#The court jester danny kaye movie

If there was an essential Danny Kaye, he remains, in Gottfried’s phrase, an ”eternal question mark.The musical numbers are forgettable but still fun especially the opening with Kaye dressed as a jester standing next to the opening credits as he sings commentary and breaks the fourth wall.Īlso fun is watching some of Rathbone’s famous sword-fighting prowess previously seen in his prime in “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “The Mark of Zorro.”įor this fantastic restoration, artists scanned the original negative at 6K, and one of the “separation masters” was also scanned and recombined with the negative scans to fix color fading in the negative. But sex seemed to matter less to him than work and his three Walter Mittyish private passions: flying his own plane, watching operations in hospitals, and cooking gourmet Chinese dinners. Kaye did have a wrenching affair with Eve Arden, and several flirtations that distracted him from a troubled marriage to Sylvia Fine, who helped to invent his stage persona. Gottfried finds no evidence to back up the rumor that Kaye was secretly gay and had an affair with Laurence Olivier (a theory that’s elaborated in Donald Spoto’s biography of Olivier). Then, turning scarlet with rage, he rose, rolled the paper into a ball, and threw it at the man.” The author tells of a time when, at the height of his career, Kaye was asked by a fan to sign his name: ”Kaye…snatched the paper out of the fellow’s hand. Kaye’s ”black moods” extended, Gottfried notes, even to innocent autograph-seekers.

#The court jester danny kaye movie

His stage performances, which by all accounts surpassed his familiar movie roles (The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Hans Christian Andersen, among others) and galvanized international audiences during the ’40s and ’50s, were exercises in comic, vocal, balletic virtuosity, a series of whimsical masks.īehind the masks, the man who evolved out of David Daniel Kaminski, a Brooklyn childhood, and a Catskills resort apprenticeship could be charming, but also abruptly cold, tenaciously depressed, or simply opaque. In private he was, well, intensely private. In Nobody’s Fool: The Lives of Danny Kaye, Gottfried repeatedly tells us that as a performer, Kaye, who died in 1987 at age 74, was indefinable. He’s there somewhere, but always blurred and elusive. The only thing missing from Martin Gottfried’s sturdy biography of Danny Kaye is its subject. A review of the book from Entertainment Weekly is below. He seems to be sadly forgotten by this generation of film students and fans.Īn interesting book by Martin Gottfried called Nobody’s Fool chronicled Kaye’s life in 1994. Yet, he did lots of philanthropic work as an Ambassador for UNICEF and won the Academy Award Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1982. I heard similar stories from Rosemary Clooney, producer Bob Finkel, comedy writers Hal Kanter and Rocky Kalish, television director Norman Abbott and others.

He said he was cold, aloof, vindictive and an egomaniac. Korman told me how Kaye cut down Madeline Kahn’s role on Broadway with him in Richard Rodgers’ Two by Two when she outshined Kaye.īob Easton, who also was a regular on the variety series called Kaye a monster. Whenever Korman scored a big laugh during the dress rehearsals, Kaye ensured that he stepped on Korman’s lines during the taped performance. Harvey Korman, who was a cast member of Kaye’s variety show told me the nightmare of working with Kaye. However, whenever I interviewed any actor who worked with him, I usually heard horror stories about Kaye rather than discussions of his talent. He was a Catskills performer born Daniel Kaminski that led a amazing career. He appeared on radio, on Broadway and on stages throughout the world. He had a CBS variety series from 1963-1967 that won four Emmy Awards.

He was a unique performer that starred in several first rate Goldwyn films and others such as The Court Jester, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Hans Christian Andersen, The Five Pennies, The Inspector General and of course the eternal holiday classic-White Christmas. I was always fascinated by the talented Danny Kaye.