done anything to offend me or to hurt me—that I may mistakenly feel that they have hurt me, I don’t know—but if I am injured in any way, I remove myself completely and it’s as though it never existed, or they never existed. And so I don’t have to keep eating my belly out about that.
DICK: You know, it’s funny, I just thought of a story that somebody told about you once and it was Basil Rathbone. A couple of years before he died he was on a show that I worked for, and he told a story—I don’t know if this is true—about you going to a party in London. As we all know, you’re the toast of London whenever you go there, and somebody said, “Come along to a party.” Someone like Lord Mountbattan or someone of that stature. And you only had on a plain blue suit. Stop me if this is an untrue story. And you said, “I’d feel silly because it’s in tails.” But they said, “No, no, come along. Everyone’s a good sport here.” And you went to the party and the Duchess of Windsor was supposed to have turned to you and, offended by your attire, and said, “Still trying to be terribly funny, Mr. Kaye.” And you said, “And you, too, Ma’am.” That was the story, now…
DANNY: Well, the last two lines are correct but—
DICK: All the names have been changed?
DANNY: No, no…the scene was quite different. And I don’t think she meant it to be strange anyway.
DICK: Oh. Well.
DANNY: It was an innocent remark, which I misinterpreted because she’s really a sweet woman and I—Why are you jiggling?
DICK: I don’t know. I had a feeling that you were. (laughs) Say, there’s another thing that we’ve stuck together here because you have this incredible voice and this great versatility and all of these wonderful things that go along with that in musicals. And we have stuck together a whole lot of you singing. It’s sort of a song montage, as they say in the business.
DANNY: Oh, I am so delighted you said that. I thought I was going to sit here without you running some footage on a song montage, which you fellas have worked very hard to put—(to audience) if you all would like to go out now because we have another few minutes and come back after the song—no there’s a song…
DICK: No, they worked pretty hard stitching this together…
DANNY: Let’s look at it again.
DICK: It’s not all good, but some of it is. (audience laughter, Danny smiling) Oh, there are five seconds.
DANNY: There are five seconds.
DICK: We can re-cross our legs.
DANNY: (singing to Dick) There once was an ugly duckling with—
(Footage of song montage begins)\
DANNY: Oh, Louis, he was remarkable.
DICK: He really had it, didn’t he?
DANNY: Oh yeah.
DICK: I was going to ask you about something else, right in there, because I know that once as a kid I read the history of the American theater and—I don’t mean to make you sound like an antique—but this was very recent American theater and they were talking about the night you hit on Broadway in that Gertrude Lawrence musical, “Lady in the Dark.” And they said that there was—
DANNY: The one that you did in the monologue.
DICK: …which I did the thing in the monologue, but—and they said it was just one of those show-stopping nights of the kind that usually in the movies gets the person kicked out of the show (Danny laughs) because they get more applause then the show does or something like that.
DANNY: Well, it almost happened, not quite. Well, the night we opened in Boston, I did a “Tschaikovsky” in which I did 56 Russian composers names in 38 seconds. And nobody knew what the reaction was going to be. And when I finished the thing, I jumped back on the horse, and the people carried on and I thought, “Well isn’t that nice.” Then I suddenly remembered that Gertie Lawrence had a song to do after I did called “Jenny.”DICK: The song “Jenny”?
DANNY: Yeah. (Singing) Jenny made her mind up… (continues talking) Well, I got back up on the horse and Gertie came out and she did “Jenny” like she had never, ever done it before. And 50 seconds in between those two numbers, she did her whole number, and it tied the show up again in a knot. I don’t think there’s ever been any musical show, really, that has had two kind of show-stoppers one on top of the other like that.
DICK: That’s strange, isn’t it, how one performer can bring something up to a height that another performer gets on top of.
DANNY: Never had done it like that before and she used to sing it, “Jenny made her mind up when she was 3.” And that night she said, “Jenny made her mind up—zap!” And she would do bumps and grinds and things. And everybody on the stage was kind of looking at her like that because they never really expected her to do that.
DICK: But it didn’t go through your head like it does in the movies, “Oh, listen to that applause I made. I’m a star. From now on it’s the golden stairway to success” so on. You just thought, “that’s a nice reaction.”
DANNY: Oh it was a very nice reaction. I had no idea where we were going from there.
DICK: How many of those 50 Russian composers do you remember now?
DANNY: 56, Mr. Cavett.
DICK: Sorry, I’ve offended 6 Russian composers.
DANNY: You said it in the monologue.
DICK: I did, didn’t I?
DANNY: You said 50. You just mentioned 50 again. And for the third time you—56 Russian composers.
DICK: (British accent) I’ll try to get my facts straight, sir.
DANNY: Let me have a little rhythm, Rosengarten.
DICK: You gonna do it?
DANNY: No. (Music stars) No, no, no, no. Bob…
BOB: Yeah?
(Danny beats out the rhythm for the pianist then sings “Tschiakovsky.”)
DICK: I’ve always wanted to hear you do that.
DANNY: Do you want me to do it again? It only takes 38 seconds.
DICK: I swear, I always wanted to hear that. That’s terrific, but I swear you left one out. Say… What have you been doing lately? And what will you be doing in the near future?
DANNY: Well…I’m certainly glad you asked that question because if you hadn’t asked it, Mr. Rankin and Mr. Bass would have been terribly upset with me. And Mr. ABC—
DICK: Well, both Rankin and Bass would be upset.
DANNY: And Mr. ABC would have been upset because we have done a special that’s going to be on ABC. And it’s about The Emperor’s New Clothes.
DICK: And people will never have to change their dial from now until when it’s on because it’s on right on this network.
DANNY: Exactly. And it’ll be on—I don’t know when it’s going to be on in the very near future people will see it. But we went to Copenhagen, which I’m crazy about anyway, and we shot some film for the lead-in and things. And there’s a process called Animagic. Do you know about that?
DICK: No.
DANNY: The little life-sized puppets. I mean, they’re built to scale. Now they take a frame of the film, and they move a foot. Another frame of the film and they move that. So there are never any strings. And I was in Japan, and they wanted me to walk for them and to use my arms and my hands. And how I turned around so they could have a film record of how this little puppet should be able to perform. And I think they had some film on that, which I would be delighted if you would ask them to run.
DICK: Have them roll it. Tell them I sent you.
DANNY: Okay.
DICK: Ah they’re—
DANNY: 3, 4, 2, 1…here we go and it’s the…
(Footage plays)
DANNY: And then I think after that, the lady who wrote Mary Poppins, is writing a story about Jack Frost that we may do as a movie in Copenhagen. It will be another kind of Andersen picture, I think.
DICK: Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen.
DANNY: Yes, and until that happens I am going to go home because I haven’t been home long enough to become restless.
DICK: Well you better do—
DANNY: So I’m going to go home and I’m going to get lost in my pots and pans.
DICK: Your Chinese kitchen. Tomorrow night Jim Henson and the Muppets will be here. (imitating Cookie Monster) “Cookies!” And the Cookie Monster. (To Danny) Sounds very much like him, don’t you think?
DANNY: Yeah, it’s a very strange thing. You know you sound just like Olivier when you get your voice in—
DICK: Now cut that out! (laughing) We will come back and expand my range some night for me, will you?
DANNY: (chuckles) All right.
DICK: Thank you for being here today. We’ll see you tomorrow night with the Muppets and the Cookie Monster.
