no evidence to back up the rumor that Kaye was secretly gay and had an affair with Laurence Olivier (a theory that’s elaborated in Donald Spoto’s biography of Olivier). Kaye did have a wrenching affair with Eve Arden, and several flirtations that distracted him from a troubled marriage to Sylvia Fine, who helped to invent his stage persona. But sex seemed to matter less to him than work and his three Walter Mittyish private passions: flying his own plane, watching operations in hospitals, and cooking gourmet Chinese dinners. If there was an essential Danny Kaye, he remains, in Gottfried’s phrase, an ”eternal question mark.”