Danny Kaye (January 18, 1911- March 3, 1987) born as David Daniel Kaminsky to Ukranian-Jewish immigrants Jacob Kaminsky and his wife Clara Nemerovsky, starred as a comedian, singer, and dancer in 18 films between 1945 and 1955 and was appointed in 1954 as the first ambassador-at-large for UNICEF.
After dropping out of high school, he worked at a series of low paying jobs, and had his first break in 1933, when he joined the Three Terpsichoreans, a vaudeville act, in which he used the stage name Danny Kaye for the first time. On a tour of Japan, he introduced pantomime gestures and facial expressions to better communicate with a non-English-speaking audience. In 1937, he had his first film role in a two-reel comedy produced by Educational Pictures. He played opposite two other hopefuls, June Allyson and Imogene Coca. He met his wife Sylvia Fine, a pianist, while both auditioned for The Straw Hat Review, which had a 10-week run on Broadway. His feature-length movie debut came in 1944 in Up in Arms.
Most of Kaye’s films were light-hearted including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Inspector General, White Christmas, On the Riviera, The Court Jester, and the biographical Hans Christian Andersen and The Five Pennies about jazz musician Red Nichols. But he also had a serious side, playing a Holocaust survivor in the TV film Skokie.
Two songs from Hans Christian Anderson became hit pop songs, “Thumbelina” and “Wonderful Copenhagen.” The latter song and the movie led to Kaye being knighted by Queen Margrethe III of Denmark. Other songs he made famous included “I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts” and “Tchaikowsky (and other Russians).’ He was posthumously awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan. Kaye’s daughter Dena accepted the award in his behalf.
Tomorrow, January 19: J.B. Pritzker
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SDJW condensation of a Wikipedia article