Kaye, Sylvia Fine

(b. 29 August 1913 in Brooklyn, New york; 28 October 1991 in New York City), lyricist, composer, producer, writer, and teacher best known for writing humorous material performed by her husband, the comedian and actor Danny Kaye.

Fine Kaye was the eldest of three children of Samuel Fine, a dentist, and his wife, Bessie, a homemaker. They lived in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York. Attracted to music at an early age, Fine Kaye started taking piano lessons at age seven and by age ten was taking music theory and harmony. She attended Thomas Jefferson High School in the Brownsville—East New York section of Brooklyn, taking two subways from her house to school. Superior academics at Jefferson convinced her parents to send her there even though she lived closer to Erasmus High School. Skipping three years ahead in school, Sylvia was president of her class and assistant editor of the school newspaper, the Liberty Bell, for which she wrote a weekly humor column, and also wrote for the school musical. She graduated in 1929. Her future husband—then known as David Kaminski—attended Thomas Jefferson too, but they did not meet until later.

She took courses at the Brooklyn branch of Hunter College, an academically respected women’s college in Manhattan, but graduated in 1933 from Brooklyn College, with a B.A. degree in music. While in college, she wrote both the lyrics and music for George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man. Her cousin, the novelist Irwin Shaw, wrote the libretto. She also wrote the music for the Brooklyn College alma mater and penned a humor column for the college paper, gleaning inspiration from Dorothy Parker and Ogden Nash.

After graduation she gave piano lessons and worked for Keit-Engle, a music publishing house where she wrote songs, none of which were published. She was also a writer for Ed Sullivan’s Headliners (1934), a musical short film. During the summer of 1939 she worked in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, at Camp Tamiment, a summer resort known for attracting young theatrical hopefuls. Each week she wrote new numbers for the skits performed by Imogene Coca, Max Liebman, and Danny Kaye. Fine Kaye began writing specialty material for Kaye, including a Yiddish version of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado. She was able to try out her songwriting skills when she wrote two numbers for The Straw Hat Review featuring Coca and Kaye, which opened on Broadway in September 1939 and closed after ten weeks.

She married Danny Kaye in a civil service 3 January 1940 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and they held a religious ceremony in a Brooklyn synagogue later that year. Their only child was born in December 1946. The couple spent their married life living on both coasts, having a house in Beverly Hills, California, and an apartment in Manhattan. Danny Kaye often said that he was “a wife-made man” and that he had “a Fine head on his shoulders.” This spoke volumes about the working relationship of this husband-and-wife team. Fine Kaye was the writer of Kaye’s material, critiquing his performances almost ruthlessly while refining his unique talent to pure gold.

In 1940 Fine Kaye became a nightclub performer, accompanying her husband at La Martinique in New York City, where she wrote the music and lyrics for the material he presented. Cole Porter’s musical Let’s Face It (1941) included Kaye in the cast and offered the opportunity for Fine Kaye to introduce some of her material in the show. Her song “Melody in 4-F” proved to be a showstopper.

When Kaye was commissioned to make the film Up In Arms (1944) in California, Fine Kaye signed with Samuel Goldwyn as a writer of special material for Kaye. In 1952 she and her husband formed Dena Productions, organized to be a complete moviemaking operation. Knocks on Wood (1954) was its first production.

Having written more than 100 songs for her husband, she coproduced and wrote film scores for The Inspector General (1949), Knock, on Wood (1954), and The Court Jester (1956), all featuring Kaye. She wrote the words and music for songs in several of Kaye’s films, including Wonder Man (1945), The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947). Her songs ranged from fast-paced, tongue-twisting patter numbers such as “Anatole of Paris” and “The Nightmare Song” from the opera Iolanthe to the tender “Lullaby in Ragtime” from the film The Five Pennies (1959). Cole Porter described her song “All About You” (from Knock on Wood) as “a perfect love song.” Two of Fine Kaye’s songs were nominated for Academy Awards: “The Moon is Blue” (1953), with music by Herschel Burke Gilbert, and “The Five Pennies,” both lyrics and music by Fine Kaye. She was associate producer in the latter production.

In the 1970s, Fine Kaye taught classes in musical comedy at the University of Southern California (1971) and at Yale University (1975). In 1979 she produced and narrated the Peabody Award—winning PBS television program Musical Comedy Tonight, which was based on her course. As executive producer for the television production Danny Kaye: Look-in at the Metropolitan Opera (1975), Fine Kaye won an Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Entertainment Special. She also produced and edited Assignment Children (1955), a UNICEF short film starring her husband.

Longtime supporters of the arts in Los Angeles as well as in New York, the Kayes were grand patrons of the Los Angeles Music Center, contributing more than $1 million; Fine Kaye continued to be a major financial supporter after Kaye’s death in 1987. After his death, Fine Kaye presented Hunter College with a $1 million gift to renovate its 660-seat theater as the Sylvia and Danny Kaye Playhouse, which reopened in 1990. The couple also endowed the orchid collection at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Brooklyn College awarded her an honorary doctorate of humane letters in 1985 for outstanding achievements in television and motion-picture production and her contribution to music. She endowed the Sylvia Fine Chair in Musical Theater there in 1991.

Fine Kaye died at age seventy-eight of emphysema. A memorial bench to Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine Kaye is in Kensico Cemetery in suburban Valhalla, New York.

A child of immigrant parents, Fine Kaye made significant contributions in the area of musical comedy and the arts. Her philanthropic support of theater education continues to leave a legacy to future students of the arts.

Fine Kaye’s musical-comedy collection is in the Library of Congress, Music Division, Washington, D.C. Additional biographical material is at the New York Public Library, Research Division, Jewish Division. There is no book-length biography of Fine Kaye; however, a great deal of biographical information is included in her husband’s biography by Martin Gottfried, Nobody’s Fool: The Lives of Danny Kaye (1994). An obituary is in the New York Times (29 Oct. 1991). An oral history tape of American Jewish Women of Achievement, housed in the Jewish Division of the New York Public Library, contains an interview with Fine Kaye.

Connie Thorsen