How Many Danny Kaye Show Episodes Are There?

1945 signage promotes CBS Radio's new Danny Kaye Show, featuring Danny and singer Kitty Kallen, who often accompanied the house band, Harry James' Orchestra. Image courtesy Cary Ginell.

The first Danny Kaye Show (the one on radio in the 1940s, not the TV series of the 1960s) has always had a murky history. Each show was broadcast once with no plans to ever air it again, except occasionally chopped up and inserted into wartime radio programs, to entertain the troops overseas. No good records were kept. And none of the episodes were titled.

Over the years, tapes of some episodes did filter out into the public. Copies were bootlegged and distributed under homemade titles like "Danny Goes to Washington, D.C." Distributors dated the episodes by looking back at old program guides or newspaper listings to match up synopses.

Unfortunately, only about 18 episodes made it into circulation (although it may have seemed like more, because a single show may have been released under two or three different titles). At least one researcher did try to reconstruct the show's history and, by counting up the number of weeks between the series' first airing and last, estimated there were 58 broadcasts. Yet, he admitted he had no inkling of what aired on about a dozen of the weeks (a couple weeks no show aired, such as in the wake of FDR's death).

Fortunately, Kaye kept reel-to-reel recordings of most of the shows and scripts for all of them in his personal collection, which his heirs later donated to the Library of Congress. Piecing them together, my answer is there were 50 actual episodes of The Danny Kaye Show, spanning two seasons from January 1945 to May 1946.

But there's a hitch: a week before the series began, a small number of stations did air a "practice show," to help the cast and crew get comfortable. So, you could say 51.

And then, there were the six shows that aired under the Danny Kaye Show banner, on the Danny Kaye Show station, in the Danny Kaye Show time slot, and that were listed in program guides as The Danny Kaye Show. They just didn't have Danny Kaye on them or involve the show's regular cast and writers.

What happened is Danny had agreed to travel overseas on a six-week USO tour, departing at the end of September 1945. Unfortunately, the second season of his radio show had been scheduled to premiere September 28. So, Kaye did the season opener as a live remote from a War Fund workers rally in Chicago, then had other radio performers fill in with a show of their own.

The first week, Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland filled in. They had recently done a couple radio shows together and had just begun work on the film Till the Clouds Roll By.

For week two, Goodman Ace created a new episode of Easy Aces, the series he starred in with his wife, Jane, for 15 years prior to becoming the new director/head writer for The Danny Kaye Show.

The next week it was Burns and Allen, whose show aired the night before, also on CBS. In Danny's slot, they performed an entirely new script, but in the format of their own program.

A week later, Jack Benny and his regulars did the same thing. Benny's regular show, however, aired on NBC, but Kaye had appeared on The Jack Benny Show the year before and would appear again the following year.

Week five saw Kaye replaced by Duffy's Tavern (another NBC show) and week six Eddie Cantor (who also had a show on NBC, but guest-starred on the very first episode of The Danny Kaye Show and, a year later, would replace pal Danny as host of Pabst Blue Ribbon's series).

So, that might make 57 shows.

No matter you count them, they're all profiled, with behind-the-scenes stories, in my book Danny Kaye: King of Jesters.

The Top 12 Roles Danny Kaye Turned Down

Danny Kaye's hit recordings of Gilbert & Sullivan songs earned him an offer to appear with the world-renowned  D'Oyly Carte company

Walter Mitty, Hans Christian Andersen, the Court Jester—Danny Kaye played several iconic roles over the years. But there were several more huge parts that could have been his, had he wanted them.

Tevye, Fiddler on the Roof  (Kaye’s wife/de facto manager Sylvia Fine allegedly said Danny was not interested in playing a character so old that he had marriage-age daughters. That, of course, didn’t stop him from six years later, playing 600-year-old Noah in Two by Two.)

Harold Hill, The Music Man  (Meredith Willson wanted fast-talking Kaye to originate this role on Broadway, but Sylvia thought the part of a huckster wasn’t right for him. But after the show became a hit, Danny campaigned to star in the movie version. This time it was Willson who refused, insisting on no one but Robert Preston.)

Henry Higgins, My Fair Lady  (Kaye declined the opportunity to fill in on Broadway while Rex Harrison took a three-month break in the early 1960s.)

Fred/Petruchio, Kiss Me Kate  (According to Howard Keel, Danny was MGM’s first choice to star in the 1953 movie version of the Cole Porter musical.)

Various Roles, Gilbert & Sullivan Operettas  (After Kaye’s acclaimed recordings of eight Gilbert & Sullivan songs, the prestigious D’Oyly Carte company invited him to tour with them in the 1950s. He declined.)

Francois, Can-Can  (Five years after On the Riviera, 20th Century Fox asked Kaye to make this similarly themed musical, but Danny let the part fall to Frank Sinatra, under On the Riviera director Walter Lang.)

The Dauphin, Huckleberry Finn  (Kaye actually signed on to play Gene Kelly’s sidekick in this big-budget musical. He even began rehearsals in mid-1951, but pulled out, along with Kelly, and the entire project was scrapped. Gene claimed Danny was dissatisfied with playing a supporting role.)

Harry, Harry and Tonto  (Writer Paul Mazursky wanted his former Danny Kaye Show boss to star in his 1974 comedy-drama, until Kaye insisted on “joking up” his script. Mazursky instead hired Art Carney, who would win an Oscar for the role.)

Frosch the Jailer, Die Fledermaus  (In 1950, the New York Metropolitan Opera asked Kaye to play a comic non-singing role in the Johann Strauss operetta, but his busy schedule prevented it.)

Remy Marko, Stop, You’re Killing Me  (Danny was supposed to follow up The Inspector General with a musical version of the Damon Runyon play A Slight Case of Murder for Warner Bros. Unfortunately, the first film was so difficult for all involved that Kaye and the studio mutually ripped up his contract. The part went to Broderick Crawford instead.)

Bert, Mary Poppins  (Walt Disney supposedly briefly considered casting Kaye as the Cockney chimneysweep immortalized by Dick Van Dyke, although there’s no record he was formally offered the part.)

Jerry, Some Like It Hot  (Billy Wilder first envisioned Kaye in the Jack Lemmon role, playing alongside Bob Hope.)