“Danny Kaye Is a Fellow Who Doesn’t Erase Easily”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – Oct. 30, 1949
By: Harold V. Cohen

           Airplanes have no monopoly on jet. Some human beings occasionally acquire it, too. Mr. Danny Kaye happens to be one of them. The old town saw his brand in action last week at the Stanley and hasn’t entirely recovered yet; as a matter of fact, that may take months.
            Mr. Kaye doesn’t erase easily. Once seen, he is a hard man to forget. Most other entertainers have their counterparts in both the past and the present, but a thorough search of memory and library will turn up nobody of exactly the same pattern or degree of indestructibility.
            Ever since a little-remembered Broadway show of a dozen years ago called “The Straw Hat Revue,” Mr. Kaye’s many skills and talents have been converging. Today they are in complete harmony, and the platinum in them glistens from the spit and polish. Watching him now is an extraordinary experience.
            The spark never flickers or fades. From the moment he saunters in from the wings until the curtains come together again, Mr. Kaye is uranium on the hoof. To an inexhaustible repertoire of striking songs and spinning impressions, the uncommonly gifted fellow has added an energy of like proportions. He is as tireless as he is endowed.

Some Were Luckier

           In the three-quarters of an hour the Stanley allotted him, Mr. Kaye didn’t even begin to warm up. Some audiences were luckier than others, however. Turning away from the clock and the warning, overtime-conscious finger of the management, he would frequently disrupt the schedule and stay on indefinitely. A neighbor who was fortunate enough to be at such a performance had to restrain himself from stopping at the box-office on the way out and putting down another price of admission.
            Once was barely better than nothing, so this corner went back to see Mr. Kaye again and again. About eight visits, to be exact. The last was as good as the first; for a welcome change, the season pass to all Warner Brothers theaters was something more than just a visa to the daily bread.
            The whole family can enjoy Mr. Kaye, and that statement cannot be made of any other comedian in the business. Although he has played his share of night clubs and cafes, where the jokes are pale and purplish, none of it has touched him, and the laughter which swept over and enveloped the Stanley all week had the mixed sounds of voices high, changing and permanent.

Watching a Picture

           Working at his trade, Mr. Kaye is a canvas of bold and bubbling oils. The expressive hands, the hair-spring body and the many-registered voice are beguiling instruments, and the impact of his tremendous personality is immediate. Stay inside his line of vision for as little as 60 seconds, and you are a Danny Kaye three-sheet for life.
            The medium of satire has seldom turned up such a magnificent mime. But by nature, Mr. Kaye is a kind-hearted man and his arrows are dipped in rosewater. The cruel and savage barbs he leaves to others, being content to examine the least vulnerable idiosyncrasies of the human race. His earnest bistro tenor who sails through “Begin the Beguine” hitting clinkers at crucial moments not only bruises the sides but also has a touch of sadness; Mr. Kaye’s English concert hall singer, at encore No. 54 and enjoying every minute of it, has the glazed look and the distressed larynx of every performer who has stayed on too long without realizing it, and everything else he does taps the heart, too, as well as the funny bone.

           That is the man’s magic and his contagion. To label him and merely a comic would be like calling Shakespeare just a playwright. Mr. Kaye is an artist to the finger-tips who happens to have picked the stage for his base of operations. You know at once he would have been that in any of the muses.

A Call on Sir Harry

           Only last summer, in the middle of another spectacular success on the continent, Mr. Kaye paid a respectful call at Lauder Ha’ in Strathaven, a little village 20 miles from Glasgow, and for the first time met the venerable Sir Harry Lauder, one of the imperishables of show business. They took to each other instantaneously, and Mr. Kaye came away from the visit carrying a treasured gift, a crooked walking stick straight from the heathered highlands that the age Scot had sent him off with as a token of admiration and affection.
            It was no accident that Sir Harry Lauder found in Mr. Kaye a kindred spirit. They have the same qualities of greatness in common.

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