Background
Danny Kaye was born on January 18, 1913 in New York City. Son of Jacob and Clara (Nemerovsky) Kaminski.
Danny Kaye was born on January 18, 1913 in New York City. Son of Jacob and Clara (Nemerovsky) Kaminski.
Kaye gained his first professional experience as an entertainer in the borscht belt resorts of the Catskill Mountains. While still in his early twenties, he embarked on a tour that took him to the Far East, but he was still an unknown when he made his first short film appearance in 1937. The Straw Hat Revue on Broadway (1939) brought him some attention and he shot to overnight stardom in Lady in the Dark (1941). It was in this show that he sang the song “Tschaikowsky,” the most memorable example of his capacity for tongue-twisting, in which he managed to pronounce the names of fifty Russian composers in thirty-nine seconds.
Following another successful Broadway appearance in Cole Porter’s Let's Face It, Kaye accepted an offerto star in films forproducer Sam Goldwyn. His first films, Up in Armsand Wonder Man, were instant hits and later successes included The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Ilans Christian Anderson. In many of the comedy films he made for Goldwyn, and later for Paramount, Kaye played double roles that enabled him to show off his talent for mimicry. At the end of the 1940s, he conquered London with his concerts at the London Palladium.
After the mid-fifties, Kaye largely abandoned films to tour the world on behalf of the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF). In 1963 he began to host his own musical variety show on television; it ran for four seasons. In 1967 he broke all engagements to entertain Israeli troops during the Six-Day War. It was not his first visit to Israel and he was to continue to appear there frequently.
In later concert tours Kaye indulged his passion for conducting; other fields in which he was a talented amateur included medicine, flying, and gourmet cooking. His last Broadway role was as Noah in Richard Rodgers' musical Two By Two. In 1981 he gave a rare serious performance as a Holocaust survivor in the TV movie, Skokie. Blood transfusions he received during heart surgery in 1983 led to hepatitis, of which he died in 1987.
Official permanent ambassador-at-large United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund.