I'm Dreaming of a (White) Christmas Physical Comedy

[post 427]

Merry Christmas all!

Here's a little physical comedy gem for you from the 1954 Bing Crosby – Danny Kaye classic film, White Christmas. This is Danny and crew in "Choreography," a parody of modern dance, and especially of Martha Graham. Enjoy!



BTW, Riley Kellogg found this photo of the real Martha Graham and also informs me that the structure the Kaye dancers climb on towards the end is a reference to the more than twenty sets the famous sculptor Isamu Noguchi built for Graham dances.

On the Second Day of Christmas Update:  And this just in from my old friend Jim Moore, whose excellent VAUDEVISUALS blog yesterday featured a slapstick version of White Christmas performed by Lou Costello. Click here to watch. The mayhem starts around the minute and a half mark.

On the Third Day of Christmas Update:  And this just in from Ira Seidenstein, who knows a thing or two about a thing or two.  Choreography by Martha Graham and featuring Merce Cunningham.



From the Performing Arts Encyclopedia,:
Performed by the Martha Graham Dance Group to music by Paul Nordoff, Every Soul Is a Circus premiered on December 27, 1939, at New York's St. James Theatre. Costumes were designed by Edythe Gilfond and the set was created by Philip Stapp. This work marked the first appearance of Merce Cunningham, who became the second male dancer (after Erick Hawkins) to join Graham's ensemble. Composer/critic David Diamond, writing in Modern Music (December 1939) said, "The circus she creates is one of silly behavior and ridiculous situations, its theme, the desire of woman to be the apex of a triangle, the beloved of a duet, who, as the spectator of her own actions, becomes the destroyer of experiences necessary to her essential dignity and integrity. It represents the fullest consummation of Miss Graham's conceptions. She has unified her entire dance vocabulary into a simple and direct theatrical means of projection and communication. The perfection of her technique, the warmth of personality, make this performance a piece of the most poignant clowning seen in the dance."

Happy 100th Birthday, Danny Kaye!

[post 321]

When I was six or seven, my parents took me to see a Danny Kaye movie (very likely The Court Jester) and I still remember thinking afterwards that I didn't know it was humanly possible to laugh that hard. Literally. I wasn't a sad child, I'm sure I laughed a bunch, but not like that, not that convulsively. Danny Kaye was born one hundred years ago today and I am honored to take this opportunity to finally say thanks and hopefully share his comic genius with some new fans.

Kaye was an endlessly inventive comedic performer whose characters were not only clownesque in spirit, but were often specific clown archetypes: a court jester; a circus clown; a mountebank's zany. He played a wide variety of broad characters, often several in the same movie, replete with wild disguises, wilder accents, and inspired gibberish.

____________________________________________

“I have cashed in on gloopty-gloop. Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Jack Benny and others had to rely strictly on pure English. I scramble up the alphabet and hit the jackpot.”

____________________________________________

Although he moved well and in fact began his professional career as one of the "Three Terpsichoreans," a vaudevillian dance act, he was not what you'd call a knockabout comedian or an eccentric dancer. His specialty was the comedy "patter" song, and particularly those of the tongue-twister variety (often written by his wife, Sylvia Fine). I suppose this might be thought of as verbal comedy, but the dexterity required, coupled with an amazingly animated face, rates him in my book as a superb physical comedian. Here are a few of my favorite scenes....

The first is from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, very loosely based on the James Thurber short story of a meek man who compensates for his drab life by daydreaming of heroic adventures. In this scene he is a combat pilot who celebrates his latest military triumph by entertaining his fellow soldiers with an imitation of a German professor. In other words, just an excuse for a Danny Kaye song, but a brilliant song it is.

And now to Court Jester, and a priceless song where Kaye's character explains how he became a jester in the first place:

If you played all the way through that, you saw the poison pellets going into the cups. Oops, I mean into the vessels. Which leads to one of Kaye's more famous patter bits (not actually a song), "The Vessel with the Pestle," in which Kaye and a rival knight must fight a battle to the death while avoiding being poisoned — just like Laertes and Hamlet! What's so effective about this is that the patter is crucial to the plot, and that the verbal gymnastics are matched by the physical comedy silliness resulting from Kaye's magnetic armor.

I sure do think the gag could go a lot further rather than being cut off by the king's proclamation but, hey, you can't have everything.

Here's one more, this one a pseudo-Italian song from Merry Andrew, Kaye's circus movie.



I have more to say on the subject of Danny Kaye, and there's more vintage footage that I've yet to explore, so there may well be more posts and more goodies down the road. BUT...  I am determined to get this one out there on his birthday, and it's already 11:30 p.m. here in New York, so.... to be continued.

And now for the punch line to my 100th birthday post. I just read this today in the Los Angeles Times: "Kaye was actually born Jan. 18, 1911, but he celebrated 1913 as the year of his birth. His daughter never discovered the explanation for the switch. He was not conventional, she noted." Other sources say not only was the year 1911, but the actual day was January 28th, not the 18th!

So I guess the joke is on me. Oh well, happy 102nd-ish!


Fun Factoids:
• Legend has it that Kaye could not read a note of music.
• MGM’s Samuel Goldwyn wanted him to have his nose fixed so he would look less Jewish, but Kaye refused.
• He was a professional-level French and Chinese chef and also a jet pilot.
• He devoted much of his life to raising money for UNICEF.
• Kaye's comical Russian accent was paid hommage by Daffy Duck in the cartoon Book Revue (1946), and by songwriter Tom Lehrer in "Lobachevsky" (1953).
• Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, creators of Superman, created a short-lived superhero title, Funnyman, based on Kaye.
• Kaye was part-owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball team.
• Kaye was investigated by the FBI for his liberal political beliefs, and was an outspoken foe of blacklisting in 1950s Hollywood.

Some Links:
The "official" Danny Kaye web site
Tribute and fan web site
Yet another fan web site
Danny Kaye: King of Jesters, a new bio; no, I haven't read it.
An Evening with Danny Kaye
The Secret Life of Danny Kaye