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Patricia Marx interviews each week at this time your city station brings you an interview with a leading figure in the arts politics or the sciences and here now to introduce today's program is Patricia Marx it's often been said that Americans today are losing their sense of humor and become serious minded I'll be talking to a man who should know whether or not this is true he's been making people laugh the world over for years he is active singer dancer conductor Elantra best and above all comedian Mr Danny Kaye with a K. do you feel that would you mind repeating those things you just said actor singer wrong wrong dancer conductor for the right on the conductor philanthropist wrong comedian wrong how would you what would you say instead of these words just conducting that's the only thing that is right about that whole thing I can that symphony orchestras now I don't know anything about it but I conduct them that's where it's right where do you do this where do I do this I've done it in New York with The New York Philharmonic then of the Boston Symphony I've done it with the for that of history I've done it with the Los Angeles Symphony I've done it with the Washington symphony with the Detroit Symphony with the Oklahoma Oklahoma. City symphony and with the Buffalo symphony. And a couple of others well Maestro I to refer to and I don't now have a little bit more respect for history. But I want to know maestro what you feel about. The statement which is often said that young Americans are serious minded completely lost their sense of humor and they're not like the old days is the term Well I would heartily disagree with that you would disagree Oh shoot. As the human changed over the years I don't think the you marriage changed so much Patricia as the subject of the I think that is changed considerably but the same basic things that have been funny for hundreds of years are still funny today. All the political jokes and political satire that have been going on for seven years and one of the great exponents of that is if our young fella Mort Sahl who was very very good at it but it isn't anything new Will Rogers did that some years ago and his subject for humor and a great many areas was the Congress of the United States or the administration that happened to be in power and that is happened for years and years not only in this country but in Great Britain I would think China before they had their form of government as it exists today I think in every country in the world there has to be that kind of elevated platform of people running the government that the ordinary fella can take a pot shot at because you know it releases a great deal of tension and it's a wonderful kind of feeling to be able to say the fellow up in the big important office doesn't know what he's doing. Then you're performing you don't do this very much do you satire know why did you do that I don't know because I don't naturally lean toward that. A lot of people naturally lean toward the spoken word as the single rapier you know their sense of humor other people might take the fall bows of people's characteristics and exploit them in that way I think what I do take I think I take people's. Weaknesses and we all have them we all recognise them in each other and I just kind of maybe draw them a little bit outsized I explode them a little bit more than is normal and I think people recognize those things and selves consequently it isn't really. Damaging to anybody do you understand I mean I'm sure you do I do what I want to with you think. That Huma should serve some kind of purpose in the said all we want to know is. Does it serve different purposes to satirise versus your kind of human. Oh I do an enormous amount of satire and I sing about it I do a song about a fellow who you know has all the right clothes on and you know has his hair caught on in the right way and he has all the right gestures and he makes all the right movements you know except he sings a little bit off key. You know now you see hundreds of people like that they don't necessarily have to be professionals I find it my own family I have a niece of mine who loves to sing can't carry a tune with. What purpose does this serve. If you said you were always does have a purpose it serves a purpose and that somebody may recognize that in themselves and cause them you know to be amused at themselves if we take ourselves constantly so seriously that we can't see anything funny about ourselves then we're doomed to a hopelessly inadequate kind of life if only I wonder what you feel about the brand of sick you Mary that is I've grown up in. Both in the sick jokes and also way some of the young comedians. Satirist and they may Mike Nichols Dick Gregory they don't use they don't use they really don't know they don't they do satire in its purest form they would take almost any given situation and blow it up so that you know that jagged edges which are very very tiny you know when you look at it realistically suddenly become the focal point for the funny but. I don't think they use a cue mood or I don't think Dick Gregory uses. I think he has you was. It might be slightly chauvinist dick like many of us do you know whether we're talking about a country or a race or religion some people do that quite easily I find I can't I work in England or and and there are on the different cities in the United States on any city in the world if they speak English I can manage to communicate with each other and that and we don't have any of the highly specialized kind of you know me that goes with one particular country does this mean that. The sense of humor is not different from country to country or I don't think so I don't think basically the sense of humor is different. I think the core of human is exactly the same in almost all the countries the best classic example is the fellas lepping on the banana peel you know that's funny in any country in the world or the outrageous situation that you know that fellow carefully prepares something a walks through a door and slips on a banana peel or bumps into his boss coming in and spills of flour on him or something you know you seem to be describing a slapstick more than almost any other form there that's visual humor if you want to call visual mis labs take I suppose you can but the same core of the fella inadvertently insulting his boss without knowing it he picks up the phone when his boss cause when he least expect him to and says outrageous things on the phone. So you can translate that into the spoken word as well as the physical then he would do you get your material from do you do you see it in specific people specific incidents or do you imagine it how do you create it I think it's a combination of both Patricia I think if anybody has any core of creativity in him and he sees something and his imagination is allowed full play he can kind of mold it to his own particular brand of performing. Given the same song five different people will do it five different ways given the same story five different people might tell it in five different ways. Given the same set of circumstances five people might do it in five different ways do you cane jazz you perform do you part of an absolutely constantly I haven't done one show exactly the same since sales. Do you work on a particular skill in changes in the sense you know nothing or do you just depends again on the medium you are working in if you're doing a weekly television show you don't have time to polish very much of anything. If you do a show which is an accumulation of many many years of discarding and polishing and rewriting and so forth and so on and performing night after night you have a great opportunity to polish and shape and form does this change as you ocean for the audience. As you're moving through with a lot I would think so I would think the mood of the audience influences it a great deal too can you change that or is it a varied from time to time I can yeah. Audience is like a person you know if you take them collectively and audiences a person and an audience can be shy and reserved and withdrawn and only with confidence and only with kind of familiarity do they emerge from out of themselves audiences like a person can be outgoing and warm and immediately responsive. Consequently there's a different kind of show that happens night after night and I never know what they're going to be like until after I step out on the stage are some audiences much harder to gain control of to Yes You know Danny do you have any. Specific approach towards an audience that I noticed when I saw you that you just gained their attention and their goodwill almost immediately and you know sometimes it doesn't happen immediately sometimes it takes longer than others sometimes it never happened. I mean hunches are trying to get there but how do you know I don't actually work at it you know I sense an audience is added to rather than its behavior that's one of the reasons I like to work in the theatre where I cannot see the audience as well as a lot of people like to because I don't like to deal with a group of faces I like to deal with a feeling of a whole audience rather than specific individuals in it. And you get the feeling from their laughter Consequently I like working in the darkness for me to be looking in the darkness so I can deal with the whole feeling of an audience rather than somebody who was particularly amusing or somebody who might not be amused at all because I find there's a conflict of emotion then for me what is your feeling towards the audience this is one of warmth report. I don't know whether my feeling toward the audience is of that much importance and my feeling about what I do is important I like doing what I'm doing I like it very much and if I like it and it gives me a sense of wellbeing and comfort and museum and then an entertainment I think I can communicate with my feeling toward an audience rather than with what I am doing. You know there was you expressed this or create the feeling in them because you know I there's nothing magical about it I don't go out and hypnotize any audience I don't go out and say abracadabra and they remain spellbound I just go out and entertain in the show as well as I know how some nights I do it better than others because I feel better some nights. I am affected by proceeding twenty four hours. There is a life to live beside the two hours that I am on the stage the events of the day have a great deal to do with shaping the way I perform. Dani what about the case when there are children and grown ups in the audience and you seem to appeal to both is this a difficult thing to do and Patricia. I honestly think that all audiences are children now they may be grown up children or they may be young children but one of the reasons that people enjoy the theater as much as they do is that they are not forced to behave the way they have to outside of the theater now let me put it another way society demands that you behave like an adult if you're twenty one Years or Older now we have people coming to the theater who are considerably older than twenty one and they make all sorts of strange noises and do all sorts of things that I ask them to do because they are not really spotlighted by what society demands for their behavior they can actually behave exactly the way they feel in an audience again the identification with so called Not on this stage gives them the freedom to behave the same way and that's why I think there's an enormous interplay between an audience and myself and so it's the same with kids in our Saturday I mean you know for instance there are always a lot of children in the matinee I don't change the show. And I find that the adults react in exactly the same way the children do or conversely the children react exactly the same way as the adults do but on some audiences much more sophisticated than others but there is the child in all of them in they still you can you can break through that that some of them may be more guarded about them but I don't think a man ever gets old enough or woman for that matter ever gets old enough to completely destroy the child within them thank goodness I would think so I suppose that's one of the so-called purposes that you might consider is to release the child yeah it kind of is a great leveller and. Sense a sense of the light again do you enjoy live performances better than working in movies or television Yeah. How much of your own material do you write or how much do you have writers still. I would think some sixty or seventy percent of what you saw on the stage between the actual numbers things that happen quite accidentally on the stage only from relating to an audience the other afternoon I don't know how that started. I think it was a Wednesday afternoon or Saturday afternoon I happened to mention that I was going to keep the audience until seven o'clock that evening and one woman quite involuntarily said Oh and I said Are you worried about your dinner spoiling and she said frankly yes and we start the whole conversation I don't know where it came from we got on the subject of potato pancakes and part roast and things and. I find now that I can relate that story to almost any audience explaining to them that something happened at the matinee that I'd like to tell you about and you know they they understand it immediately you can use it although I don't actually sit down and write with a right is but I will take something that has been written and in the course of performing or in the course of creating it you know. I think I kind of impose myself onto what has been written so that it shapes to me. How about with the many movies you've made. Did you work on the scripts at all oh some of them so you know I merely suggesting what might be. A sequence in a movie or how we could perhaps do the sequence in another way which would. Be better for the scene before after. We did you learned these fabulous Daleks where did you pick them up from travels around the world I don't think so I think I did those or had a feeling for those before I travel anywhere. You see I am firmly convinced that a lot of people have ears and really do not hear and a lot of people have eyes and really do not see they just see what is necessary to see now their words you know they see if they're driving toward a cliff you know they know enough not to drive over it a lot of people use those organs for a little bit more than just everyday living and I think if one is musically inclined one has a sense of the cadence of a language which is what causes an accent you know. Dialects not that difficult No not that special to me group of people but I do them almost anybody can do accents isn't a great talent it's a lot rhythm isn't it yeah it's cadence. That's true though it's the way they put the words together in a few sound cues particular defining sounds well you speak French I try all right I don't know how I know what how I have a little one and. How do you say. I would like to take a warm bath in French. Show. Now in English you say I would like to take a warm bath in French and say I would like to take a walk. So it's the cadence of the language rather than the accent itself because I will say the same line without any X. and. I say it as we speak English now I would like to take a warm bath then I would say I would like to take a warm bath. And then immediately has a foreign flavor doesn't now add to that. Like to take a walk. And then immediately becomes an accent do you do you speak foreign language eleven you do with an American accent. No no not too much I speak nine Well yeah eleven I have a working. Nobody understands them I speak eleven languages but nobody understands it and I. Do speak baby. Very in one language and I haven't recently now you know. A lot of people speak French and German and Spanish. Italian. Almost everybody speaks baby sometimes I do that's not you know you know just little animals three or four year month old baby and hears him saying. I left. So very important language. Here basically means for communication I didn't realize now that I speak several languages without even trying and I have one I like now I mean. This is you know I will do this tonight in the theater and I've never done it my life but tonight I was somehow explain it yeah I will explain about this we do speak several And yeah and I'm going to make the whole audience speak baby this is something that interest me you have a great deal of audience point does a patient and. I've seen it done other times in this terrific reticence audience doesn't want to how do you make them do these credibly goofy soundings and then. You think they have more fun that way there's a lot in young. Things then you made a marvelous movie Secret Life of Walter Mitty I wonder if you have any secret dreams like. No. I'm luckier than most people I usually can really act them out. Most people have fantasies like Walter Mitty had. They have them within the confines of their own mind. And a lot of people in my profession literally go about acting them out. And sometimes it is more fun and sometimes it gets your mixed up where you don't know what you really are. Is it being a surgeon. No I would have liked to have been a surgeon I think. When I really come down to the bottom line I don't think I would have liked to have been anything but what I am I would have liked to have been a surgeon I would have liked to have been a symphony conductor but you were quite well again that's acting it out you see I have I can't read music I have no knowledge of music and yet I hear well enough that I can conduct an orchestra and make them play the way I want them to because everything I conduct I actually know I can sing all of them so you really did do this could yes I think I'd love to hear would you advice him when now to go into into show business if they wanted to if they wanted to I don't know if I'd advise anybody going show business if they wanted to I would advise them to go into it if they had to. Think it's too well Maestro doctor. Says to Danny Kaye I want to thank you very much now that I I was delighted to talk to you and I enjoyed myself enormously I think we've set are some of the world's problems which will never ever come up again. And now I'd like you to hear them I still sing some songs in several of the eleven languages he speaks. In tropical climes that was happening times of the day. When all the citizens were caught to tell their clothes off and. It's one of those rules of the greatest food say because the sun is much too South Korea and one must avoid this thing by. Public a public a public. Figure. The natives maybe when the police leave their house. Because they're the. Dogs and. In the mean time the Japanese don't care the Chinese wouldn't talk to him do. But Englishman detest. And if an opinion is that a lovely screens to protect you from the glass in the melee stakes they have had like plates which the British expelled at twelve noon the naked school the lack of. Sinning. I see God has sent you ever to get that India on. How to tie who's here and. That's quite all right. It's such a surprise for the eastern eyes to see that the English out of their White him to meet with the white man rides every native hides in glee. Because the simple creatures help people within ten beyond everything. VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY bomb. Up Hubbard and have been in a pub I use it as a. Book. And get out in the mean time the smallest mail read it deplores the stupid hit it. It. Is just what they need to. Put their. Own energy. To even. When there's nothing else to do. But. Good. This knowledge. Of the meat that I think the dog scout the butcher pony used to make go solo be a propos P.F. that you can go to check out this link I went up against Get up a couple games get this metabolic heat up to let on a fact questions get a chuckle of a couple up to. The public but I think I am not the puppet. Going up. And out of the Mr Chairman just grabbing my cynical ploy to get him to take up the sort of thing about John enough it was enough to say that we got him to come up front and the timing of such as him I really ought to stop the subject has been about the. Plan we may believe that is not because if. You have been listening to Patricia Marx interviews join us again next Friday at five when once again we bring you Patricia Marx interviews. There.