See It Now Reviews
“Danny Kaye Hit On See It Now”
Star-
By: Charles Mercer
NEW YORK (AP) – Danny Kaye, a man who hurdles language barriers with
the greatest of ease, has given television one of its finest 90 minutes. The occasion
was “The Secret Life of Danny Kaye” on See It Now (CBS-
Kaye’s
secret life turned out to be most uncomplicated. He loves children. He also happens
to be one of the merriest and most imaginative pantomimists alive. So he took his
love and his talent on a 50,000-
The result, as viewed by the
television audience on Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now, was an extraordinarily moving
dramatization of an often forgotten fact. The only great international language is
laughter.
Superior photography furnished striking evidence of what UNICEF
is doing in such diverse places as Nigeria and Yugoslavia and Morocco. Had See It
Now belabored the purpose and nature of UNICEF further, the result would have been
tedious. As it was, Kaye has made many millions of Americans receptive to the purposes
of that most worthy organization.
For Kaye and the cameras demonstrated
another often forgotten fact. Children are alike everywhere. In faces and reactions
they cannot be separated into nations and creeds. Often during the program it was
impossible to tell in what country Kaye was performing as the cameras searched the
rapt faces of his audiences.
One wishes, of course, that Kaye would consent
to embrace television as a constant medium. But it might be even better for the world
if he were sent abroad into it to organize all its children to laugh down all the
adult idiots who are trying to run it these days.