Once, when I was a young boy... I think about 7 years old; I was very ill. I ended up sick at home from school for about two weeks.
I was SO sick, that I couldn't concentrate enough to read (even then my favorite thing to do indoors) so of course I was terribly bored.
One of the local UHF television stations used to play old movies; and one day, they had a Danny Kaye triple feature, with "Hans Christian Anderson", "The Court Jester", and "The Five Pennies".
I was absolutely enchanted. I've loved Kaye's work ever since.
I was really amused, when I started playing Fallout 3 (a video game), and one of the songs on Galaxy News Radio, was Kaye's "Civilization".
I'm sick today, and funny enough, one of the websites I read had this clip, the most famous sequence from "the court jester":
Not Kaye's best work as an actor ("the five pennies" definitely takes that), but some brilliant writing, and great fun. If you've never seen it, you really owe yourself to watch it.
