Danny Kaye’s profile gets a boost each year at this time since the 1954 holiday musical comedy “White Christmas” has become a perennial. And because 2013 is the late comedian’s centennial year, we’ve seen more activity in getting his movies to DVD.
But for some reason, it’s been a long haul.
Kaye only made 17 pictures, but five have remained elusive to fans, two lesser works from the end of his career, and — more surprisingly — his first three movies, which made him a star and cemented his reputation as a big-screen comedian and song-and-dance man whose name over the title guaranteed box-office gold in the 1940s and '50s.
Over the past decade, most of Kaye’s movies have slowly made their way to DVD on various labels (even his 1949 cameo in Doris Day’s “It’s a Great Feeling”). And things have picked up in 2013 as the year has been more or less bookended by two major releases from Warner Home Video of Kaye’s most famous characters — “Hans Christian Andersen” (1952), in a gorgeous Blu-ray edition last December, and next week’s DVD debut of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” (1947). (Just in time to piggyback on Ben Stiller’s remake, due Christmas Day.)
And now, at long last, out of the blue with no fanfare to speak of, Kaye’s first three movies have been made available in the four-disc set “Danny Kaye: The Goldwyn Years” ($39.95) on the Warner Archive burn-on-demand DVD website (www.warnerarchive.com).
When Kaye began making movies in 1944, his first five pictures were for the Samuel Goldwyn Company. And when home video was developed, all five quickly went to VHS tape. (Ridiculously overpriced used tapes are still available on the Web.)
But for some reason, official DVD releases have eluded Kaye’s first three movies — although there have been lots of bootleg copies and imports floating around on Internet sites over the years, each varying in degrees of quality.
One of those five films is “Walter Mitty,” which, as mentioned, is getting a solo release, and another is “A Song Is Born” (1948), which found its way to DVD in 2009.
“A Song Is Born” is one of the four in this new Warner Archive set, and here are the other three:
• “Up in Arms” (1944). Kaye’s feature-film debut is highlighted by one of his most famous patter songs, “The Lobby Number,” in which he spoofs how movies are shown in theaters. Dinah Shore and Dana Andrews co-star in this farce about a hypochondriac who is drafted and wreaks havoc in the Army during World War II, until he becomes an accidental hero. (A remake of Eddie Cantor’s 1930 film “Whoopee!”)
• “Wonder Man” (1945). I would rank Kaye’s second film as one of his best, right up there with his acknowledged 1956 classic “The Court Jester.” Here, Kaye plays twin brothers, one an introverted bookworm and the other a boisterous nightclub performer. When the entertainer is killed by mobsters his ghost takes over the bookworm’s body, causing no end of problems for all concerned. Loaded with clever gags, both verbal and physical, and the groundbreaking special effects won an Oscar. With Virginia Mayo, Vera-Ellen and S.Z. Sakall in support.
• “The Kid From Brooklyn” (1946) is another remake (of Harold Lloyd’s 1936 boxing spoof “The Milky Way”), with Kaye as a milquetoast milkman who inadvertently knocks out a prizefighter and is goaded into the ring by a wily promoter (Lionel Stander). Frequent Kaye co-stars Mayo and Vera-Ellen are here again, and the great wisecracking Eve Arden joins the fun as well.
Warner Archive is also offering a new Kaye double feature of two reissued titles, “The Court Jester” and “The Five Pennies” (1959). Other, earlier-issued Kaye movies on the site include “Merry Andrew” (1958), and his final film, “The Madwoman of Chaillot” (1969).
So now only two of Kaye’s movies are not on DVD, two of his last starring roles and the only two black-and-white films he made: “Me and the Colonel” (1958) and “The Man From the Diner’s Club” (1963), both for Columbia Pictures (owned by Sony).
A Sony Choice Collection burn-on-demand release sometime soon could rectify this oversight.
Chris Hicks is the author of "Has Hollywood Lost Its Mind? A Parent’s Guide to Movie Ratings." His website is www.hicksflicks.com
Email: hicks@deseretnews.com