From the book: American Film Comedy, From Abbot and Costello to Jerry Zucker by Scott Siegel & Barbara Siegel.

A warm, sweet-tempered, and engaging comic star for nearly twenty years, Danny Kaye made movies that were rarely as brilliant as he was. He usually played befuddled but lovable simpletons who were less that courageous, yet capable of the most hysterical forms of indirect bravery.

Kaye was an inventive and lively singer; he, in fact, rose to fame thanks to his rapid-fire delivery of wonderfully idiotic songs, many of which were written by his lifelong wife, Sylvia Fine.

Born David Daniel Kaminski to a poor tailor and his wife in Brooklyn, New York that young man quite school at thirteen to enter show business. He got his start as a comic in what became known as the "Borscht Belt", an enclave of resorts hotels in the Catskill Mountains north of New York City where Jews often went to vacation during the summer.

From there, Kaye traveled the dying vaudeville circuit, gaining experience and trying out new material. Spotted for the rising young comedian that he was, Kaye made several two-reel shorts for the small independent Educational Pictures, but they didn't bring immediately him fame and fortune. They were, however, later complied into a film inaccurately titled 'The Danny Kaye Story'.

After Kaye had several successes on Broadway in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Hollywood took another chance on him in the person of Samuel Goldwyn. The famous producer had once made movies of Eddie Cantor; he saw the same genius in the young Kaye and signed him to a film contract.

The following year, Kaye began his long and commercially successful association with Goldwyn, starring in 'Up In Arms (1944), the first of many bright and generally entertaining comedies.

In all, Kaye starred in seventeen feature films; while not all of them were gems, most were hits.

A number of them, thanks to Kaye, have become minor classics. The actor's most fondly remembered movies are: 'Wonder Man' (1945), 'The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty' (1947), 'The Inspector General' (1949), 'Hans Christian Andersen' (1952), 'Knock On Wood' (1953), 'The Court Jester' (1956), and 'Merry Andrew' (1958).

Kaye occasionally shared top billing with other stars, most notably Bing Crosby in 'White Christmas' (1954) and his last feature film, the all-star drama 'The Madwoman Of Chaillot (1969).

Long associated with his devotion to the world's children, Kaye was an early and inspired advocate of the UNICEF. He made a serious short called 'Assignment Children' for the United Nations in 1954, and in that year was also given a special Oscar for "his unique talents, his service to the Academy, the motion picture industry, and the American people." Occupied with his highly regarded TV variety program, "The Danny Kaye Show" (1963-1967) and his continued commitment to UNICEF, his film career virtually came to a halt. He didn't seem to mind.

He starred in the Broadway musical 'Two by Two' in 1970 and traveled the country as a popular comic guest conductor of various city symphony orchestras.

Later he made occasional forays back into television, most memorably as Captain Hook in a new version of 'Peter Pan' (1975) and in 'Skokie' (1981), giving a stunning dramatic performance as a concentration camp survivor facing the nightmare of neo-Nazis marching in his home town near Chicago.