Danny Kaye His Daughter Fondly Recalls Life at Home in Beverly Hills

The front entrance of the house.

Danny Kaye and his wife, Sylvia Fine Kaye, lived in this wisteria-covered home in Beverly Hills, with neighbors that included Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Jack Benny, and Fred Astaire. Sylvia, a lyricist and composer, wrote many of her husband’s musical routines.

Photography by Tim Street-Porter

The living room.

The piano in the living room is where Sylvia Fine Kaye played and where guests “gathered to sing at parties,” daughter Dena Kaye says. Over the pharmacy chest hangs an abstract painting by Ronaldo De Juan; above the fireplace is a pastel drawing on paper by Mary Cassatt.

Photography by Tim Street-Porter

The formal dining room.

The George I oak sideboard in the bay window of the formal dining room displays several of the Kayes’ Chinese Export porcelain tureens and stands. The room was “usually used for big parties and sometimes for dessert after dinner in the Chinese kitchen,” says Dena Kaye.

Photography by Tim Street-Porter

The music room.

“The closest thing we had to a family room, besides the kitchen, was the music room,” daughter Dena Kaye recalls. “We’d often eat dinner there, in front of the TV. It’s also where my parents usually had business meetings. The couch was my father’s favorite.”

Photography by Tim Street-Porter

The Chinese kitchen.

Danny Kaye loved to cook and entertain in the Chinese kitchen, which he had equipped with several refrigerators and a stove with three woks and an oven for cooking Peking duck.

Photography by Tim Street-Porter

The indoor lap pool.

“My mother had a separate building constructed for the 50-foot-long, 5-foot-deep indoor lap pool behind the house,” daughter Dena Kaye says. Beyond the glass doors at left are some of the orchids Sylvia Fine Kaye cultivated; to the right are the patio and the garden.

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