Memories of "Knock on Wood"

Danny Kaye left a wonderful impression on AD Francisco Day during the production of Knock on Wood.

Francisco “Chico” Day, the assistant director of Danny Kaye’s Knock on Wood (1954), was the first interview I conducted solely for my book—30 years in the making—Danny Kaye: King of Jesters. 

It was a Wednesday afternoon, February 3, 1982. I was a wide-eyed, 19-year-old college kid; Chico was 74 and had been in show business since the 1940s. He’d worked on over 60 movies, with Tracy, Hepburn, Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Billy Wilder, and Cecil B. DeMille, for whom he helped pull off the parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments. He got a lot of assignments, especially those shot in Mexico and Spain, because he was bilingual, and was the first Mexican-American to join the Directors Guild. But Chico struck me as a sweet, humble man who lived in a modest high-rise apartment in Los Angeles, and lit up with joy talking about working with Danny. (I checked in on him after the interview, and that year he sent me a Christmas card.)

Here’s our conversation:

[DK] You made a lot of films for Paramount.

[Day] Oh, yeah. I was about 25 years at Paramount.

[DK] Just Paramount? You were under contract to Paramount?

[Day] No, no. You know, we were employed at the time in the so-called “Golden Era,” you know? We weren’t under contract; we were hired on a yearly basis, but we weren’t under contract at all. We worked in many, many pictures over many, many years.

[DK] You were assigned to your films or you went door-to-door shopping?

[Day] Oh, yeah. They had the directors and the writers and the assistant directors and the production managers and the stars and everything. It was at that time, the so-called “Golden Era.” We really had stars. Now you pick up anybody on the street and he’ll be a star the next day. We used to groom them.

Anyway, Danny was a wonderful man. I loved working with him. But he always wanted me, whenever he had to do something, he wanted me to do it first. Like he had to climb a ladder in a theater, one of those backstage ladders way up onto the roof, and he didn’t want to do it until I did it. And when we were on the street and he had to run and then slide and then turn, he wanted me to go and do it for him.

So we had a great rapport with each other and I think that Danny was and still is one of the great mimics of the world. He’s a great musician, he knows music quite well, and comedy, and what else is there? I mean for a man who has attained as much popularity and position in the world as Danny.

I haven’t seen him since I made that (picture). We used to have a great set-up when he’d come into the stage, he’d always crawl out and say (in a heavy accent), “Cheee-co?” And I says, “Yes, Danny?” And he says, “Did you took a chave?” And I’d say, “Yeah, Danny.” And then he’d say, “You took a chit?”

And you know he was a great fellow to be around with and a great pro. He was always on time. There was no problem EVER with dialogue. If there was something that they were rehearsing and it didn’t work out the way that they thought it would work out, why just like that Danny would rehearse it once and that’s all. He had a real photographic mind and he would do anything that he had that we could do, because if the directors had something new for him, something that was better, Danny would take it always. But usually Danny was the one that would make suggestions, as far as I can remember.

[DK] He would improvise a little?

[Day] When it came to things that required music or anything like that I imagine that he and his wife would go over it, but he would improvise gags, whatever came up, whatever he was thinking about. He was just really one of the people I enjoyed working with and learning a lot of things from him becasuse he had a great personality and was very kind to people, very cordial.

Chico Day was an assistant director at Paramount for 25 years. He semi-retired in 1981 and passed away in 1995.

[DK] Was that the first time you met him?

[Day] Well, you know, I had seen Danny in the studio because I was at Paramount for many years, but that was the first time I worked with him.

[DK] There was (second-unit) filming in England, France and Switzerland. Did the whole crew go out there or was it just location shooting?

[Day] I don’t remember in Knock on Wood—it was all done on stage here at Paramount. We never went on location, but with other pictures, naturally. Patton, The Magnficent Seven: Mexico. Patton: Spain, England, India, Morocco, Crete. You took the whole crew. From here we took the nucleus crew and then we augmented it in Spain and then when we went to England and we had to use some of the English personnel. When you go to any other place that has the people involved, that are in the motion picture business, the theatrical business, they we’d use some of them. But usually we took our own crew.

[DK] Do you remember anything about the directors?

[Day] Panama and Frank? Oh, they were great. You know I never thought that two people could get along, but I think this was an exception. Originally they were writers together, and then when they decided to produce and direct, one of them would direct one picture and one of them would produce. Then they’d change around in the other picture. So it was very congenial as far as I was concerned. I know that later on when I left Paramount I think that they sort of broke up and decided to go their own way, but I wasn’t involved in any of that. I always thought they were very congenial and every once in a while, you know tempers would come up just like in any other human being and it was one of those things that was conveniently and defintiely settled and never, NEVER allowed a situation. They were really wonderful to work with.

[DK] So did just one of them direct the film?

[Day] Well, they were both on the set. But one of them was the one who took charge of that one particular picture. Like in Knock on Wood, let me see, I think it was, uh, Panama--was Panama the young one? You know it’s a funny thing. this was the only picture I did with them and naturally I didn’t think too much about it later on. But anyway they would change around. If they decided, like they decided that one of them was to be the director and that’s it. Interference as far as doing whatever he wanted to do, no, NEVER. The other one didn’t interfere at all. They would get behind the camera and discuss maybe one thing or another and whatever it was, why, if the director, the one that was directing, decided that what he was it, why that was done. There was no argument about it.

[DK] Was that for the whole picture?

[Day] Yep, yep.

[DK] Okay, in most musicals they tape the music before.

[Day] Well, musicals, I worked in several of them, in fact I worked on a lot of them; Hello, Dolly! was one of them, one of the later ones. But they pre-score the whole thing and then they have the playback and they play the music and then they have the singing and everything, whatever can be done. And the actor or actress just mouths it. But it’s so beautifully done, so well done, and we have person who is in charge of the music is on the set all the time and whenever they have music to do and he watches the mouhting very closely—his ear on the music and his eyes on the actor of actress to see that it is absolutely in sync. Then naturally the first time, the so-called “rushes,” the very next day we see the film and then everybody’s in the theater and they watch for all of these things to see if it does jive wth the music and so forth and so on. And that’s the way it is.

[DK] Do you know like Danny’s specialty songs, like he had one in Knock on Wood called “The Drastic, Livid Life of Monahan O’Han.” He was in a bar with some Irishmen and he starts to sing the song. There’s all these words and it’s really fast. Was that a plyaback on that?

[Day] Well, I’ll tell you what. I think that it was, but the other way is called a direct recording. I would imagine in a situation like that it might be done direct. We would sometimes use two cameras, so that if you got it perfect the first time, that was it. But at other times when there is a doubt, they do what is called a pick-up. They move the camera around and get a closer angle or whatever it is and then they start maybe a few bars back and then they pick up whenever the fault that occurred and they correct that with another take. It’s done different ways, but it’s usually the actor or actress feels whether they want to do it again or not. If they want to do a pick-up, why, they do a pick-up. If they want to do it all again, they’ll do it all again. It depends on how the individual feels at the time.

[DK] Sylvia Fine, Danny’s wife who wrote all those patter songs, did she hang around the set?

[Day] Well, Sylvia I don’t remember too much on the set. But Sylvia was there, I think, whenever Danny needed her or whenever she wanted to be there. Once in a while she would be on the set that I recall, and Danny would go over whatever it was they had to do and then she would watch and see that it was taken and done right. I have a remembrance that it was very few times that she ever came on the set.

[DK] Did you have any other stories?

[Day] Well, those things are so spontaneous, the things that happen, I don’t remember too much and it was so long ago. But my recollection of Danny as a person: very business-like, very attentive, cordial, a real gentleman. I never saw Danny really mad, though I’m sure that he must have. But when he came on the set he was just as joyful as he could be, always smiling and alert—my gosh, he was really a brilliant man. And I don’t ever remember him using his temper, you know though I guess he’s human, he could have. And he was always very polite with the other actors, very helpful. He would go and even if one of the actors had a problem, Danny would go ahead and rehearse with him, calm him down. That is if the actor wanted that type of—because actors are really very individual and some of them don’t want to have that particular feeling of the star wanting to help them.

There was this one individual that played the part of Brodnik. I don’t know if you remember the story(line), but Danny was to be met by Brodnik, and “Brodnik” would be the key word—that’s how Danny was supposed to know that this was the contact. And when we first rehearsed it, why it was really a wonderful situation because the fellow that played Brodnik would come by, Danny would get very close to him and he’d say (winking seductively), “Brrrrodnik.” Oh, You know, nobody could do anything like Danny did. He was always a great comedian. So, every once in a while I’d play that. I’d be Brodnik and I’d go up to Danny and I’d say (with an inviting wink), “Brrrodnik!”

The one thing I recall is having a good time. Always. From the time that Danny came on the set it was a pleasure. And then when the time came to take the scene, why then everything became very professional, very serious. But during the whole in-between, Danny was—if he wasn’t in his dressing room, if he wasn’t transacting business—he was talking to somebody and having a good time.

[DK] Had you ever worked with any of the people on the crew before or after, like Mai Zetterling?

[Day] I think that Mai, that was the first picture that she did. Now with Mai, we used to have a “Myer.” We used to say, “Hey, Myer!” to anybody and she used to think that it was “Mai.” That we were calling to her, see? And she would answer and pretty soon we just stopped using it because it disturbed her. Tobin Thatcher, I worked with him. Steven Giraut, I worked with him. He was Dr. Karl Krueger.

[DK] The technical people? Were you one big company or did you all get your jobs as you did and just ended up in the same film by chance?

[Day] It was a family. We worked the year round. So we’d go with maybe a completely different crew, but you know they were all people that were employed at Paramount, so we knew each other.

[DK] So you really liked your job?

[Day] Oh, my gosh, yes. There’s no job in the world that can compare to the motion picture business at that time. See, now a lot of lawyers have taken over and it’s a business. It’s a business that these lawyers should never be in, because it’s not a business of percentages. I mean that you feel that any one picture is like the other. It’s a business and that’s the way it should be treated. But it’s not so. It’s a creative business and they have no right in the motion picture business. However, you know, it doesn’t make any difference to me who it is that takes over. But the thing is that I don’t think that we’re making the type of pictures that we did when I was involved. Well, I’m still active, but the motion picture business has certainly changed considerably and a lot of the young people that are coming in are wonderful. They’re very talented, but they just don’t seem to have the creativity that the people of that era had. Maybe I’m not wise in saying that, but that’s the way I feel about it.

[DK] Maybe now they just think of it as a job?

[Day] No, I think what the trouble is, that the people that are coming into the business, they don’t want to start from the bottom. For instance, they go to UCLA or USC or any of the universities and they take a course in motion pictures, and when they come out they want to direct. Right off the bat. Well, if they can and if somebody’s willing to give them a chance, fine. But there are very few, very few that can do that. However, I’m not doubting that a lot of the young ones that are coming up have the talent, because that’s where talent comes from is youth. The only thing is that some of the old-timers can teach the young ones a lot of things to do. A lot of short cuts, a lot of ways of doing things. For instance, if you’re doing a stunt and the stunt works from a certain point to a certain point, a lot of directors would want to shoot the entire thing all over again from beginning. And other directors that are in the wise in this business and don’t want to take the time if so much of the take was good, they’ll change the angles on the camera and then do that portion coming into where the error was and then continue on. And so it’s a business where you have to know a lot of tricks and a lot of ways of remedying the situation.

[DK] Save time and money.

[Day] We did. I imagine that Knock on Wood probably was made for about $1 million in those days. A million two, a million three. Now you couldn’t make that for less than $10 million. So prices, living conditions, cost of living, and everything else goes up with it. Salaries are so tremendous now. I think that when we were doing that, in ‘53, I think the highest salary for first assistant director was $75 a week. Now, my gosh, a first assistant director, just a minimum, gets about $1,440 a week. Plus a lot of things.

[DK] So you’re a unit production manager now?

[Day] Yeah, well, I’m an assistant director or a unit prodution manager, either. Whatever comes up first. I’m working on seven projects right now, but I don’t know which one will materialize. Now for instance an assistant director that’s working on a weekly rate here in Hollywood effective as of July 1, 1982, he gets $1,445 a week—that’s for five days. Plus he gets a production fee of $63 a day! That’s something that I don’t even think counts as salary. It’s just a bonus. And on a distant location the production fee is $314 a week for first assistant director and the salary goes up to $2,024, and to think of getting $75 a week at that time and now getting over $2,000 a week. It’s quite a change.

Dr. Who Was Danny's Double

Comic Jon Pertwee looked so much like Danny Kaye, he was hired to play him.

Although he became best known as BBC’s time-traveling Dr. Who in the early 1970s, Jon Pertwee started out as an English comedian who was so often mistaken as Danny Kaye, that in time he was hired to play Danny Kaye.

Pertwee didn’t just look like Danny. He was also equally limber-limbed and nimble-tongued. So, after Kaye’s triumphant appearances at the London Palladium in 1948, Pertwee worked an impersonation of Kaye into his vaudeville act. His impression was so well received, that it was featured in the British film Murder at the Windmill (1949, released in the U.S. as Mystery at the Burlesque), which was really just an excuse to show off a bunch of vaudeville acts.

The comparisons to Kaye, however, soon began to irk Pertwee. Worse, autograph-seekers were constantly walking up to him and asking for Kaye’s signature. During one music hall appearance in 1951, he told a reporter, “I am tired of being mistaken for Danny Kaye. I am waiting for the day when I hear of Danny Kaye being mistaken for me.”

Yet that resemblance did get Pertwee more work. In 1953, writer/directors Norman Panama and Melvin Frank had hoped to film their new Danny Kaye picture, Knock on Wood, entirely in London and Zurich, and cast Swedish beauty Mai Zetterling as the leading lady. Yet as soon as they laid out their shooting schedule, to begin June 1, news came that Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, televised nationally, was to take place June 2. Suddenly it seemed easier and less expensive to make the movie on a Paramount soundstage, with a Paramount crew.

Instead, a second-unit crew would spend the last two weeks of May filming Zetterling and a body-double for Kaye running around England and Zurich. And the obvious choice to hire as Danny’s lookalike? Pertwee. Unfortunately, Pertwee had a prior commitment, so a stand-in for the stand-in had to be hired for the last three days of filming. Those exteriors in Zurich at the airport, clinic and hotel? Pertwee. The shots in England, on the country road, river bank, clinic, railroad station, hotel, alley, and driving to and from the castle? Also Pertwee. But the exteriors about two-thirds into the movie in England at a crossroads, on the streets, and outside the pub and hotel? Some other guy, who’s noticeably taller and lankier than Pertwee (or Kaye, for that matter).

Zetterling, too, had to get on a plane to Hollywood, so after the first three days of second-unit work, a double for Zetterling was used in the remaining far shots.

As a sly nod to Kaye’s double, Panama and Frank in their next Kaye picture, The Court Jester, named one of the assassinated lords Sir Pertwee.

But that wasn’t Pertwee’s final Kaye connection. In 1975, he sang Danny’s fairy-tale tunes on the soundtrack to Hans Andersen, a stage version of Kaye’s Hans Christian Andersen musical (1952). (Pertwee’s 1959 movie The Ugly Duckling, however, had nothing to do with Andersen or Kaye).

Pertwee died in 1996, like Kaye at age 76, and was compared to Danny till the end.

British comedian Jon Pertwee gained famed as the third Dr. Who, after years of living as a Danny Kaye lookalike.

Do You Want to Buy Danny Kaye’s Roadster?

Do you have a spare million to buy this beauty?

Next week, some lucky car collector will become the new owner of a treasured piece of Danny Kaye movie history:  the tricked-out sportscar Danny hijacks in Knock on Wood.

The car, a 1952 Woodill Wildfire roadster, is one of 142 cars from the Ron Pratte collection being sold at the Barrett-Jackson Car Auction Jan. 13-18, 2015, in Scottsdale, Az. The Discovery and Velocity cable TV channels will broadcast portions of the auction.

The Woodill Wildfire became famous for being the first car built all of fiberglass. For publicity, one of the first off the line in Downey, Ca., was sent to nearby Hollywood and affixed with plenty of gadgets that Kaye could play with as he pretends to be a British car salesman. Months later, the car was slightly restyled to make it look like a racing car, for the Tony Curtis movie Johnny Dark. A year later,
it was driven by Rock Hudson in Written on the Wind.

The company only produced about 15 cars and sold another 285 as kits. Fewer than 10 are known to exist today, the most recent one—a 1955 model—selling three years ago for $100,600. Kaye’s older, storied model will fetch a far higher price. No word on whether it still contains the original overhead, underslung, oscillating compression decravinator.

In Knock on Wood, Danny's character disguises himself as an English car salesman and bluffs his way through a demonstration of a new, gadget-laden vehicle.

The Sequel to Danny Kaye's "Knock on Wood"... Starring Bob Hope

While Sam Goldwyn always wanted to make a sequel to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, it was Kaye's first film for Paramount, Knock on Wood, that came closer to inspiring a follow-up picture.

Knock on Wood was intended to be Danny Kaye’s first of two movies with Paramount, but the spy comedy was so well received, it led to a series of other pictures, nearly including a sequel.

As shooting for the film was wrapping in late summer 1953, Paramount was desperate to find a co-star for Bing Crosby in White Christmas and, impressed by how well Knock on Wood was coming along, bribed Kaye to handsomely to step in—and even paid Knock on Wood writer/directors Norman Panama and Mel Frank to rewrite the White Christmas script to make it more suitable for Danny’s talents and personality.

When the two movies were released in 1954, White Christmas became the biggest grossing film of the year, taking in $12 million. But it cost nearly $4 million to produce and market, and Paramount had to give away two-thirds of the profits to Crosby, Irving Berlin, and Kaye.

What really impressed the studio was the surprise smash showing of Knock on Wood. It cost $1.2 million and earned $4 million. Paramount quickly negotiated with Kaye for a second two-picture deal, even though it still hadn’t decided what it was going to do as the second picture of the first two-picture deal. Panama and Frank, as it turned out, wanted to do an epic swashbuckling comedy, The Court Jester. Paramount okayed the big-budget epic, but as part of the second deal, they wanted a sequel to Knock on Wood.

After finishing up with The Court Jester in 1956, Panama and Frank started work on a script for a sequel that incorporated Danny’s same ventriloquist character, running into more international spies, but this time in Japan. The title: Knock on Silk.

But as the disappointing returns on The Court Jester trickled in—and Danny devoted huge swaths of his downtime to traveling the globe for UNICEF—Paramount began to question the wisdom of a sequel. Kaye wasn’t happy with the script, so he decided to do two movies for other studios first. When he found their rewrite still too outlandish, he committed to The Five Pennies as his next Paramount picture, figuring he’d conclude his Paramount contract with Knock on Silk.

So Panama and Frank gave it one more stab, removing the Knock on Wood sequel elements and renaming it The Bamboo Kid. It would be shot in Japan, with Danny playing a temperamental movie star who criticizes the script he’s given, saying that it’s too unbelievable—until such adventures really start happening.

Panama and Frank submitted their revised script to Danny in February 1959. He still didn’t like it and tabled the project indefinitely. He ended up selling it to Bob Hope, who had Panama and Frank rewrite it again as The Road to Hong Kong.

Danny Kaye: King of Klutzes

A dozen members of the cast and crew were injured during the production of The Court Jester, including Kaye and several pint-sized co-stars.

One of the most surprising discoveries I made in conducting research for my recent book Danny Kaye: King of Jesters was that Kaye, for such a graceful performer, was a magnet for injury. He suffered countless breaks, bumps, scrapes, cuts, tears and twists on the job, many of them detailed in the book.

But at least he had company, as fellow performers—primarily dancers and stuntmen in his movies—experienced their fair share of injuries. Not unexpectedly, the two films that racked up the most accident reports were the one with the most elaborate dance sequence (Knock on Wood, with its ballet climax) and the one with the most elaborate stunts (The Court Jester).

During the production of Knock on Wood, in addition to Kaye cutting and bruising his knee in the shower scene, a stand-in stepped on a nail, choreographer Michael Kidd was struck by a “fake-flower wire,” a dancer injured his wrist taking falls, another dancer skinned her knee, and yet another ballerina complained of a “splinter injury.” The worst fate befell dancer Pat Denise (who played Danny’s mother in flashback), who pulled her calf muscle while rehearsing the title song dance number. Kaye personally drove her to the doctor, who advised Denise to stay off the ankle for a while, shutting down production and delaying filming for more than three weeks.

The cast and crew of The Court Jester sustained roughly a dozen injuries, several of them suffered by the acrobatically inclined midgets. One wee actor, while rehearsing a scene in a tree, struck his head on a protruding stump. More seriously, as another midget was rehearsing sliding down a rope, his left leg struck his right leg as he tried to make a “false landing,” sending him tumbling. He tried to break his fall with his left hand, and ended up breaking his left wrist and his left ankle.

The Twelve Days of “White Christmas”... Number 6. One Big Fat Contract

Danny Kaye really had no interest in appearing in White Christmas. He simply did not care for supporting roles. A few years earlier, he’d agreed to co-star with Gene Kelly in a musical Huckleberry Finn for MGM, but—just as filming was about to begin—he backed out. He knew that he’d disappear behind Kelly in any MGM musical.

Consequently, he didn’t think his role would be any better appearing alongside Bing Crosby in a movie built around Crosby’s most famous song. But Kaye also didn’t want to just say no to Paramount. His personal production company had just completed its first picture, Knock on Wood, and Paramount had provided funding, equipment, crews, offices, and distribution—and agreed to do the same for a second film. Indeed, production had gone so well, Kaye’s partners were in the midst of negotiating a second two-picture deal with Paramount.

In addition, Paramount’s liaison to Kaye—Don Hartman—was a close personal friend of Danny's. He oversaw the writing of Kaye's first three movies in Hollywood (Up in Arms, Wonder Man, and The Kid from Brooklyn) and nearly teamed up with Danny to form their own production company in the late 1940s.

In August 1953, when Hartman begged Kaye to take the role, he was desperate, after already losing Fred Astaire and Donald O’Connor. The script, music, costumes, sets, everything was ready and waiting.

So Danny agreed to appear for the ridiculous amount of $200,000 (more than double O’Connor’s price) plus 10% of the profits, convinced that Paramount would pass. Paramount had already promised to split the profits in thirds with Crosby and Berlin, but—out of options—consented to pay the $200,000, if Crosby and Berlin each gave Kaye 5% of their cuts. Both happily agreed, figuring that the picture—and, in turn, they—would make more in the long run with Kaye in the cast.

Ironically, the role Kaye didn’t want turned out to be the most lucrative of his career.