5 Fun Facts About Comedian & ‘White Christmas’ Star Danny Kaye

Lori Acken March 3, 5:06 pm

Danny Kaye was the whole package when it came to entertainment — he charmed moviegoers as Bing Crosby’s White Christmas costar and won multiple Emmys for his variety hour The Danny Kaye Show. Bob Hope called Kaye his favorite comedian. He also expertly sang scat with Satchmo himself, Louis Armstrong, and calypso with Harry Belafonte, cracking both up in the process. Kaye was also an avid and longtime ambassador and supporter of UNICEF. In short, there was very little that the Hans Christian Andersen star, who died on March 3, 1987, at the age of 74, couldn’t do.

Here are some things you may not have known about charming and versatile entertainer Danny Kaye.

1 Kaye is the only member of his family not born in Ukraine

Kaye was born David Daniel Kaminsky in New York City on Jan. 18, 1913, the youngest of three sons born to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants Jacob and Clara Kaminsky.

2 Kaye lost his job in a dentist office but won the dentist’s daughter

1st November 1948: American actor and comedian, Danny Kaye (1913 - 1987), arrives at London Airport with his wife, Sylvia Fine.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Before he became an entertainer, Kaye tried his hand at a number of odd job and was fired from most of them. When Danny was a preteen, a local dentist hired him to man his office during the lunch hour. One day, Danny passed the time testing the dentist’s drill on the wood work. It was the end of his job — but not their association. Some years later, Danny reconnected with the dentist’s daughter, Sylvia, at an audition and the pair eloped.

3 Kaye’s one of the original owners of the Seattle Mariners

In 1969, the Seattle Pilots Major League Baseball team left the Emerald City for Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and changed their name to the Brewers. An avid baseball fan, Kaye teamed up with a Seattle-based business partner turned pal to create the Mariners, who took to the diamond in 1976.

4 Kaye loved Chinese food & cooked it often for his famous friends

American actor,singer and dancer Danny Kaye (1911 - 1987) cooks a meal at home, circa 1950. His speciality is Chinese food.

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In fact, Kaye was an expert in the kitchen, no matter the fare. “The trouble with Danny’s cooking,” said former Los Angeles Philharmonic president Olive Behrendt, according to The New York Times, “[is] it spoils you forever for going to restaurants. You could eat in this home every night for a month and never be served the same dish twice.”

Danny’s passion for Chinese cooking came about when he took his “Around-the-World Burlesque Show” to Shanghai in 1934. He loved the cuisine so much that he trained with Johnny Kan and Cecilia Chang, who owned some of San Francisco’s top Chinese restaurants, and equipped his home kitchen with a batch of custom-made Chinese stoves. Among his dinner guests were Luciano Pavarotti, Beverly Sills, Henry Kissinger, Cary Grant, Shirley MacLaine and John Denver.

5 He was a master of dialects

He rarely got tongue-tied even with the most fast-paced of lines or lyrics. According to his daughter, fans who approached Kaye often clamored for him to recite his part in the famous “The Vessel With the Pestle” scene from his 1956 film The Court Jester. He also did voice work in several Rankin/Bass specials like Here Comes Peter Cottontail.

What was your favorite role of his? Let us know in the comments!