– The Forties –
(Continued)
The Inspector General
After the contract with Sam Goldwyn ended, Danny and
Sylvia accepted an offer from Warner Bros
. where Danny proceeded to film The Inspector
General. For this film, Sylvia moved up to the title of Associate Producer and was
responsible for all the songs in the movie, as opposed to just one or two during
the Goldwyn years. During the filming of The Inspector General a new technique was
used. Typically, whenever a song appeared in a movie, the singer would record the
song first in a studio and then go through the motions later, lip-syncing in front
of the cameras. As one article put it: "Not even Warner Bros. can get Kaye to do
the same thing twice, a calamity which completely disorganized movie-making routine."
(September 1949) Danny usually does a song differently every time he sings it. "If
he does a song 10 times he usually does it in 10 different moods. If he was in one
mood when he made the original record a week before, the chances are 10 to one that
he will not be in the same mood when he does it a week later on the playback." (December
1948) Because of this, a new uni-directional microphone was created for this film
allowing Danny to sing the song at the same time the cameras were rolling. The microphone
was geared to pick up only Danny's voice and no background noise. This made it possible
for his wife, Sylvia, to sit on the set and play the accompaniment. The real background
music was added in later. (December 1948)
The Inspector General premiered in 1949, but the film didn't do well at the box office.
Danny and Sylvia terminated their contract with Warner Bros. not long afterwards.
– The Fifties –
Movies of the Fifties
The start of the new decade had Danny appearing in such movies as On the Riviera
in 1951 with Twentieth-Century Fox. The next year Danny reappeared with Goldwyn in
Hans Christian Andersen. In the early '50s, Danny and Sylvia created their own production
company, Dena Productions, w
ith their partners, Melvin Frank and Norman Panama. Their
movies were produced in collaboration with Paramount who allowed them to use their
studios and distributed their films. Producing movies through their own company allowed
Danny and Sylvia to have a bigger say in the cast and the script. Knock on Wood,
released in 1954, became Danny's first movie to be produced by Dena Productions.
It was an attempt to allow the real Danny Kaye personality to filter through the
movie. It was also decided by Danny, Melvin Frank, and Norman Panama, to allow Danny
to ad-lib. As Danny said, "[...] I'm my own producer and I let my own ad libs stay
in the film. This gives it a lively quality which I think helps it greatly." (The
Danny Kaye Story pg 195) As for the title of the film, in a September 1954 article,
Danny wrote, "We called it that because my wife, Sylvia, and I, plus our partners,
made it with our own money. And every time anyone said, 'it’s sure to be a hit,'
we’d all knock on wood."
In 1953, not long after wrapping up Knock on Wood, Danny was approached with an offer
for a role in White Christmas with Bing Crosby. Fred Astaire and Donald O'Connor
had been the first two choices, but neither were able to do the film. Things were
coming down to the wire and "Don Hartman, production manager of Paramount, remained
up all that night trying to think the thing out. At breakfast he had resolved to
put the substituting proposition up to Danny Kaye, who just then was finishing 'Knock
on Wood' on the same lot." (September 1953) Danny had already had prior commitments
and wasn't sure about accepting the role. Hartman asked him how much money it would
take. Danny's response: “I want $250,000 for playing the part and 10 per cent of
the film’s net profits.” Both Irving Berlin and Bing Crosby immediately agreed to
sacrifice 5% of their net profits in order to get Danny on board. According to Kurt
Singer's book, Danny "was sure he couldn't fill Astaire's shoes, but Sylvia again
was adamant: 'Danny protested that he was a faker, not a dancer, and that the routine
would have to be simplified for him. I told him he could do it.'" (The Danny Kaye
Story pg 198) The movie has become a classic appearing on television every holiday
season. When asked about Bing, Danny said:
"I loved to work with him. I had the feeling he was my close personal friend. The
real truth is that everybody knows Bing, but no one knows him. Through the years
he has created a legendary character that is so vivid, no one knows where the legend
begins and the real Crosby leaves off. I thought I knew Bing--thought I knew all
about him until we started to make White Christmas. Then I realized I actually didn't
know the man at all. The truth of the matter is, there isn't a lazy bone in Bing's
body. He works harder than any man I've met--but he does it with an easy casualness
that makes him look lazy." (The Danny Kaye Story pg 198)
And what did Bing say about Danny? "'Danny Kaye,' said Bing, in naming him the all-time
greatest performer in show business, 'has everything it takes. He can act, dance,
sing and clown. The man is absolutely sensational. Catch his new comedy, "Knock on
Wood" and see what I mean.'” (December 4, 1954)
On his fortieth birthday, January 18, 1953, Danny opened at the Palace Theater in
New York for an eight-week run. According to a January 19, 1953 article, the advance
sales amounted to $250,000 while The Danny Kaye Story mentions that it was $230,000.
The article also went on to explain that Danny was "getting 60 percent of the box
office gross, up to $40,000 a week and 65 percent of anything over that." In any
case, Danny's performance at the Palace was a huge success and garnered him a lot
of income. And there were plenty of famous people there as well including the Duke
and Duchess of Windsor, Marlene Dietrich, and more.
"He sang song after song, including some new ones, and then included some audience
favorites which he had done long ago on the Broadway musical comedy stage when he
played in such as 'Lady In The Dark' with Gertrude Lawrence and in 'Let’s Face It.'
The audience kept demanding more so Kaye sent the exhausted orchestra offstage for
a brief rest. But he remained on stage with a piano player and continued to entertain.
Not only did he sing, but he played one-character farces and did tap, soft shoe and
almost every other kind of dance. He threw in quite a bit of strenuous acrobatics.
Finally exhausted himself, he sat on the edge of the stage with his legs stretched
over the footlights and sang several of the songs he does in the leading role of
the new-motion picture, Hans Christian Andersen. The orchestra, rested, came back
and he went into his exciting performance again. Finally amid cheers from the audience,
he said, 'It is now time for all of us to go home and permit our baby sitters to
go home.'" (January 19, 1953)
The late fifties brought such movies as The Court Jester, Merry Andrew, Me and the
Colonel, and The Five Pennies. While The Court Jester --produced by Dena Productions--remains
a classic and is considered by many of Danny's fans to be his best movie, it didn't
do well at the box office. Danny explains, "The picture didn't make money because
its production cost too much in today's inflationary market. Expenses got out of
hand." (The Danny Kaye Story pg 203) According to Singer, the movie's total production
cost was 3 million dollars. (The Danny Kaye Story pg 199). Merry Andrew didn't do
well either. With Me and the Colonel, Danny decided to take a new approach as Singer
said, "In this motion picture he played a bewildered Jewish refugee named Jacobowsky,
who fled without a passport before the advancing Germans." (The Danny Kaye Story
pg 200) The Five Pennies was another movie different from his past experiences. This
was a biographical movie about Red Nichols and was produced by Dena Productions.
Ambassador for UNICEF
The fifties also brought about Danny's involvement
with UNICEF, the United Nations
International Children's Fund. UNICEF was first brought
up by Maurice Pate (who, at the time, was the executive director) whom Danny met
on a plane ride. "[...] he suggested I stop at some of the UNICEF installations in
the Far East [...] and then come back and write a magazine article or go on the radio
about UNICEF so that more people could find out what it is doing in the world." Danny
agreed and said he would do more than that. (February 1957) For one of Danny's first
trips with UNICEF, he convinced Paramount to lend him a small camera crew in order
to film their travels. What resulted was the documentary "Assignment: Children,"
which came out in 1954. "When it was completed, [Paramount] gave it all as a contribution
to UNICEF. The film was released world-wide and all proceeds were turned over to
UNICEF." (February 1957) Later, Danny's first television appearance was a documentary
film he did for Edward Murrow's "See It Now" program regarding his work with UNICEF.
It was a 90 minute film, for which he received no money, that highlighted his seven-week
tour. Eventually becoming an Ambassador-at-Large for UNICEF, Danny said, “I don’t
operate exactly in the classic tradition of an ambassador,” he said. “Most of the
time these people couldn’t understand a word of what I was saying and I certainly
couldn’t understand them. But there’s a universality about my kind of nonsense. Their
faces show they were getting the message." (September 1956) When he was first presented
with the opportunity to do some work for UNICEF, Maurice Pate warned him saying,
"'You will be in areas of the earth that no tourist has ever seen. You will be uncomfortable.
You will miss your warm shower and good food. You yourself will not always be safe
against diseases. Think it over again, but know this: Yours would be a tremendous
contribution.' Danny did not think long. 'This is exactly what I want to do,' he
said." (The Danny Kaye Story pg 227) And he never shied from anything he was confronted
with. When Danny met a little boy with yaws, who was covered from head to toe in
ulcerous sores, Danny was told, "'You can't show that on the screen.' I said, 'If
I can't show that on the screen, I don't want to make the picture at all. I want
to show exactly what is happening. I don't want people to think that everything is
sugar-coated and nice.'" (February 1957) Martin Gottfried, in his book Nobody's Fool,
said, "In 1956, the word 'leper' still carried a connotation of contagious mutilation
and the shunned, so this was very dramatic footage of Kaye mingling with these infected
people in their village square and learning native dances from them." (pg 228)
