The Good Seed

When he was only five, David Daniel Kaminski, lean, red-haired son of a Russian-born garment worker, made his professional debut as a watermelon seed in a play at Brooklyn's P.S. 149. Within 25 years, the little seed had sprouted into a big U.S. buffoon called Danny Kaye. Comedian Kaye mugged, mimicked and gitgatgittled through vaudeville and such hit Broadway shows as Lady in the Dark, was carefully nourished in Sam Goldwyn's Hollywood hothouse, and had his own radio show. For ten years of playing to packed houses, he never ventured to play the biggest house of all--television. But Entertainer Kaye found reason to want TV's vast stage as much as TV wanted him, and the engagement was made. This week came the marriage, and a happy event it was.

Kaye's TV debut. The Secret Life of Danny Kaye, on CBS's See It Now, was a 90-minute film of one of the most widely staged and widely publicized benefits in show-business history. The subject: Kaye's bone-bruising, tongue-twisting, 35,000-mile junket around most of the world on behalf of the nonpolitical United Nations Children's Fund. The stars: Danny Kaye in a multitude of piquant, nimble versions, and hundreds of the 40 million underprivileged children who have received milk, shoes and medical aid from UNICEF. The show was filmed by two CBS-TV camera crews over a seven-week tour of three continents and brilliantly edited (from 240,000 ft. to 10,000 ft.) by See It Now Producers Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly, and by Kaye and his wife, Lyricist Sylvia Fine.

A Bag of Fruit. The plot of the show was nothing more than Kaye's merry Pied-Pipering through the villages, homes and affections of children in 14 countries. There were no obtrusive reminders of UNICEF's constant need for funds. The film's chief purpose, says Kaye, "is to bring to the attention of the people of the world what UNICEF is doing."* There were no shooting schedules, no rehearsals, no retakes and none of the familiar TV tinsel and dross--but a lot of unfamiliar spontaneity and holiday glow.

Though Kaye has refused offers of up to $250,000 for a one-shot TV show, he did Secret Life for no pay, as the latest chapter in 3 1/2 years and 100,000 miles of traveling, performing and moviemaking on behalf of UNICEF. He paid his own expenses, carried only "a little bag of dried fruit, a little match stick on which to jot down little notes, and a pair of comfortable shoes." Kaye, 43, found it a strenuous but gratifying effort. "The important thing I learned," he says, "is that through the medium of TV . . . if we can help to better understand the problem of the world's children, the world might be well on its way to understanding itself."

A Riff of Jazz. To light up the TV screen, Kaye lit up the small faces of thousands of impoverished, diseased children, and usually found himself drawing laughter from people who had little else to laugh about. ("My type of diplomacy," he says, "is limited to the little world of laughter.") He cavorted with a leper ("a mixture of the Lindy Hop and tribal ritual") in Nigeria, impersonated a flamenco dancer in Madrid, sang jazz "riffs" to band members in Yugoslavia and led them through a song (I Never Knew) they had never heard. In a Rome school for handicapped children (see cut), he learned a Neapolitan folk song, Ciu Ciu Bella, and in Morocco he flipped flies off the scabrous faces of grimy boys stricken with trachoma. "These kids hold up their cups and say, 'UNICEF please.' They think it's the word for milk. It's very touching."

Competent Idiot. He soon found that children everywhere he went not only looked alike but had the same reactions. "Any time an adult makes a fool of himself for children he establishes a basis for communication. And I'm an extremely competent idiot."

Kaye also elbow-rubbed with Sir Anthony Eden, Tito, Italy's President Gronchi, the King and Queen of Greece, David Ben-Gurion, the Sultan of Morocco, Pope Pius XII. "Regardless of their politics, they all felt the same way: that the health and welfare of their countries depend on children, and unless adults provide them with the opportunity to develop, there will be no world in years to come."

* Under arrangements made by UNICEF and the U.N., the show was shown simultaneously on television this week in 25 other countries, including Russia.

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