WALTER MITTY RETURNS--AND GOES BOWLING

“Blissful balderdash.”

That is what your faithful scribe wrote on Feb. 5, 1973, in his report of the last Danny Kaye concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The exclamation was inspired by the multitalented gentleman’s oft-repeated claim that he cannot read music.

This not-so-casual observer couldn’t believe that anyone so impeccably attuned to sonic, structural, harmonic, rhythmic, stylistic, technical and melodic refinements could be a musical illiterate. The incredulous critic questioned the claim, and promptly forgot about it.

Danny Kaye, like the proverbial elephant, never forgets.

The other day, your dauntless scribe braved Kaye’s lavish lair in Beverly Hills in anticipation of his long-awaited return to the podium. The maestrissimo answered the door himself, exuded bonhomie, profferred coffee and cookies. Then he announced that he had to get one thing straight before any interview could begin.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a dozen years,” he confided, his steely dimples all but crackling. “It has been on my mind ever since you wrote that review.”

Your scruffy, admiring, innocent scribe gulped. This

ancer-singer-conductor-philosopher-raconteur-super-chef-and-baseball-maven extraordinaire can be a formidable fellow.

“I can’t read music.” he said. “Not a friggin’ note.”

Danny Kaye is a wonder man, a kid from Brooklyn up in arms in defense of the loftiest muses, a Walter Mitty whose secret life involves diverse baton triumphs as well uplifting services as a court jester, an inspector general of orchestras who knows exactly when and how a song is born, a Hans Christian Andersen of concert halls in Utopia and on the Riviera, a five-penny merry Andrew who thinks it’s a great feeling to make music on the double--and on the triple, too--and who, knock on wood, will continue to do so for at least another century of white Christmases.

Over the past quarter-century, he has helped raise more than $6 million for orchestra players in the gala pension-fund benefits that have become his specialty, both here and in Europe. On Sept. 8, he will make his long-awaited debut at Hollywood Bowl.

Sir Charles Groves will be his august colleague and/or stooge. The stoic musicians of the Los Angeles Philharmonic will be his collective instrument, his accomplices and/or victims. Patrons--there could be as many as 17,600 of them--will pay as much as $50 to be his instantly surrendering adulators and/or prisoners in happy hysteria.

Cahuenga Pass may never be the same again.

Kaye has never conducted an orchestra in a location of such magnitude. But he says he isn’t worried about the possible evaporation of wit or wisdom in the wide open spaces.

“At first, we considered using one of those big closed-circuit TV screens at the top of the shell, like Diamondvision. I vetoed the idea.

“I didn’t want people looking up and down, from the screen to the podium. I didn’t want to encourage a loss in concentration. TV is too easy. It does everything for you. There are enough problems as it is with the fractional sound delays. I don’t need sight delays too. I’d rather have the audience imagine what is happening than see it delayed, and blown up out of proportion, on the screen.”

Comedy is hard, serious work. Kaye likes to have at least six hours of rehearsal for his special programs, and even then he isn’t always satisfied. As is his wont, he pulls an illustration out of the ever-ready anecdote bag.

“Ormandy once met me and complained that I had made heavy demands on his orchestra. ‘Why, you need more time for your comic concert than I need for a Mahler symphony.’ ‘Yeah,’ I told him, ‘but you don’t make up a symphony on the spot. I do a lot of mishegoss .”

When Kaye and friends make up a symphony, they create a sort of dissonant delirium that many consumers like to confuse with the more expensive spread.

“It’s like wine tasting. Did you ever hear what the experts say to each other at wine-tasting sessions? The pretentious gobbledygook is unbelievable. All I do is select and focus. Every profession has an enormous amount of obfuscation.”

Kaye, incidentally, didn’t use the word obfuscation. He used a simpler word. He spices his observations generously with the sort of expletives and related adjectival constructions editors deem inappropriate for a family newspaper.

“Years ago,” he continued to muse, “I did my modern-music number with the Boston Symphony. A few days later, Charles Munch found himself preparing a new piece by David Diamond. ‘I like Danny’s piece better,’ he said.”

He smiles the smile of a contented thinker.

“The important thing, here and everywhere else, is making it look easy. That’s the part that drives us all crazy. Someone asked me the other day to name the greatest baseball player I ever saw. I didn’t even have to think. It was Joe DiMaggio. It wasn’t just that he could do it. It was that he could do it and make it look so easy.

“All the great ones are like that. It’s the same in all professions. Especially in mine. Being an entertainer is no joke.

“Remember the story about Edmund Gwenn on his deathbed? Ed Wynn, his friend, visited him in the hospital. Wynn asked Gwenn if it was very hard to die. Gwenn thought a moment and let out a sigh. ‘Not as hard as doing comedy.’ ”

Danny Kaye sighs.

He isn’t very good at sitting still. In the course of an hour, he bounds to his feet a dozen times. He acts out skits, playing all the parts. He recites dialogue. He calls for props.

He conducts an invisible orchestra. He sings all the instrumental entries in a Tchaikovsky symphony--in key and with split-second precision. He recalls the patter song that made him famous in “Lady in the Dark” in 1941, the crisp little ditty in which he invoked the names of 54 Russian composers, real and not so real, in 38 unfrenzied seconds.

He beats meticulous time with a left foot encased in a brand-new running shoe. He sings a symphonic etude in a whole chorus of different voices. He mimics various baton virtuosi, past and present, with uncanny perception. He drops names.

He puts on a tremendous performance even for a one-person audience. Although he is perfectly polite about it, he doesn’t seem to like the fact that the audience is taking notes. He prefers steady attention, unbroken eye contact.

He reflects on his philharmonic experiences.

“I’m an absolute tyrant on the podium. I stand up there, before a hundred musicians, and I get a feeling of wanton drunkenness, a great, neurotic feeling of power. It is wonderful.

“Once, at a press conference in Montreal, a writer asked me where I got the nerve to conduct a symphony orchestra. The question took me aback. I finally told him that chutzpah really wasn’t the point, that it gave me tremendous satisfaction to be able to raise money for a good cause.

“I’ll never forget the first time I tried conducting. It was with the New York Philharmonic in Dimitri Mitropoulos’ time. Howard Taubman, the music critic of the New York Times, came up to me before the first rehearsal. He told me that this orchestra eats up conductors. He told me to watch out for four members of the orchestra who were particularly difficult.

“After I was introduced to the orchestra, I made a little speech. I called each of the four players by name, asked each one to raise his hand. ‘I hear you guys are troublemakers,’ I said, quaking but not showing it. ‘I just want you to know one thing. The first one who gives me any trouble, I’m going to throw him off the stage.’

“Nobody gave me any trouble. At the beginning, I could see the doubt in the musicians’ faces: ‘I wonder what this clown is going to do with us?’ Everything was a bit tentative. By the second hour, everybody was playing for me, really playing.

“I only had to insist on one basic point. ‘Whatever you do and whatever I do,’ I begged, ‘please don’t try to be funny. That would be fatal.’ I still say the same thing.

“Anyhow, a few days later, I saw Mitropoulos at a party. ‘I am angry at you,’ he said. I got very uncomfortable. ‘You have a great talent. You should make the most of it. You should not make fun of it.’

“The funny thing is, I think he meant it.”

At 72, Danny Kaye, a.k.a. David Daniel Kaminski, doesn’t work all that much. Until he underwent major surgery last December,his mobility was severely hampered by a hip injury. Hollywood doesn’t make his kind of innocent fantasy-comedy these days, and he can afford to be choosy about his professional involvements.

He has just finished an episode for the new “Twilight Zone” series on television. “It’s another of those crotchety old man parts,” he explains. He has no musical commitments beyond the Bowl date, and he isn’t making any big, long-term plans.

“There isn’t much else,” he says with a shrug. “I can’t say where I’ll be four weeks from now.”

Kaye protests, perhaps too much, that he has no musical background, no formal or even informal training as a musician.

“My mother saw me as a great architect or engineer or physician or surgeon. Music wasn’t part of the picture. When I was in P.S. 149 in Brooklyn, I did have a terrible crush on my music teacher, Margaret Kress. That is true. And I always sang. But I didn’t want to practice anything.”

After he became a star of stage, screen and podia, he began to get some interesting music-oriented invitations.

“Groucho Marx introduced me to Gilbert and Sullivan. I recorded some of the patter songs, and might have done one of the operettas on the stage under special conditions. But I wouldn’t have wanted to do something night after night, always the same way each time. I believe in undisciplined discipline.

“That woman in Boston (Sarah Caldwell) wanted me to do that opera with the birds (“The Magic Flute”). It didn’t work out.

“Rudolf Bing once announced that I might do Frosch in ‘Fledermaus’ at the Met. He made the announcement before we had even negotiated the possibility. I told him what he could do.

“Julius Rudel once proposed two roles in ‘Fledermaus,’ Frosch and Orlofsky too. That appealed to me, but nothing came of it.

“John Mauceri, the conductor, asked me to stage ‘Rigoletto’ in Italy. That didn’t make sense to me. I looked at the libretto. This jester is always complaining about how awful it is to have to be funny when his heart is breaking, but you never see him funny. I couldn’t see myself doing that. Now, if they had offered me the opera that Pavarotti does, I might have been interested.”

Which opera?

“You know--the amusing one, the one with the great aria that goes like this. Dah da-da-dah da da-da daaah. “ Kaye sings the opening phrases of “Una furtiva lagrima” from “L’Elisir d’amore,” with a lovely, poised, insinuating legato.

He brushes off a compliment regarding his musicality. “I turned pages for Danny Barenboim once at a chamber-music rehearsal. Everybody thought I was following the score, but I wasn’t. I was following his eyes.

“Another time, someone asked me if I could play the piano. ‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘I never tried.’ ”

Balderdash. Blissful balderdash.