Television: 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...

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