Actor. (b. Jan. 18, 1913, New York City, as David Kaminski; d. Mar. 3, 1987.)

Though in his later years he was known primarily for his work with UNICEF, this pixieish, red-haired entertainer had been convulsing both kids and their parents his entire life with his energetic clowning and his ingenious patter songs. Like most of his generation of performers, he worked his way up through vaudeville, nightclubs, and even the borscht belt. Beginning in 1937, he appeared in two-reel comedies for Educational Pictures Dime a Dance, Getting an Eyeful, Cupid Takes a Holiday but they did not showcase him to best advantage. Kaye's real break came when he hit Broadway in 1939's "Straw Hat Revue," where he met his future wife, Sylvia Fine, who wrote the trip-hammer song parodies that became his trademark. He later appeared in other shows, including "Lady in the Dark," in which his showcase number, "Tchaikovsky," rocketed him to stardom, and brought him to the attention of producer Samuel Goldwyn, who guaranteed him an astonishing $150,000 per film.

Kaye made his feature debut in "Up in Arms" (1944), a reworking of the old Eddie Cantor vehicle "Whoopee!" which made room for two patter routines, "Melody in F" and "The Theatre Lobby Number," and cast him as a likable nebbish. Goldwyn's instincts proved correct, and the instantly successful Kaye continued in a similar vein with "Wonder Man" (1945, the first of three films to cast him in dual roles), "The Kid From Brooklyn" (1946, a remake of Harold Lloyd's The Milky Way, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1947, in perhaps his best-known role), and "A Song Is Born" (1948). He then freelanced in "The Inspector General" (1949) and "On the Riviera" (1950, another dual role), before returning to Goldwyn to play the title role in the musical biopic "Hans Christian Andersen" (1952). He then moved over to Paramount, where he produced his own vehicles, with the writing-directing team of Norman Panama and Melvin Frank. They turned out to be his all-time best: "Knock on Wood" (1954), in which he plays a ventriloquist caught up in international intrigue, and "The Court Jester" (1956), an uproarious swashbuckler parody which includes the unforgettable "vessel with the pestle" wordplay routine. (Panama and Frank also wrote the maudlin screenplay for 1954's smash hit "White Christmas" in which Kaye served as a last-minute replacement for Donald O'Connor.)

His later vehicles were an uneven lot, including the circus-themed "Merry Andrew", the whimsical "Me and the Colonel" (1958), the dramatic musical "The Five Pennies" (1959, which did give him a great specialmaterial duet with Louis Armstrong), and the sprightly "On the Double" (1961), which returned him to surefire material with a dual role. Following the slapsticky "The Man from the Diner's Club" (1963), Kaye starred for four years (1963-67) in a one hour variety series on CBS; both he and the series won Emmys the first season. His only other screen role of note was that of the Ragpicker in "The Madwoman of Chaillot" (1969). He starred on Broadway in "Two by Two" (as Noah), and was featured in a number of television specials (including a "Pinocchio" that cast him as Geppetto). He was effectively cast as a concentration camp survivor in the powerful TV movie Skokie (1981), and toward the end of his life made a memorable appearance as a wacky dentist on "The Cosby Show." Most of his time in later years was spent conducting symphony orchestras in fund-raising concerts.

Copyright ©1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.