TV Review: Danny Kaye bio unintentionally echoes entertainer's failings
November 29, 1996
MICHAEL FOX
Bulletin Correspondent
Danny Kaye was an entertainer of the first rank, but he wasn't a great artist, let alone a genius.
That is increasingly clear as we approach the 10th anniversary of Kaye's death, and his career recedes further and further into the past. For all the pinnacles of stardom he reached, Kaye's simply not on a level with the immortals.
Kaye boasted astonishing energy, charm and versatility. But his physical comedy lacks the inspiration of Chaplin and Groucho; his dancing doesn't match Fred Astaire's or Gene Kelly's transcendent beauty; and his singing is downright pallid compared to Frank Sinatra or even Bing Crosby.
Perhaps that explains the tedious, adulatory tone that engulfs PBS' "American Masters" tribute, "Danny Kaye: A Legacy of Laughter." In a misguided bit of simpatico, the show tries to please as valiantly as Kaye ever did.
Long on platitudes and short on insight, "A Legacy of Laughter" breathlessly makes Kaye's case to a generation born after his heyday. A wiser tack, rather than selling Kaye to us this way, would have been to simply let his vintage scenes play a little longer, allowing us to judge for ourselves.
The third son (and the first one born in America) of Jewish immigrants from Ukraine, Kaye began life on Jan. 19, 1913 as David Daniel Kaminsky. By the time he was 20, David had escaped Brooklyn for the Catskills circuit and had abbreviated his name to Danny Kaye.
The frenetic young actor-comedian-singer-dancer-vaudevillian learned his craft on the job, working his way up to Broadway. Along the way he met his wife, Sylvia Fine, a songwriter who penned much of his trademark material over the years.
Kaye went to Hollywood in 1943, had a modest hit with "Up in Arms" and then rocketed to fame with "Wonder Man," "The Kid From Brooklyn," "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," "A Song is Born," "The Inspector General" and "On the Riviera."
The boyish-looking Kaye was the first multimedia star, with movies, records, live performances and a radio program. He made the cover of Time magazine in 1946 (with Sylvia in the background), which was tantamount to the top of the world in those days.
"A Legacy of Laughter" is all sweetness and light, narrated by Hugh Downs with a smugness that's all the more remarkable for the many cliches he's asked to mouth.
"In December of 1946," Downs intones, "Sylvia and Danny celebrated the birth of their only child, Dena, who brought new meaning to their relationship."
Yes, but why was Kaye so popular? There's no conjecture, for example, over America's desire for an innocuous, white-bread hero during and just after the war. When Kaye later played a Jew fleeing Poland in "Me and the Colonel" (1958), Downs rumbles, "It was a serious side of Danny that troubled his fans."
We hear plenty about UNICEF, and Kaye's work with children. Compliments are tossed out by the scarce interviewees, including Carl Reiner, Itzhak Perlman, Harry Belafonte, Rosemary Clooney and, disconcertingly, Mikhail Baryshnikov.
"I am crazy about what I do," Kaye himself says. "I am crazy about my life. I am crazy about where it's taking me. And I'm crazy about where it's going to take me."
But for all his talent, there's no poignancy in any of Kaye's antics. The adult dimension -- namely sexuality and pain -- is missing. All one has to do is look at Kaye's comedic offspring, Robin Williams and Jim Carrey, to see how they carry on that tradition.
They can also look forward, 25 years from now, to Kaye's fate. Future generations will see Carrey's cartoon work, and the hyperactive genie to whom Williams gave his voice in "Aladdin," as clever but grating -- and they may wonder what people once found funny.
| 
