The Kid from Brooklyn

Danny’s ancestral home was the small Jewish Ukrainian town of Ekaterinoslav, from which, in 1906, Danny’s father, horse dealer Jacob Kaminsky, fled with his wife Clara to escape the rising persecutions of the pogroms. They made their way to Kyiv and, after the birth of Larry and Mac Jacob, sailed to America, landing in Philadelphia. He quickly learned the craft of sewing saddlebags and ladies’ corsets. 

After saving sufficient funds, Jacob gravitated to New York and ultimately settled in Brooklyn, where some relatives lived. He soon arranged for his family to join him at 350 Bradford Street, a two-story brownstone built in 1901 in the East New York section. Jacob returned to Ukraine to rescue children born to another part of his family who had survived the pogroms. Among them was Danny’s cousin Carol Iskowitz, whom Jacob raised in their house. 

Danny was born on Jan. 18, 1913. Administrators Liz Caputa and Judy Tullis of the Facebook page “King of the Jesters,” a source providing additional information, maintain that in later years, for reasons unknown, Danny shaved two years off his birthdate, asserting that Dena made this officially clear at the time of Danny’s “apocryphal” centenary year of 2013. David Koenig, author of “Danny Kaye: King of the Jesters,” unaffiliated with the Facebook page, adds further mystery to Danny’s biography by casting doubt on the Bradford Street birthplace on his blog “Danny Kaye’s Stomping Grounds: Then and Now”:

During his boyhood in the 1910s, Danny lived with his parents, two brothers, and grandmother in a small apartment at 361 Miller Avenue in Brooklyn. Today, there’s a four-story building at that address, crammed with 20 tiny apartment units, but city records show that structure was built in 1925 after the Kaminskys had moved out. Perhaps the construction is why, in the early 1920s, the family relocated to the next block, Bradford Street … From the early 1920s through the late 1930s, Kaye listed this [as] his home address. The lease was in his father’s name.

Caputa provides a sense of young Danny’s neighborhood. “There are references in some books that he lived in the same area as the guys of Murder, Inc., such as Lucky Luciano and Al Capone. They never said he formed any friendships with them.” Clara’s mother made sure that Danny would not succumb to his rough surroundings. While teaching Danny Jewish folk songs, she recognized his penchant for singing as well as mimicry and took him along when shopping, encouraging the half-pint busker to perform little tunes he learned from the street.

Good Old 149

Danny attended nearby Public School 149 at 700 Sutter Avenue through the eighth grade. The school was later renamed P.S. 149 Danny Kaye. The Library of Congress collection contains a certificate, dated June 25, 1941, that the school awarded to Danny, class of 1926, “for high accomplishment in the field of Dramatic Art.” This date seems to affirm Danny’s 1913 birthdate. Caputa offers an explanation, “Danny was probably backtracking and changed the years that he went to school.” 

In 1949, Danny composed and wrote a rally song honoring his alma mater, “Good Old 149,” which he recorded for Decca and appears in the collection with the lyrics:

149 is the school for me / Drives away all adversity

Steady and true / We’ll be to you

Loyal to 149 Rah! Rah! Rah! / Raise on high the red and white

Cheer it with all your might / Hey, Good Old 149 / Hooray for 149

On the Sept. 30, 1964 episode of “The Danny Kaye Show,” Phil Silvers joined his fellow P.S.149 alumnus for a duet on this ditty. Incidentally, TV’s Sgt. Bilko boasts that at the school, “he majored in hooky.”

The LOC collection holds photos of Danny’s 1957 visit to P.S.149 in conjunction with a film for UNICEF, one of many causes for which this tireless humanitarian crusaded. Caputa cites from a reliable source that Danny may have regularly returned to put on shows for the kids.

Anywhere I Wander

After graduation from P.S. 149, Danny attended Thomas Jefferson High School at 400 Pennsylvania Avenue. (In 2007, the school closed, and the campus was subdivided into four specialized schools.) He particularly disliked math. Despite his affinity for swimming, baseball and pole vaulting, boredom overtook him. Danny quit school and hitchhiked with his friend Max Tirsch. Although their goal was Florida, they got as far as Asheville, North Carolina, playing ukulele and singing along the way. The March 1963 issue of Reader’s Digest featured an article, “The Happiest Man,” in which Danny recalled an incident that befell them during their lark:

In my early teens, I ran away from home … I talked a pal of mine into going along. Our thumbs got us rides, we sang for food, and at night, we appeared at the local police station to announce we were hitchhiking to relatives and asked to be put in a cell until morning. It worked fine until we hit a small town in Delaware. The chief of police said, “You kids look like a couple of runaways. You say you’re from Brooklyn? I’ll just telephone and see if there’s a “wanted” on you.” He found that there was indeed a missing person’s alarm for me. He soon had my father on the phone. After hearing I was all right, Pop seemed to relax. “You want me to send him home?” the chief asked. “Oh, no,” Father said. “He wants to find out something. He’ll come home when he’s ready.”

Father, indeed, knew best. Danny hesitantly returned to high school. Shortly after his Bar Mitzvah at age fourteen, his mother died from tuberculosis. Danny’s maternal grandmother took care of the boys. She remained until her death ten years later. Danny’s brothers worked in the medical business when they were very young. Later on, Mac owned Shell Electric, one of the biggest electrical supply companies in Brooklyn. The company was eventually dissolved.

Danny left Thomas Jefferson without graduating. Caputa asserts that “Danny did not wish to be there, and given his mischievousness, the school was happy to let him go. He was recognized as a higher achiever, but his interest lay elsewhere. He wanted first to be a doctor, but that was unattainable due to the family’s financial situation.”

Although Danny partially fulfilled his initial choice by later studying medicine and working with artificial heart pioneer Dr. Michael Debakey, Dr. Danny Kaye is difficult to envision, according to Tullis. “Can you imagine a man with his personality trying to be a surgeon? He would be cracking up the staff while an operation was going on.”

During his teen years, Danny earned money as an office clerk and soda jerk. While working for an insurance company, Danny allegedly made a $40,000 accounting error. Pinkerton agents tailed him and even followed him once to the movies. They determined that Danny had made an honest mistake and dropped the case. Danny was also hired to watch the office of dentist Dr. Fine in a different section of the borough. This is where he met Sylvia, the doctor’s daughter, who would become his future wife. Sylvia was born on Aug. 29, 1913. It was probably not love at first sight since Dr. Fine fired Danny when he discovered that the rascal was applying his drill upon the office woodwork.

Danny, relishing the taste of performing on the road, single-mindedly pursued his all-consuming desire to entertain. He metaphysically reflected on his calling during the Nov. 24, 1971, episode of “The Dick Cavett Show”:

I don’t know what pushed me into show business. What I really wanted to do was be a doctor. I believe anybody given equal opportunity really becomes what they have to become rather than what they want to become. I became what I think I had to become because it’s the best means for self-expression that I have.

The Borscht Belt Jester

With his school chum, Lou Eisen, he started a group called “Red and Blackie.” While harmonizing outside a candy store, they caught the ear of Nat Lichtman, a talent scout for White Roe, the Borscht Belt resort in the Catskills. Eisen hired them for $200 plus room and board to be tummlers during the summer season. Caputa describes the tummler’s unique function, which defines an essential ingredient of Danny’s artistry. “A tummler creates chaos. When it would rain at the resort, the owners would say, ‘Guys, go do something.’ One of the stories is that Danny would grab a hatchet and go after one of his friends in the pool.” At night, they could work on the stage where Danny began cutting his teeth as an entertainer.

Danny returned to Brooklyn in the winters when the resorts shut down. Lou Eisen went on to become a podiatrist. Danny kept in touch with him throughout his life. In 1933, newly-named Danny Kaye formed with Borsch Belt colleagues a song and dance trio called “The Three Terpsichores.” They opened in Utica, New York and later toured the United States and the Far East. The task of entertaining non-English speaking audiences motivated Danny to master pantomime, facial expressions and gestures that would become his trademark.

No Two People

Although Danny had become a roving trouper, he always returned to his father in Brooklyn, regardless of the numerous times he moved out. After a series of shorts filmed in New York and a return stint at the Catskills, Danny became reacquainted with Sylvia Fine. She was now an audition pianist, having also attended Thomas Jefferson High School, after which she studied music at Brooklyn College. “Brooklyn College Prize Songs” comprises “From the Portals of Joralemon” and “It’s a Long Way to Brooklyn Campus,” her droll laments on the rigors of traveling to and from classes.

In 1939, Danny undertook a Broadway venture, “The Straw Hat Revue,” for which Sylvia, who had written many musical sketches in college, wrote the music and lyrics. After dating during the short run, Danny proposed over the telephone while appearing in Florida. Sylvia joined him, and they were married on Jan. 3rd, 1940.

Sylvia wrote many songs and skits for Danny. Examples of the latter are “Brooklyn for Beginners” and “How to Speak Brooklyn.” Danny was well versed in the vernacular, as he revealed on the Sept. 19th, 1973, episode of the British talk show Russell Hardy Plus:

We speak very good English where I come from. Where I come from, we talk a lot of very, very good English. It’s very hard to talk proper, proper meaning that all “r’s” become “v’s” and all “br’s” become “bv’s” or “pr’s” become “pv’s.” Like for instance, If I were to tell you, my bruddah was studying to be a priest. He didn’t like the parochial school. So, he became a pvinter.” It is a specific part of Brooklyn. Within the city of New York, you have as many different varying kinds of accents as you have in London.

Happy Times

An article that appeared in the Brooklyn Eagle on Sunday, October 29, 1939, brought readers up to date on Danny’s meteoric rise, “Brooklyn’s Danny Kaye/Now in ‘Straw Hat Revue,’ He Trouped 18 Years, and His Father Is Ladies’ Tailor of 350 Bradford St”:

One of the pleasanter surprises of “The Straw Hat Revue” at the Ambassador Theater has been the Broadway debut of an amiably antic comedian who answers to the name Danny Kaye and who hails from Brooklyn. Twenty-five, tall, slim, and blond, he has been trouping it in the hinterlands since the age of 18. Danny once thought seriously of becoming a physician but, fortunately, was sidetracked into a less serious preoccupation.

“My dad went from saddlebags to corsets,” he says. “He was a horse dealer in Russia and now is in the ladies’ tailoring business. We live in the East New York section of Brooklyn (father is John Kominski, 350 Bradford St.), and I went to Thomas Jefferson High.”

During summer vacations, Danny played the circuit in the Catskills, teamed with two vaudevillians who made him a dancer in forty minutes flat in a hotel lobby one night when their dancer came down with measles. He went on the stage, never bothering to let his left foot know what his right foot was doing, and fell flatter than Humpty Dumpty. He got a laugh, and a comic was born.

The vaudevillians were hired by a traveling unit show, and Danny was “thrown in.” Inside of two weeks, he was doing 16 of the show’s 21 turns. They took him to Japan, China, the Philippines, Malaya, Siam and back again. In the Orient, he was a matinee idol — the grinning and willing audiences able to follow his jokes and patter only through an interpreter.

Lately, he has played the Casa Manana with Nick Long Jr., London’s swank Dorchester House, done guest air appearances for Bessy Venuta and Walter O’Keefe, movie shorts at Astoria and last summer teamed with the Strawhaters at Max Liebman’s Camp Tamiment in the Pennsylvania Hills.

A sample of his sly style in “The Straw Hat Revue” is the “Anatole of Paris” sketch, written by Brooklyn’s Sylvia Fine. He is a male modiste complete with blue hair, whose “twisted eugenics” are the result of a “family of inbred schizophrenics” and who designs preposterous women’s hats because, he confides, he hates women. A moment later, he is a frenzied wolf on Wall St., too busy cornering the pumpernickel market to get married. Again, he pops up as a blibber-blabber radio singer, a dialect waiter, and the Masked Gondolier (alias Danny Davenport of the United States Secret Service) in “The Great Chancelier,” a merry travesty on a long line of phony Continental operettas. Another of his high spots is the harmonizing trio, “Three Little Hicks,” a parody of the “Three Little Maids” number in the Shubert sister show, “Streets of Paris.”

So here is a modern Daniel thrown suddenly into that modern lion’s den, Broadway. Critics and [the] public seem to be gobbling him up. The verdict seems to be Kaye is okay.

Life Could Not Better Be

The Straw Hat Revue put Danny in the limelight and landed him a nightclub engagement at La Martinique, with Sylvia as his accompanist. This, in turn, led to stellar roles in landmark Broadway musicals “Lady in the Dark” and “Let’s Face It.” Now financially secure, they moved to a penthouse apartment at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel at 781 5th Ave., which remained Danny’s Manhattan address for the rest of his life. Although Danny left “The City Across the River,” his love for The Brooklyn Dodgers never abated, as Caputa explains:

His roots were tied very deeply into The Brooklyn Dodgers. Danny’s father took him to a game when he was five, and he became an instant fan. He attended games at Ebbetts Field when he was in town, taking a break on whatever he was working on and sit in the stands with his transistor radio listening to what was going on with the Dodgers. The man bled blue, period. I’m paraphrasing, but his comment was, “It’s not over yet,” when the Dodgers could be losing ten to nothing, and it would come down to the last strike. When the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles, his attitude was, “Well, they’re coming with me.” He didn’t have the “Dem Bums” attitude. When VJ Day was declared, Danny was broadcasting his radio show when he heard the news. He said, “Oh well, it’s time for me to go.” He volunteered to go to Okinawa, the first in the USO group to go there to entertain the weary troops waiting to be deployed home. Danny’s friend Leo Durocher, Dodgers infielder and manager, joined him on the trip.

In 1944, Danny made his feature film debut with “Up in Arms.” His movie popularity would continue for the next 20 years. “The Kid from Brooklyn,” a 1946 remake of the 1936 Harold Lloyd feature “The Milky Way,” must have been a pleasing vehicle for Danny, who once posed with a baseball jersey that read, “40 — Kid From Brooklyn.” His leading lady was dancer Vera-Ellen, with whom he co-starred once again in his biggest box office success, “White Christmas,” released in 1954. At one moment in the film, Danny lets loose his affection for Brooklyn, as Caputa explains. “As the veterans are told to be seated right before the finale, Danny uses his Brooklyn whistle to join in the cheering. His cousin has said this was a sound he would often make.”

Danny regularly returned to visit his father, who died in 1952. He often got together with fellow Brooklynites, such as opera stars Robert Merrill and Beverly Sills. Although Danny had become an internationally acclaimed star, nothing could ever take Brooklyn out of the Kid. In 1949, Danny was inducted as “Honorary Mayor of Brooklyn” at the Towers Hotel at 21 Clark Street in Brooklyn Heights by Chief Louis Zeltner of the Old Time Locality Mayors. In a lifetime of awards, including The Legion of Honor, The Presidential Medal of Honor, The Golden Globe, an honorary Academy Award and The Kennedy Center Honor, the mayoral induction might have been his most cherished of all.

Danny died on March 3, 1987. Sylvia died on Oct. 28, 1991.

Addenda

Audience Participation Routine for “How to Speak Brooklyn”:

You only have to know a few basic phrases to get along in Brooklyn. And you might as well memorize this basic vocabulary now, in case you ever go there.

The basic word in the language is “SHEDDEP!!” You use this word talking to friends, close friends and total strangers.

Danny teaches the word to the entire audience. When they have learned it with the proper inflection, he divides the audience up into the three main classifications that are found in Brooklyn: Cops, Cabbies and Women who lean out of upstairs windows:

The entire balcony is Women Who Lean Out Of Upstairs Windows. That’s all they do. They just lean out of windows all day and watch things. Their entire vocabulary consists of the one word, “SHEDDEP!!”

The entire left half of the house is Cops, and the right half is Cabbies. Danny first rehearses the Cops in their salutary greeting: “GIT OTTA DEH!!”

Then the Cops in the Obligatory retort: “AHH, GIVEYA HITNDEAD!”

Now that everyone knows his lines (Danny makes sure that the balcony hasn’t forgotten), Danny says that we can have a Brooklyn social conversation. And he gives them the basic situation:

It’s the 5:30 rush hour. All you cabbies are parked in the red zone, blocking traffic. Behind you, horns are honking, busses have locked bumpers, ambulance drivers are yelling. But you don’t care. You like to park in red zones. Now, you fold your arms in defiance.

All you Women Who Lean Out Of Upstairs Windows, lean way out to watch this. You’ve got a cushion for your elbows, so don’t be afraid to lean …That’s it! Now your husband’ll be home soon, you haven’t started dinner yet and your nasty little kids are yelling for lunch. You fold your arms in defiance.

Is everyone defiant? Good. Now we can play sweetness and light. You Cops and you Cabbies look at each other and look mad! MAD! That’s it! Now remember your lines, and I’ll give you your cue … you’re MAD.

Now, and don’t forget you’ve gotta be heard over the noise of the elevated subway, SO BE SURE AND SHOUT!! All right, here we go!

Danny cues them, and the conversation proceeds in a normal manner:

COP:

GIT OTTA DEH!!

CABBIES:

AH, YA MUDDAH WEAHS SNEAKERS!

COPS:

WATTAYA, WISEGUY, SUMPN??

CABBIES:

AHH, GIVEYAHITNDEHEAD!!

BALCONY:

SHEDDEP!!

Danny jumps in:

Great! This brings the Cops and Cabbies together, and they turn around and start yelling at the Women in the windows, “Now all together, YELL! That’s it! You’re mad! MAD!”

Danny lets the rhubarb develop and finally ends it with: 

It’s beautiful! That’s the sound that I miss — Sweetness and Light in Brooklyn.

Sylvia Fine, ”How to Speak Brooklyn” from the Library of Congress, Music Division

Excerpts from “Brooklyn for Beginners”

DANNY: You gotta learn to say “loin” in Brooklyn, New York

And loin to say “lern” when it’s lern of pork

A thing what ya trun is a thing what ya t’rew

And a drip ain’t a drop it’s a joik who’s a shmoooo

That’s how you talk in Brooklyn

Dese are the woids ya say:

Pork — lern

Trun — t’rew

Study — lern

Drip — shmoo

(Indicates Audience To Join)

Pork —

AUDIENCE: Lern —

DANNY: Trun — 

AUDIENCE: T’rew —

DANNY: Study —

AUDIENCE: Loin — 

DANNY: Drip —

AUDIENCE: Shmooooo!

DANNY: Boil don’t mean steamin’ or startin’ to swear

Boil is that guy on the video d’ere

To show yez it’s true and according to Herle

Whenever yiz boil, everybody says berle!!

That’s how ya talk in Brooklyn

Dees are the woids ya say:

Steamin’ berl

Milton — Boil

Banana — erl

Muddah of — poil

DANNY: A cherce little verce ain’t a pome dat ya hear

A cherce little verce is a t’roat that is clear

A tree grows in Brooklyn, and that’s nuttin’ new

But the t’ree that I mean comes right after two

That’s how ya talk in Brooklyn

Dees are the woids ya say:

Pome — voise

T’roat — verce

Swear — coise

Of — cerse

DANNY: I t’ink yiz are ready for sentences now

So pay close attention ‘n’ I’ll show yiz how

Oh, you’ll be amazed when I tell you the facts 

In other words — yiz’ll drop dead in yer tracks!

Now, just take a sentence as simple as this

“Weren’s you employed there and slightly remiss?”

On Avenue A, to make them understand

You’d say, “Hey, usen’t you used to woik d’ere

Before yiz wuz canned?” 

That’s how ya talk in Brooklyn

Dees are the woids ya say:

Weren’t — usen’t 

Aven — yuh

Employed — woik

Remiss — huh?

DANNY: One final t’ing and yer lesson is troo

Whom yiz’ll cheer and whom yiz’ll boo

Some they is heroes and some they is bums

Here’s how ya sep’rate the cream from the crumbs

Frankie — yaaaaay!

Lana — oooooooooooooh!

Dodgers — H’raaaaaay!

Giants — Booooooooooooo!

DANNY: Hey, you, d’ere

I tell ya true, dere

If you’re from Brooklyn

O.K.!

Sylvia Fine, “Brooklyn for Beginners,” written for Danny with audience participation, from the Library of Congress, Music Division

Brooklyn College Prize Songs

From the Portals of Joralemon

From the portals of Joralemon

To a class at Willoughby,

Then we tramp out once again, up to Pearl for history.

Through a maze of trolley cars, we dodge,

Right by traffic cops, we charge — and take our chances —

From the portals of Joralemon

To a class at Willoughby.

From the portals of Joralemon

To a class at Willoughby,

Then between the “EL” posts, we must run

Down to Court for chemistry,

Even through the winter’s rain and snow.

When the bells we must go — for education. 

From the portals of Joralemon

To a class at Willoughby —

From the portals of Joralemon

To a class at Willoughby,

When the elevator boys hear “one,”

Then he’s sure to stop at three,

And when you want six, he’s bound to shout

“Only five and seven ont.” So how can we get

From the portals of Joralemon

To a class at Willoughby?

Sylvia Fine, “‘From the Portals of Joralemon,’ Brooklyn College Prize Songs” from Library of Congress, Music Division

It’s a Long Way to Brooklyn Campus

The bells up at Lawrence,

I hear they are calling.

The classes at Court Street have not yet begun

The classes at Pearl Street are still loudly squalling,

But Lawrence Bells ring out, ring out, so we must run.

Oh, someday, most distant, the bells up at Lawrence 

And Court St., and Pearl St, and Willoughby, too,

Will all ring together thru sunshine and torrents,

But college days will long be through for me and you.

Sylvia Fine, “‘It’s a Long Way to Brooklyn Campus,’ Brooklyn College Prize Songs” from Library of Congress, Music Division