In 1937, Kaye's film début came from a contract with New York-based
Educational Pictures for a series of two-reel comedies. He usually played a manic, dark-haired, fast-talking Russian in these low-budget shorts, opposite young hopefuls
June Allyson and
Imogene Coca. The Kaye series ended abruptly when the studio shut down in 1938. He was working in the Catskills in 1937 under the name Danny Kolbin. His next venture was a short-lived
Broadway show with Sylvia Fine as the pianist, lyricist, and composer.
The Straw Hat Revue opened on September 29, 1939, and closed after 10 weeks, but critics noticed Kaye's work. The reviews brought an offer for both Kaye and his bride Sylvia to work at
La Martinique, a New York City nightclub. Kaye performed with Sylvia as his accompanist. At La Martinique, playwright
Moss Hart saw Danny perform, and that led to Hart's casting him in his hit Broadway comedy
Lady in the Dark. In the next Broadway season, he was the star of a show about a young man who is drafted called ''
Let's Face It!''. His feature-film début was in producer
Samuel Goldwyn's
Technicolor 1944 comedy
Up in Arms, a remake of Goldwyn's
Eddie Cantor comedy
Whoopee! (1930). Rival producer
Robert M. Savini cashed in by compiling three of Kaye's Educational Pictures shorts into a patchwork feature entitled
The Birth of a Star (1945). Studio mogul Goldwyn wanted Kaye's prominent nose fixed to look less Jewish; '' trailer Kaye starred in a radio program,
The Danny Kaye Show, on CBS from 1945 to 1946. The program's popularity rose quickly. Within a year, he tied with
Jimmy Durante for fifth place in the
Radio Daily popularity poll. Kaye was the first American actor to visit postwar Tokyo. He had toured there some ten years before with the vaudeville troupe. When Kaye asked to be released from his radio contract in mid-1946, he agreed not to accept a regular radio show for one year and only limited guest appearances on other radio programs. Many of the show's episodes survive today, notable for Kaye's opening signature patter ("Git gat gittle, giddle-di-ap, giddle-de-tommy, riddle de biddle de roop, da-reep, fa-san, skeedle de woo-da, fiddle de wada, reep!"). Some of Kaye's films included the theme of doubles, two people who look identical (both played by him) being mistaken for each other to comic effect. in 1948, he "roused the Royal family to laughter and was the first of many performers who have turned British variety into an American preserve."
Life described his reception as "worshipful hysteria" and noted that the royal family, for the first time, left the
royal box to watch from the front row of the orchestra. He related that he had no idea of the familial connections when the
Marquess of Milford Haven introduced himself after a show and said he would like his cousins to see Kaye perform. Kaye had an invitation to return to London for a
Royal Variety Performance in November of the same year. When the invitation arrived, Kaye was busy with
The Inspector General (which had a working title of
Happy Times).
Warner Bros. stopped the film to allow their star to attend. When his Decca labelmates
The Andrews Sisters began their engagement at the London Palladium on the heels of Kaye's successful 1948 appearance there, the trio was well received and
David Lewin of the
Daily Express declared: "The audience gave the Andrews Sisters the Danny Kaye roar!" Kaye entered television in 1956, on the CBS show
See It Now with
Edward R. Murrow.
The Secret Life of Danny Kaye combined his 50,000-mile, ten-country tour as UNICEF ambassador with music and humor. His first solo effort was in 1960 with a one-hour special produced by Sylvia and sponsored by
General Motors, with similar specials in 1961 and 1962. His last cinematic starring role came in 1963's ''
The Man from the Diners' Club''. Beginning in 1964, he acted as television host to the CBS telecasts of
MGM's
The Wizard of Oz. Kaye did a stint as a ''
What's My Line? mystery guest on the Sunday-night CBS-TV quiz program. Kaye was later a guest panelist on that show. He also appeared on the interview program Here's Hollywood. In the 1970s, Kaye tore a ligament in his leg during the run of the Richard Rodgers musical Two by Two'', but went on with the show, appearing with his leg in a cast and cavorting on stage in a wheelchair. He had done much the same on his television show in 1964, when his right leg and foot were burned from a cooking accident. Camera shots were planned so television viewers did not see Kaye in his wheelchair. In 1976, he played
Geppetto in a television musical adaptation of
Pinocchio with
Sandy Duncan in the title role. Kaye portrayed Captain Hook opposite
Mia Farrow in a
musical version of Peter Pan featuring songs by
Anthony Newley and
Leslie Bricusse. He later guest-starred in episodes of
The Muppet Show and
The Cosby Show,
Career in music , Meitar collection,
National Library of Israel While Kaye claimed he could not read music, he was said to have
perfect pitch. A flamboyant performer with his own distinctive style, "easily adapting from outrageous novelty songs to tender ballads" (according to critic Jason Ankeny), in 1945, Kaye began hosting his own CBS radio program, in which he performed a number of hit songs, including "
Dinah" and "
Minnie the Moocher". In 1947, Kaye teamed up with
The Andrews Sisters (Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne) on Decca Records, producing the number-three
Billboard hit "Civilization (Bongo, Bongo, Bongo)". The success of the pairing prompted both acts to record through 1950, producing such rhythmically comical fare as "
The Woody Woodpecker Song" (based on the bird from the
Walter Lantz cartoons and a
Billboard hit for the quartet), "Put 'em in a Box, Tie 'em with a Ribbon (And Throw 'em in the Deep Blue Sea)", "The Big Brass Band from Brazil", "It's a Quiet Town (In Crossbone County)", "Amelia Cordelia McHugh (Mc Who?)", "Ching-a-ra-sa-sa", and a duet by Danny and Patty Andrews of "
Orange Colored Sky". The acts teamed for two yuletide favorites – a frantic, harmonic rendition of "A Merry Christmas at Grandmother's House (Over the River and Through the Woods)" and a duet by Danny and Patty, "
All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth". Kaye's début album,
Columbia Presents Danny Kaye, had been released in 1942 by Columbia Records with songs performed to the accompaniment of
Maurice Abravanel and
Johnny Green. The album was reissued as a Columbia LP in 1949 and is described by the critic Bruce Eder as "a bit tamer than some of the stuff that Kaye hit with later in the '40s and in the '50s, and for reasons best understood by the public, doesn't attract nearly the interest of his kids' records and overt comedy routines". In 1950, a Decca single, "
I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts", was released, and became another chart hit for him. Following the success of the film
Hans Christian Andersen (1952), two of its songs written by
Frank Loesser and sung by Kaye, "
Thumbelina" and "
Wonderful Copenhagen", reached the charts; the former title became a minor US hit, and the latter reached number five on the
UK Singles Chart. In 1953, Decca released
Danny at the Palace, a live recording made at the New York Palace Theater, followed by
Knock On Wood (Decca, 1954) a set of songs from the movie of the same name sung by Kaye, accompanied by
Victor Young and His Singing Strings. appearing on his show in 1965 In 1956, Kaye signed a three-year recording contract with
Capitol Records, which released his single "Love Me Do" in December of that year. The B-side, "Ciu Ciu Bella", with lyrics written by Sylvia Fine, was inspired by an episode in Rome when Kaye, on a mission for UNICEF, befriended a 7-year-old child with
polio in a children's hospital, who sang this song for him in Italian. In 1958,
Saul Chaplin and
Johnny Mercer wrote songs for
Merry Andrew, a film starring Kaye as a British teacher attracted to the circus. The score added up to six numbers, all sung by Kaye; conductor
Billy May's 1950 composition "Bozo's Circus Band" (renamed "Music of the Big Top Circus Band") was deposited on the second side of the
Merry Andrew soundtrack, released in 1958. A year later, another soundtrack came out, for
The Five Pennies (in which Kaye starred as 1920s cornet player
Red Nichols), featuring
Louis Armstrong. In the 1960s and 1970s, Kaye regularly conducted world-famous orchestras, although he had to learn the scores by ear. Kaye's style, even if accompanied by unpredictable antics (he once traded the baton for a flyswatter to conduct "The Flight of the Bumblebee") Kaye was invited to conduct symphonies as charity fundraisers
Imitations Kaye was sufficiently popular to inspire imitations: • The 1946
Warner Bros. cartoon
Book Revue had a sequence with
Daffy Duck wearing a blond wig and impersonating Kaye. • Satirical songwriter
Tom Lehrer's 1953 song "
Lobachevsky" was based on a number that Kaye had done, about the Russian director
Constantin Stanislavski, with the affected Russian accent. Lehrer mentioned Kaye in an opening monologue, citing him as an "idol since childbirth". •
Superman creators
Jerry Siegel and
Joe Shuster fashioned a short-lived superhero title,
Funnyman, taking inspiration from Kaye's persona. ==Other endeavors==