I hear Denmark, Holland and most of Europe was enraged that our American Comedian would play their Beloved Literary Hero. This part WAS a stretch for Danny Kaye to play... what do you think?
"Oh, I'm sorry, did my pin get in the way of your @ss?"
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I love the film! And only Danny could play the role the best!
°o.O shopping is healthy O.o°
BETHANY COX
"Music comes from within, from your heart and from your soul."
Danny Kaye gives a brilliant performance here, both singing and acting. I loved all the songs, and also the ballet sequences. This is an underrated gem, and I mean it! Lyrical, wagnerian in places, funny and touching, everything you want in a musical. For me, the Little Mermaid ballet, while long, was the highlight of the film.
It was an anti-semetic thing, rather than the fact that he was American. There was a very high level of anti-semitism in Denmark in the 1950s, or so it has been alleged.
shareWhere did you hear that from? Denmark, even back then, like Holland, had/has a long history of tolerance and progressive attitudes. I think it probably has more to do with the fact that Europe was still just coming out of the horrible years of WWII, and taking a writer like Andersen, whom they had a much wider knowledge and regard for beyond 'fairy tale creator'... turning it into Hollywood 'fluff'.... may not have connected very well with the reality of peoples lives in Europe at the time. The US was in the artificial, anti-communist, escapist early 1950's.... a far cry from what life in Europe was like.
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I thought Danny did a wonderful job. He was loveable and believeable, and I love to listen to him sing.
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Mischief managed!
Absolutely. Although there was something strange in the movie but I couldn't really put my finger on it. Something...I dont know, out of place. It wasn't on Danny Kaye's part, or maybe it was, I dunno. Maybe it was because it's, as someone put it once, lacking in the "manic twittering Kaye is known for," though that does show through every once in a while, particularly in song. What is "mischief managed" from? I recognize it from somewhere.
By teh way, I absolutely love your screenname!
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (both book and movie)
Oh slowly, slowly! It's too nice a job to rush!
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As far as I'm concerned it was magic as it was the first film I ever saw! My elder sisters took me to see it during the easter holiday in 1952, I was nearly four at the time but I can still remember the red kite flying at the end of the film - magic!
shareI absolutely agree with little-miss, a fantastic film and ONLY Danny could play the part.
shareH.C. Anderson was described as tall, thin, homely and awkward, but with a melodic voice and a skill at sitting in front of an audience and telling the story in such a way htat you forgot that it was the author telling the story and getting swept up in the story itself. That pretty much describes Kaye, except for the awkward part. Danny did give a very nice playing of social awkwardness, though, in his portrail.
The thumbelina song and Inchworm both were just wonderful. The story of the Ugly Duckling was just so wonderfully presented as well. Danny had a wonderful singing voice that did justice to the concept of the story taking over.
Danny also worked for years to get the recognition his talent deserved, having started in Vaudeville. this paralleled to some extent Anderson's early life.
Perhaps having a comedian play someone serious was an issue for Europe.
What you have to understand is that the USA has a very different idea of who Hans Christian Andersen was in the first place. The rest of the world puts him into nearly the same category as Edgar Allan Poe or E.T.A. Hoffmann, and deservedly so; most of his stories, after all, have unhappy endings, and are most powerful in the way they set a mood. In the USA, they think, "He wrote fairy-stories, therefore he wrote for kids, therefore the unhappy endings are mistakes that we have to fix." (Is is any wonder that German for "happy ending" is "das Happyend" and Japanese for "happy ending" is "happiendu"?)
Danny Kaye would have been an awful actor to play the real Andersen.
But, as the opening of the movie plainly says (so it's not fair to complain), this movie is a fairy tale about Andersen. And for this fairy-tale movie, Kaye is perfect; it's probably the best thing he ever did (and it's one of Loesser's greatest scores, too).
Curiously enough, the movie itself flirts with tragedy. It is more true to the spirit of Andersen in its own story than in the way it presents his.
i think he played the part wonderfully.
shareThis was the first movie I ever saw, and I am delighted that quite independenly
the song "Wonderful, Wonderful Copenhagen" is one of my twenty year old daughter's favorites. Among American actors to play Anderson, Danny Kaye was the best choice. Ray Bolger might have had a more physical appearence to the
real Anderson, but Kaye was close enough, and had a kind of European sensibility that really wasn't so much in Bolger's personna as a third generation Irish American,