You may not even know of Danny Kaye unless you’ve seen the Christmas movie classic White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney. It just goes to show how popularity is so fleeting, because when he debuted his TV-styled variety show in 1963, he was a household name due to movies like Hans Christian Anderson, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and of course the Bingster flick. Here, you get 2 dvds of the show which work as a time capsule that captures an era of when TV was recorded “live” in front of an audience and the square box was for the whole family to watch while eating their TV dinners on TV trays.
You get a lot of cute Borscht Belt-styled humor here, with appearances by Jack Benny (who looks quite young!), Rod Serling (who is his Twilight Zone-iest), Art Carney and Jackie Cooper who all come with fun comedy sketches. Then, some wonderful dance routines with GeneKelly and Liza Minelli are absolutely delightful and some duets on vocals with Ella Fitzgerald and Harry Belafonte (on a rockin “Hava Nagilia”-where else but in America?!?) as well as a take with Nana Mouskouri who looks gloriously Greek. Nothing “edgy” or with a “message,” just good old entertainment during the era of Camelot.
MVD Visual