Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

the darker, more volatile elements of social
engagement and essentially invent himself as an
emotionally armored teenage rebel, a sort of proto–
Ziggy Stardust; essentially, what led him to music. “I
think he felt very responsible, as children do, for the
fact that he was the favorite child,” his cousin Kristina
has said, “and he was given attention by his father,
and Terry wasn’t.”
It was around this period of domestic volatility
when David first heard what would become one of
his touchstone songs: “The Inchworm.”
In 1952 the Brooklyn-born actor Danny Kaye (real
name David Daniel Kaminsky) starred in Hans
Christian Andersen, a musical version of the life and
work of the beloved Danish children’s fairy tale
writer. The songs were composed by the great
Frank Loesser, who also wrote the songs for the
Broadway musical Guys and Dolls and the sexy
holiday standard “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Although
“Thumbelina” is probably the best-known song on the
film’s soundtrack, the “deep Loesser cut” is
“Inchworm,” or “The Inchworm,” depending on how
it’s listed.
In the film, there’s an unintentionally creepy scene
in which Kaye (whose sexual preference was, like
Andersen’s and David Bowie’s, the subject of much
ambiguity and debate) walks past a classroom and
peers into the open door at the children as they sit in
their rows, counting in song: “Two and two are four.
Four and four are eight …” The justifiably concerned
professor slams the door on him. Hardly chastened,