For those who celebrate it ...



A HAPPY HALLOWEEN !

Have lots of frights and laughs , so in other words ... Have FUN ! ;o)



   Eric

Don't know if this is of interest or not, but I find it interesting, so I

thought I would share.



Back in the 60's, my aunt did a school paper on Danny Kaye -- he was her

favorite as well.  In her research, she collected a number of articles from the

50's and 60's, some of which she hand-transcribed.  She gave me the pouch with

contains all her Danny Kaye research, along with articles which she added when

he died.  I am going through them, and attempting to transcribe and/or scan them

to save them.  And I thought it might interest this group to read some of them.



In going through the articles, I found two which were actually written by Danny

Kaye himself.  So I started there.  Here is the first one I transcribed.  Please

note that any typos are almost certainly mine, and sometimes I was uncertain

about the spelling of names.  Without further ado:



------------------------------



THERE'S A LITTLE BIT OF CHILD IN EVERY ADULT



(and a little bit of adult in every child)







by Danny Kaye







POSH - Volume 2, Number 3, Fall 1961







There's no better way to travel than to see the world with, by, for and through

its children.  It has been my good fortune to meet more than a million children

- during seven tours to 48 countries for the United Nations Children's Fund.







I wouldn't trade the experience for the S.S. Canberra.







Why, I've learned more from seeing these children than I could have by

memorizing all of Baedecker or taking a Cook's Tour of the globe with Mr. Cook.







The love affair between Danny Kaye and Kids seems to be rather well-known now. 

When did it start?  I really can't recall.  I guess I started caring about kids

when it was childish to be a child, or even to like one.  But I grew out of that

and into an understanding that the life and love and the future of the world are

best expressed by its children.







It also seems well established that I make my living as an entertainer.  I am

proud of my profession.  People in show business traditionally are first to lend

a hand when needed - and performers usually become emotionally involved with

charitable causes.  While I have always tried to play my share of benefits, I

must admit I was never wrapped up in a cause until one day in 1953 when UNICEF

opened up a whole new world for me.  This is the wide world, the real world, the

laughter-and-suffering world of children.







We think only of teaching children, but the fact is, we can learn from them. 

They are much more intelligent than we think, and lacking the complications that

adults acquire, they are much quicker than we to know the truth.  Furthermore,

it's easy to communicate with kids.  There are no language barriers.  Whether in

Burma or Greece or Africa, I've learned that kids behave the same all over the

world, and all of them respond to the two international languages - love and

laughter.







Of course, you must shed a few inhibitions if you want real rapport with

children.  Instead of expecting a kid to act like an adult, you must act like a

kid.  Don't be embarrassed or afraid to do it, because if you do, the child will

sense it and your communication line will be broken.







So, travelers do all your sightseeing, see the museums, crawl the pubs or

whatever it is you like to do when in port.  But take a tip from an old

wayfarer.  Pass up a few ruins and seek out the children at every stop.  You'll

have fun and you'll learn.







For those of you who are parents, you might become better parents.  I did. 

There was a time when, to compensate for my travel and long absences from home,

I would overwhelm my daughter Dena with affection upon my return - never

realizing that it made her retreat.







Then I visited a hospital in India, where a boy lay ill in his bed and his

parents sat silent in a corner.  The boy turned his head slowly in their

direction, and they walked to his side.  A few minutes passed, and he turned his

head away again.  The parents returned to their corner.







My UNICEF guide explained the significance of what I had seen.  "It is the

custom in India," he said, "for the parents to stay by their beloved ones.  They

do not force themselves on the children, but they are there in spirit and body,

so they can be called upon."







And then I knew how to live with my Dena.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

dan ~

just wanted to say a quick & earnest thanks for making these articles

available. how nice of you.. & how interesting!

can't wait to get a chance to read them.



cheers,

	 ...-elizabeth.





Date: Thu Nov 6, 2008 10:27 am (PST)

From: "Daniel E. Harden"  danieleharden@...

Subject: [dannykaye] Danny Kaye articles

To: dannykaye@yahoogroups.com



<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dannykaye;_ylc=X3oDMTJicm9hMjJnBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE1BG\

dycElkAzQyOTI1BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTMzNDI1OARzZWMDaGRyBHNsawNocGgEc3RpbWUDMTIyNjA2Mz\

g5NQ-->Why

do we love Danny Kaye so?  Is it his









Don't know if this is of interest or not, but I find it interesting,

so I thought I would share.



Back in the 60's, my aunt did a school paper on Danny Kaye -- he was

her favorite as well. In her research, she collected a number of

articles from the 50's and 60's, some of which she hand-transcribed.

She gave me the pouch with contains all her Danny Kaye research,

along with articles which she added when he died. I am going through

them, and attempting to transcribe and/or scan them to save them. And

I thought it might interest this group to read some of them.



In going through the articles, I found two which were actually

written by Danny Kaye himself. So I started there. Here is the first

one I transcribed. Please note that any typos are almost certainly

mine, and sometimes I was uncertain about the spelling of names.

Without further ado...



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

The rest of the articles, I think, were written about Danny Kaye rather than by

him.  I have only begun transcribing them, but I will share them as time allows

me to transcribe...  Many have to do with his life or his work with UNICEF, some

have to do with his show or movies.  Hopefully all of them will be of some

interest.



This one is short, from 1954, and is a critique about the movie Knock On Wood.



Dan



------------------



Color, Comedy - and Kaye







Saturday Review, April 10, 1954, page 36







Not even Danny Kaye's most avid admirers, legion though this number be, have

been able to applaud wholeheartedly their favorite comedian's more recent films.

To be sure, there were always moments they would point to, moments when Kaye

managed to break free from the constraints of plot and character that shackled

his extraordinary talents and to soar into the realms of controlled hysteria,

where he has no peer.  For what stood out in films like "Walter Mitty", "The

Inspector General", or even "Hans Christian Andersen" were the isolated

interludes in which Kaye, generally working with material supplied by his wife,

Sylvia Fine, stopped acting out a role and slipped into a song or dance that

hadn't the remotest connection with what had been going on a moment or two

earlier.







The good news in "Knock on Wood" (Paramount) is that the clever writer-director

team of Norman Frank and Melvin Panama have hit upon a story and a character

that permit their star to be consistently funny as the plot unfold, while at the

same time introducing Kaye's specialty numbers (again written by Sylvia Fine)

easily and logically.  The result, inevitably, is one of the finest comedies to

hit the screen in a long time.  It builds slowly, taking as its point of

departure a situation strangely reminiscent of Michael Redgrave's problem in

"Dead of Night" a few years ago.  Kaye, a nightclub ventriloquist jittering on

the verge of schizophrenia, agrees to go to Switzerland for psychiatric care

because his dummies keep talking back at him.  Just before he leaves, however, a

spy stuffs some stolen blueprints for a super-weapon inside his two dolls. 

Immediately, albeit unwittingly, Kaye finds himself catapulted into the middle

of an international situation as rival gangs attempt to snatch papers from him.







Although the psychiatric aspects of their story are played straight (at one

point the dialogue seems to have been lifted verbatim from a college text),

fortunately nothing else is.  As the scene shifts from Paris to Zurich to

London, both spies and story become increasingly opera bouffe.  Since the spies

not only foil easily but are also highly expendable, soon Kaye has Scotland Yard

after him on a multiple murder charge.  The ensuing chase finds him posing

successively as an Irish tenor in a London pub, the staid salesman of a

gadget-ridden British hot rod, and a premier danseur in a Russian ballet - all

hilarious and wonderful to behold.  It might be added that the ballet, staged by

Michael Kidd, contrives to look like a real ballet even when Kaye is whirling

like a dervish or intercepting ballerina Diana Adams in the midst of a grande

jeté.  In fact, there is at all times a keen awareness of just how far to push

the farcical and when to keep one foot on the ground.  Mai Zetterling is

attractive and intelligent as the psychiatrist, David Burns deft and amusing as

Kaye's manager and side-kick.  But from start to finish "Knock on Wood" is Danny

Kaye - and it's grand having him around in a picture that uses him so well.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Okay, now for another article by Danny Kaye himself that further explains what

he alluded to in the Posh article.  This one I found quite touching.  See what

you think.  As always, please excuse any typos or misspellings...  Also, there

are I think three words in this article that are italicized for emphasis.  I

hope they come out as such.



Dan



------------------------------



How I Learned a Lesson in Parenthood







By Danny Kaye







Reader's Digest, September 1959 (pages 79-82)







What followed from a poignant scene in a primitive hospital in India







How many parents, I wonder, have had to learn the hard way, as I did, how

delicate the relationship is between an adult and a child, and how easy it is to

distort it?







Like so many other children, my daughter Dena is growing up in a family where

her father is frequently away from home; and, like so many fathers, I tried to

make my homecomings compensate for these separations.  I'd arrive with joyous

shouts and a suitcase full of presents, sweep Dena into my arms and smother her

with plans for the next day, the next week.  I'd hug her close, trying to make

up for the lost time, the missed love.  But my exuberance just didn't seem to be

contagious; at each reunion she responded to me less.  And I didn't know what to

do about it.







Then in the spring of 1954, when Dena was seven, I was faced with a protracted

absence from home.  A U.N. official had said to me, "We're trying to help some

children grow up instead of dying at the age of eight or ten, and we'd like you

to give us a hand."  He explained that an anti-TB vaccine costing only one cent

per shot could mean life to uncounted African and Asian children; that one

injection of penicillin could cure the terrible ulcers of yaws, that leprosy,

malaria, and other ancient scourges to which millions of innocent children are

heir could be defeated by modern medicine - if the world would only help.







  He asked me to tour the medical and nutritional stations maintained by the

United Nations Children's Fund and the World Health Organization, and with a

camera crew shoot a color film to be entitled "Assignment Children".  It was

hoped that this film would focus public attention on the problem and elicit the

support so desperately needed.  The U.N. official also thought I might be able

to entertain the children and help them overcome their fears when suddenly faced

by doctors and glittering medical paraphernalia.  There was little I could say

but yes.







I delayed telling Dena as long as I could.  Then suddenly at bedtime on Sunday

evening she looked me in the eyes and said solemnly, "You're going away."







"Well, ." I said.  "Yes."  While I stalled and searched for the best way to

breaking the news, she had seen the truth and spoken it.







"When are you going?" she asked gravely.







"Not for a whole week.  And we'll have a ball during that time.  A beach party

every day, if you like.  How about it?"







"All right," she said, but without enthusiasm.  Dena had already gone away from

me.







We opened our tour by joining a mobile U.N. vaccination unit in India, traveling

from one small village to another.  The children were naturally awed and

frightened when we arrived with our needles, and my job was to win their

friendship, and confidence.  For me to be introduced to them as a movie star was

obviously ridiculous.  These children didn't know what a movie was.  If I

exploded upon them with a big fanfare, they'd only see a big-mouthed redhead who

made a lot of noise in a foreign language and interrupted something much more

important, such as drawing a picture in the dust or thinking secret thoughts. 

All children fave a great sense of privacy and you violate at your peril.







I quickly learned to move in quietly, letting them come to me.  I'd wander

through a village and sit down on the ground someplace, certain that curiosity

would eventually lead the children to me.  When they got close enough I'd make a

funny face at them and there'd be giggles.  Soon someone would make a funny face

back and we'd have a fine contest going, with everyone laughing and relaxed. 

Then I'd clap hands and start a follow-the-leader that took us down the lanes

and around the temples and pagodas, to end up before the waiting doctors.  The

children submitted to the injections, comforted not by any skills of mine but

because they saw in me a reflection of themselves.  Thus the adult would was

suddenly not quite so alien and overwhelming.







I remembered this lesson when I went to entertain patients in the children's

ward in Mysore Province in south-central India.  It was a day when the vary land

seemed fevered.  Twenty iron cots lined the walls of a stifling room, and at the

far end was an upright piano.  The children paid no particular attention to me

as I walked down the aisle between the beds, nor did I to them.  Standing beside

the piano and tapping the beat out lightly, I hummed a song to myself.  A couple

of little boys glanced at me curiously, then turned back to the beads they were

stringing.







My accompanist whispered to me, "Danny, belt one out!  Wake 'em up!"







I shook my head.  "Give me 'Blue Skies', real easy."







This time I sang the lyrics instead of humming, but quietly, again as if to

myself.  Several children were gravely watching me now, and by the time I had

started the third song a few of the more venturesome had climbed out of bed and

come over to the piano.  When I finished the song we stared at each other for a

moment of dignified silence, then I made a face and they laughed.  It was that

laughter that brought every child in the room to attention and soon into the

party.  Their laughter made us friends, not mine.  They came to me, and on their

own terms.







But somehow I didn't see how this lesson applied to my relationship with Dena. 

Not until I witnessed little Kirim and his parents, and their ordeal in a

primitive hospital in central India.  Kirim was a delicate boy of five, brought

in for surgery.  He was given an anesthetic, and operated on and placed in a

small crib to regain consciousness.  Throughout the entire procedure his parents

stood reassuringly close by, where, until the anesthetic took over, he could see

their calm dignity, their outward appearance of serenity.







I was nearby when Kirim finally opened his eyes after the operation.  If I'd

been his father I'd probably have joked and laughed and tried to make the boy

look up at the familiar and loved faces of his father and mother, I suddenly

realized how wrong I would have been - how deep was their wisdom.  They spoke

his name and touched his hand, but gave no display of their own concern and

emotion.  During the following hours they talked only when Kirim wished to talk,

laughed only when he did, was silent when he was silent.  They did not impose

themselves upon him, did not use his small being to ease their own anxieties. 

They let him decide how much attention he needed, how much love he wanted

displayed, and when.  They were a great reservoir of strength he could dip into

at will.







After my tour had covered 40,000 miles, through Burma, Thailand and Africa as

well as India, I turned at last homeward.  Through my memory ran an endless

parade of little faces, black ones, brown ones, tan and yellow and golden ones. 

Now I wanted only to see one small pink and white face.  As I stepped from the

plane, my wife and daughter greeted me with the reserve that comes from a long

separation.  I kissed them warmly - but quietly - and the three of us left the

field hand in hand.  I wanted so to walk doubled over with my face thrust

against Dena's, forcing upon her my attention, my love, my accumulated sense of

loss.  I wanted to hold her tight, literally to squeeze out of her the admission

that she had missed me . I wanted it all now, this instant!







But at last I knew better.  She would take her own time before accepting me

again as a part of her life.  Usually it required about a week, and the more I

bounded at her, I realized now, the slower it would be.







During the drive from the airport Dena's mother and I talked casually about

things that had happened at home during my absence.  Intuitively my wife

understood what I was doing, and together we tried to emphasize not the

interruption in our lives but the continuity.  We talked as if I had gone away

only yesterday.  Dena participated in the conversation, but tentatively,

cautiously.







At home we had supper on the terrace and were sitting quietly over coffee when

Dena suddenly threw her arms in the air and cried, "How about a beach party

tomorrow?"







"Hey!" I cried in response.  "How about that!"







I opened my arms to catch her as she launched herself at my neck.  It had been

but three hours since my plane landed.







Since that day I have tried never to drive my daughter from me by overwhelming

her with my own moods.  And I've learned that this principle doesn't just apply

to long separations.  Even when I'm making pictures in Hollywood - coming home

each evening after the day's work like so many fathers - I return with some

calmness, holding my emotions in reserve to see what her needs may be.  I try to

be her reservoir of strength.







Someday, when she's older, I'll tell my daughter why her father changed.  Then

she will understand what we owe to Kirim and his parents.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thanks very much for transcribing these articles, Dan!



Bill





On Nov 6, 2008, at 10:30 AM, Daniel E. Harden wrote:



> Okay, now for another article by Danny Kaye himself that further

> explains what he alluded to in the Posh article. This one I found

> quite touching. See what you think. As always, please excuse any

> typos or misspellings... Also, there are I think three words in

> this article that are italicized for emphasis. I hope they come out

> as such.

>

> Dan

>







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I recently came across the song Delilah Jones at

http://bigpopcorn.blog.rendez-vous.be/25864/Danny-Kaye-Delilah-jones/, but the

version there seems to be clipped, lopping off the end.  Does anybody happen to

have this song (complete) or the flip side, Molly-O?



Also, does anybody know about or have the Disco song he did titled "You're My

Friend"?  Apparently there was a record put out with 5 different versions of it.



Thanks in advance,



Dan



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]