Want to know the best Danny Kaye movies? How about the worst Danny Kaye movies? Curious about Danny Kaye’s box office grosses or which Danny Kaye movie picked up the most Oscar® nominations? Need to know which Danny Kaye movie got the best reviews from critics and audiences? Well you have come to the right place….because we have all of that information.
It seems that Danny Kaye (1911-1987) movies were always on television when I was growing up. I have fond memories of watching movies like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Anderson (1952), White Christmas (1954) and The Court Jester (1956) when I was younger. So when I got a request to do a Danny Kaye Ultimate Movie Rankings page I was shocked that he actually did not make many movies in his career.
His IMDb page only 33 acting credits from 1937-1986. This page will rank 17 Danny Kaye movies from Best to Worst in six different sortable columns of information. Shorts, television appearances and movies not released in theaters were not included in the rankings.
Danny Kaye Movies Can Be Ranked 6 Ways In This Table
The really cool thing about this table is that it is “user-sortable”. Rank the movies anyway you want.
- Sort by Danny Kaye movies by his co-stars
- Sort Danny Kaye movies by adjusted domestic box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Danny Kaye movies by adjusted worldwide box office grosses using current movie ticket cost (in millions)
- Sort Danny Kaye movies how they were received by critics and audiences. 60% rating or higher should indicate a good movie.
- Sort by how many Oscar® nominations and how many Oscar® wins each Danny Kaye movie received.
- Sort Danny Kaye movies by Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score. UMR Score puts box office, reviews and awards into a mathematical equation and gives each movie a score.
Stats and Possibly Interesting Things From The Above Danny Kaye Table
- Eleven Danny Kaye movies crossed the magical $100 million domestic gross mark. That is a percentage of 64.70% of his movies listed. White Christmas (1954) was his biggest hit.
- An average Danny Kaye movie earned $161.90 million in adjusted box office gross.
- Using RottenTomatoes.com’s 60% fresh meter. 14 of Danny Kaye’s movies are rated as good movies…or 82.35% of his movies. The Court Jester (1956) was his highest rated movie while The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969) was his lowest rated movie.
- Eleven Danny Kaye movies received at least one Oscar® nomination in any category…..or 41.17% of his movies.
- Two Danny Kaye movies won at least one Oscar® in any category…..or 11.76% of his movies.
- An average Ultimate Movie Rankings (UMR) Score is 40.00. 14 Danny Kaye movies scored higher that average….or 82.35% of his movies. Hans Christian Anderson (1952) got the the highest UMR Score while The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969) got the lowest UMR Score.
Possibly Interesting Facts About Danny Kaye
1. Danny Kaye 1913-1987) was born David Daniel Kaminsky in Brooklyn.
2. Danny Kaye left school at the age 13, to work and perform at resorts in the Catskills Mountains.
3. Danny Kaye made his Broadway debut in 1939. In 1941 while performing in the musical, Lady in the Dark, he was noticed by agents and production companies. After a two year courtship, Danny Kaye signed with Samuel Goldwyn and started his movie career.
4. Danny Kaye’s first movie was 1944’s Up in Arms. Up in Arms was a very successful movie and started a nice 15 year run that would produce some major hits for Kaye. Some of these hits were 1946’s The Kid From Brooklyn, 1947’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, 1952’s Hans Christian Andersen and 1954’s White Christmas.
5. Danny Kaye was never nominated for an Oscar®. He did however receive 4 Golden Globe® nominations during his movie career. He won the Golden Globe® for Best Actor twice in his career…for 1951’s On the Riviera and 1958’s Me and the Colonel. In 1982 he received an Honorary Oscar®.
6. Danny Kaye was the first ambassador-at-large for UNICEF. Kaye worked tirelessly for UNICEF.
7. Danny Kaye was married one time in his life. He married Sylvia Fine in 1940. They would later become estranged but never filed for divorce. In 1946, their daughter Dena was born. Dena is Danny Kaye’s only child.
8. Danny Kaye was one of the original owners of the Seattle Mariners baseball team. Danny Kaye was an accomplished pilot. He was rated to fly multi-engine planes including the big 747 jets.
If you do a comment….please ignore the email address and website section.
I believe it was in the 60s, Black and white movie. Danny Kaye played a bookworm who had a twin brother that worked as a singer in a diner’s club. His brother was killed and came back as a ghost to ask him to find out who killed him. I thought the movie was called The Man in the Diner’s club. I looked, but it’s not the same movie that I am talking about. Does anyone know what movie I am talking about? If you do, I’ve been trying to find the movie, but had no luck.
Hi Penny,
I am not an expert on Danny Kaye, but I think the movie you are looking for might not be from the 60’s, but rather from the 40’s- Wonder Man (1945) with Kaye in a dual role, a ghost is also involved. Vera Ellen and Virginia Mayo are his costars…but I might be wrong, because I remember the movie as to be shot in brilliant Technicolor. Anyway, hope this helps.
Hey Lupino and Penny….pretty sure Lupino has the right movie listed. Wonder Man was made in 1945…but it looks awesome so I could see that you would think it was a movie from the 1960s versus the 1940s. Good guess Lupino….I am with you 100%.
Love Danny’s movies. Best one in my opinion is the court jester. I either show it or loan it to friends who aren’t familiar with either older movies or Danny Kate. So far 7 friends enjoyed the hell out of it.
Hey Michael…..glad you like The Court Jester so much…it is easily one of his best and most entertaining movies. Glad so many of your friends have enjoyed as well. Thanks for the feedback.
STEVE
1 Danny Kaye is certainly giving me value for money today via a video from you and I think a stats update from Bruce as the figures on Danny’s page are new to me.
VIDEO COMMENTS (1) White Christmas and The Court Jester are my two favourite Kaye movies and I see Bruce and you have both of those in your Top 5 (2) your range of bright posters captures well the spirit of Kaye’s career and my own favourites were those for On the Double, Knock on Wood and the two quite raunchy ones for Walter Mitty and Song Is Born (3) the array of fine stills included the super colour one from Merry Andrew with the monkey and a superb black and white one from Up in Arms in which Danny looked remarkably young and boyish. I liked the final solo colour one of Danny though he looked a little unusually sad in it (4) Bruce and you agree on 3 of the Top 5 (6) I thoroughly enjoyed this one so although it was short it was a very sweet 9.3/10
**BRUCE’S STATS UPDATE Bruce sorry if you did this one before yesterday and I missed it because I really have been looking forward to it. Anyway the update now gives Danny 11 movies that crashed through the 100 million barrier and a fine average of 161.9 per movie which is good to see because he made so relatively few movies that it is nice to know that statistically they counted for quite a lot within themselves. Good show!
CORRECTION
1 Just as I keep confusing Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge with Clint’s Heartbreak Ridge so I regularly mix up the ‘Song’ films – Disney’s Song of the South, Bob Taylor’s Song of Russia, Muni’s A Song to Remember. Katie Hepburn’s Song of Love and now Danny Kaye’s A Song is Born. Sorry Steve for getting in wrong in my earlier post.
2 Just like Bruce with Superman Returns I’m too quick on the draw when I see ‘song’ mentioned in a movie title so I usually rush things too much get it wrong first time.
Fixed it.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, kind words and rating. The Court Jester is my favorite of Danny Kaye’s films, I’ve watched that many times, not so much the others. I used to like Wonder Man a lot when I was a kid but it hasn’t dated well and the Oscar winning special effects aren’t all that special anymore.
Now remember – The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!
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Hey Bob….yep Danny Kaye was the man….two Kaye items in a row…..plus the news that almost all of his movies were in color….which came from John…..it is like a Danny Kaye website…lol.
Cogerson
Danny Kaye is unique among classic era stars that I am familiar with in that he was basically a color movie performer. He made a few b/w shorts in the 1930’s, but his first feature Up in Arms in 1944 and almost all his subsequent features were in color. He made seven color features in the 1940’s. Seven of his eight 1950’s features were in color. And two of his three 1960’s movies were in color, for totals of 14 out of 15 up to 1960, and 16 out of 18 for his career. His first b/w movie was Me and the Colonel in 1958, his 14th feature. His only other b/w movie was The Man from the Diner’s Club in 1963. It is interesting to compare Kaye to Abbott and Costello whose careers were almost entirely b/w. Martin & Lewis, and even Crosby & Hope, worked mainly in black and white during the same era when Kaye was exclusively in color. Another interesting comparison would be with Montgomery Clift whose career almost exactly overlapped Kaye’s.
Hey John…that is interesting….who would have guessed some of these facts….especially that his first black and white movie was near the end of his career. Then the fact that he only made 2 black and white movies in his career….seems almost impossible for that to happen especially for a person who started making movies in the 1940s. Good comment as always.
What Danny Kaye movies are available on DVDs. I have court jester, white Christmas Hans Christian Anderson and five pennies. I an in South Africa so getting DVDs from USA is a problem. I never have posted a comment on anything before
Hey Don….glad to know our webpages are reaching South Africa. All of your DVDs are very highly ranked as Court Jester (9th), White Christmas (8th) Hans Christian Anderson (1st) and Five Pennies (8th) on my UMR scoring system. I can imagine getting the DVDs would be an issue….pretty sure You Tube has a few Danny Kaye movies available for viewing…..might be worth checking out. Glad to see you posting here….it is greatly appreciated.