I'm Dreaming of The Time Danny Kaye Made Us Dinner

  

White Christmas Star Danny Kaye with my Father, circa 1978

Every year, a few days before Christmas, I snuggle up with the puppies and watch, for the umpteenth time, the 1954 classic White Christmas. I love these few days before Christmas, with their anticipation of good things to come. And I love this old movie. Joe is usually doing something else. He does not share my affection for vintage entertainment.

Long before White Christmas became a seasonal favorite, one of its stars, Danny Kaye, made dinner for my family in the late 1970s. 

A patient of my father, Kaye, born David Daniel Kaminsky, would come bursting into town from time to time for medical appointments and hang out with Mom and Dad. He wore a flowing scarf and made a big impression. 

 

My parents did their best to convey to us kids that Uncle Danny was a big deal in the world of entertainment, a “puckish Brooklyn-reared comedian who sang, danced, mimicked, pantomimed and joked his way to Broadway and Hollywood fame” -- but we were too tied up with teenagers’ usual dramas and preoccupations to care all that much. A self-taught Renaissance man, Kaye conducted the Cleveland Orchestra in 1979 and counted Chinese cooking among his many interests. 

 

He insisted on preparing dinner for my parents in Los Angeles and, once they’d become good friends, made all of us a meal in our Shaker Heights kitchen. 

 

What I most vividly recall of the meal preparations was him frying up potatoes and causing the scalding oil to gush all over our kitchen cabinetry. Our housekeeper Rena, who usually made us dinner, cackled with delight over this avoidable kitchen catastrophe. Movie stars failed to impress Rena, and this one did not have the common sense to know that a vat of hot oil overflows when you put in too many shredded potatoes. He had better not intrude on her turf ever again.

 

We all recovered from this meal-prep mess-up, and only fond memories remained. I learned that Kaye had died of heart failure in 1987 when I spotted a New York Post headline on my way to the subway one evening. I called my parents to convey the sad news. 

 

Because of my personal connection to White Christmas, I get a special kick out of this old, sentimental tale of show business, friendship, and loyalty. My favorite moment is not the title song, but rather, the Haynes sisters’ expression of their mutual devotion. Joe loves “Snow," the movie’s other great, pre-climate change tune about what the weather should be doing in December.

Whatever gets you in the seasonal mood, I hope you, too, are curling up with your loved ones in these enticing days before Christmas. Maybe you’ll want to give White Christmas a go. 

 

Do it for Uncle Danny.