Stories
and Articles
From a March 1962 article:
Mrs. Kaye says now that Danny has his pilot’s and navigator’s license, she at last can invite guests to dinner. For a year their dining room table was covered with charts (This little snippet just tickled my funny bone. I suppose all wives have a similar experience at some point in their married lives. For me, it was my husband's college books. - J.N. webmistress)
From a July 1961 article:
He had a congressional secretary remove her pointed shoe and place
her stockinged foot beside it.
“See?” Kaye said. “It’s like Chinese
foot-binding.”
Laughing, the secretary protested,
“You just don’t understand women.”
Throwing wide his arms, Kaye said, “I
have never understood women. I will never understand women. Maybe,
if I live to be 130 years old, I will get an inkling.”
From a September 1957 article:
There was a day the phone kept ringing until Danny snarled into it, “See here, dis is da
hangout of Marblehead Moe . . . and I’m warning ya, lay off callin’ here
or I’ll get da mob to take ya for a ride—unnerstand? I got da wires
tapped and I know where y’are.”
Sylvia
looked up, “That poor soul will never call us again. Who was it?”
“Your mother,” said Mr. Kaye gently.
From a September 1948 article:
He gave us a demonstration of scat-singing, but couldn’t explain it. He just sort of gets up and opens his mouth and lets a flock of syllables fly. “I have no more idea what I say than you do,” said Kaye when he sat down.
“When he can
spiel off Malichevsky, Rubinstein, Arensky, Tschiakovsky,
Sapellnikoff, Dmitriff, Prokokief, Shostakovich,Cherpnin,
Kryjanowski and 42 others without stopping for breath,” said Kaye
without stopping for breath, “he’ll be an addition to any party.”
A number of Gilbert and Sullivan
singers, however, have been talking this fast for a century.
Frankly, Kaye said, he doesn’t see what people think is so wonderful
when he does it.
From a March 1987 article:
There was a mother with a
baby boy on the flight and, as was his habit, Kaye – who portrayed Hans
Christian Andersen on screen and became a Pied Piper to the world’s
children in his three decades of work for UNICEF – picked up the infant
and waltzed the child off to first class to entertain him.
The baby gurgled happily throughout
the one-man show, and, after a few minutes, Kaye wound up the
entertainment and moved to hand the child back to the mother.
But the baby bawled in outrage and
every time the comedian stopped the show and tried to leave there were
more howls. A trouper to the last, Kaye took a manful gulp and kept the
baby amused for the entire flight. The weary mother made the most of the
relief and slept all the way to New York.
From the article "My Favorite Jokes" by Danny - August 1965
It has been my experience that the greatest men live by the simplest creeds. During World War II I heard of a lonely destroyer skipper who ran his ship with both strength and compassion but who kept almost entirely to himself. He had one ritual, however, which puzzled his fellow officers almost beyond endurance. Every morning before coming up to the bridge he would unlock a special drawer in his desk, take out a strongbox, unlock it, remove a small scrap of paper, read it carefully, return it to the strongbox, replace the box in the drawer and lock the drawer. One day, during a particularly heavy air attack, the skipper was killed. After the very briefest of decent intervals, his executive officer led a mad dash to the captain’s cabin, unlocked the special drawer, remove the strongbox, unlocked it, removed the mysterious scrap of paper and examined it carefully while his companions waited breathlessly. On it was written: “Port is left, starboard is right.”