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Danny Kaye
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Danny Kaye was one of the most popular entertainers in the United States and England during the 1940s and '50s, thanks largely to a string of successful films that showcased his witty song-and-dance routines. Kaye worked on Broadway, having success in the early '40s with Lady in the Dark. Audiences loved his energy and clever wit and he was a popular stage performer during World War II, frequently working with material written by his wife, lyricist Sylvia Fine. He made more than a dozen popular movies, including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1959) and The Court Jester (1956). For years Kaye was a spokesman for the United Nation's Children's Fund, and in 1954 he was awarded a special Oscar for his humanitarian efforts. During the '60s he was on TV, the star of The Danny Kaye Show (1963-67), but his style of entertainment was no longer the rage and his popularity waned.
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Danny Kaye was a man of many talents. He had a remarkable mind for creating new ideas and accepting the unconventional. For years and years, he topped the men's best dressed list, but his feet always hurt. The day after he appeared in public wearing MURRAY SPACE SHOES, he was taken off the men's best dressed list. But his feet were comfortable and happy! He had discovered shoes to fit the shape of his feet.
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Danny Kaye shows off his keen musical sense in the lead role of The Five Pennies, the life story of cornet master Red Nichols--or at least the Hollywood version of Nichols’ life. The movie gets off to a kicky start as Nichols joins a big-city band, meets his future wife (Barbara Bel Geddes), and sits in on a speakeasy session with Louis Armstrong. Armstrong’s in the movie a lot, and there are smaller roles for other musical names such as Bob Crosby and Ray Anthony. The tunes include a batch of standards but ... new songs written by Sylvia Fine, Danny Kaye’s wife and the creator of his signature wordplay routines. The film’s main dramatic device--that Nichols eventually sacrifices his career to care for a sick daughter--must be slogged through while the decent jazz sequences come and go. Whether you’re a Danny Kaye fan or not, this film emphasizes his very real musical "touch"" (in his manner, not his cornet playing; Red Nichols dubbed the horn himself). It also proved Kaye could handle melodrama at least as easily as frantic comedy, and yet this 1959 film was near the end of his run as a movie actor.
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The exuberant and prolific Danny Kaye began his long career as a performing busboy in the Borscht Belt of Catskills resorts. He made his film debut in 1937 in the two-reel short Dime a Dance and took part in cabarets and vaudeville in the United States and abroad. He signed with Samuel Goldwyn in 1943 and went on to make various films as well as appearances in the New York stage; meanwhile, his self-titled Danny Kaye Show delighted radio audiences in 1945 and television viewers from 1963 to 1967. Kaye's many awards include two Golden Globes, a Tony, an Emmy, and two Oscars. He was married to composer and lyricist Sylvia Fine for forty-seven years.
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Born David Daniel Kaminsky in Brooklyn in 1913, Danny Kaye's knack for comedy was honed as a comedian in the Catskills. One night, in 1933, he lost his balance and the audience broke into a roar of laughter. He would later incorporate this into his act. Throughout the late 1930s Kaye performed material written by his wife, Sylvia Fine, who would later write many of his most famous lyrics and tongue-twisters. Throughout his career he starred in seventeen movies, including The Kid from Brooklyn, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Inspector General, Hans Christian Andersen, and the incomparable The Court Jester. It was in the latter and the "Pellet with the Poison" routine that Kaye displayed the vocal talents which made him famous with "
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In addition to his success in the cinema, Kaye remained quite a hit on stage. In 1948, he took his one-man show to the London Palladium and the crowds went wild. The show broke all attendance records, and made history as the Royal Family actually left the royal box in favor of the first row to better enjoy the actor's performance.
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