Jimmy Durante

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Jimmy Durante
Jimmy durante 1964.jpg
Durante as host of The Hollywood Palace, 1964
Background information
Born as: James Francis Durante
Born Feb 10, 1893
New York City, U.S.
Died Jan 29, 1980 - age  87
Santa Monica, California, U.S.
 
Spouse(s): Jeanne Olsen
(1921 - 1943) her death
Margie Little
( - )
Children: 1 (adopted)
Occupation:
Actor
Years active 1920–1972

James Francis Durante (/dəˈrænti/ də-RAN-tee, Italian: [duˈrante]; ✦February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American actor, comedian, singer, vaudeville performer, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. He often referred to his nose as the schnozzola (Italianization of the American Yiddish slang word schnoz, meaning "big nose"), and the word became his nickname.

Early life

Childhood

Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Rosa (Lentino) and Bartolomeo Durante, both immigrants from Salerno, Campania, Italy Bartolomeo was a barber. Young Jimmy served as an altar boy at St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel.

Early career

Durante dropped out of school in seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first played with his cousin, whose name was also Jimmy Durante. It was a family act, but he was too professional for his cousin. He continued working the city's piano bar circuit and earned the nickname "Ragtime Jimmy," before he joined one of the first recognizable jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band. Durante was the only member not from New Orleans. His routine of breaking into a song to deliver a joke, with band or orchestra chord punctuation after each line, became a Durante trademark. In 1920 the group was renamed "Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band."

Stardom

By the mid-1920s, Durante had become a vaudeville star and radio personality in a trio named Clayton, Jackson and Durante. Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson, Durante's closest friends, often reunited with Durante in subsequent years. Jackson and Durante appeared in the Cole Porter musical The New Yorkers, which opened on Broadway on December 8, 1930. Earlier the same year, the team appeared in the movie Roadhouse Nights, ostensibly based on Dashiell Hammett's novel "Red Harvest".

By 1934, Durante had a major record hit with his own novelty composition, "Inka Dinka Doo", with lyrics by Ben Ryan. It became his theme song for the rest of his life. A year later, Durante starred on Broadway in the Billy Rose stage musical Jumbo. A scene in which a police officer stopped Durante's character—who was leading a live elephant across the stage—to ask "what are you doing with that elephant?", followed by Durante's reply What elephant?" was a regular show-stopper. Durante also appeared on Broadway in Show Girl (1929), Strike Me Pink (1934) and Red, Hot and Blue (1936).

During the early 1930s, Durante alternated between Hollywood and Broadway. Outstanding among his early motion pictures was The Phantom President (1932), starring George M. Cohan with Durante as his gregarious pal. Durante then replaced Cliff Edwards as the comic foil in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Buster Keaton comedies: Speak Easily (1932), The Passionate Plumber (1932), and What! No Beer? (1933). The Keaton-Durante series was very successful and might have continued, but Keaton was experiencing personal problems, including loss of control over his movies, alcohol abuse, and a messy divorce, so MGM fired Keaton and kept Durante. MGM gave Durante leads in moderately budgeted comedies like Meet the Baron (1933) and Hollywood Party (1934), but he couldn't carry an entire feature film; he was more effective as somebody's sidekick, and MGM released him in 1934.

Durante went to England to work in a Richard Tauber film musical, Land Without Music (released in the United States as Forbidden Music). Upon his return to Hollywood, there were no movie jobs for him. Columbia Pictures offered him a major role in its college musical Start Cheering, filmed in 1937, and he received excellent critical notices, re-establishing him in movies. From then on, he almost always appeared in strong supporting roles.

Durante went on to appear in the Gene Autry musical western Melody Ranch (1940), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942, playing Banjo, a character based on Harpo Marx), Ziegfeld Follies (1945), Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962, based on the 1935 musical), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

Marriages

Durante's first wife was Jean "Jeanne" Olson, whom he married on June 19, 1921. She was born in Ohio on August 31, 1896. She was 46 years old when she died on Valentine's Day in 1943, after a lingering heart ailment of about two years, although different newspaper accounts of her death suggest she was 45 or perhaps 52. As her death was not immediately expected, Durante was touring in New York at the time and returned to Los Angeles right away to complete the funeral arrangements.

Durante's radio show was bracketed with two trademarks: "Inka Dinka Doo" as his opening theme, and the invariable signoff that became another familiar national catchphrase: "Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." For years no one knew who Mrs. Calabash referred to and Durante preferred to keep the mystery alive until 1966. One theory was that it referred to the owner of a restaurant in Calabash, North Carolina, where Durante and his troupe had stopped to eat. He was so taken by the food, the service, and the chitchat he told the owner that he would make her famous. Since he did not know her name, he referred to her as "Mrs. Calabash". At a National Press Club meeting in 1966 (broadcast on NBC's Monitor program), Durante finally revealed that it was indeed a tribute to his wife. While driving across the country, they stopped in a small town called Calabash, North Carolina whose name Jean had loved. "Mrs. Calabash" became his pet name for her, and he signed off his radio program with "Good night, Mrs. Calabash." He added "wherever you are" after the first year.

Durante married his second wife, Margaret "Margie" Little, at St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church in New York City on December 14, 1960. As a teenager she had been crowned Queen of the New Jersey State Fair. She attended New York University before being hired by the legendary Copacabana in New York City. She and Durante met there 16 years before their marriage, when he performed there and she was a hatcheck girl. She was 41 while he was 67 when they married. With help from their attorney, Mary G. Rogan, the couple were able to adopt a baby, Cecilia Alicia (nicknamed CeCe and now known as CeCe Durante-Bloum), on Christmas Day, 1961. CeCe became a champion horsewoman and then a horse trainer and horseriding instructor. Margie died on June 7, 2009, at the age of 89.

Religion

Durante was deeply religious and a staunch Roman Catholic. In Las Vegas, he was seen regularly after Sunday Mass outside of the Guardian Angel Cathedral, standing next to the priest and greeting parishioners as they left the church. In 1968 he recorded 10 spiritual and inspirational songs for the album Songs for Sunday; it was expanded to 20 selections for a CD release under the same title in 1996.

Charitable work

On August 15, 1958, for his charitable acts, Durante was awarded a three-foot-high brass loving cup by the Al Bahr Shriners Temple. The inscription reads: "JIMMY DURANTE THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS COMEDIAN. A loving cup to you Jimmy, it's larger than your nose, but smaller than your heart. Happiness always, Al Bahr Temple, August 15, 1958." Jimmy Durante started out his career with Clayton and Jackson and when he became a big star and they were left behind, he kept them on his payroll for the rest of their lives.

Durante's love for children continued through the Fraternal Order of Eagles, who, among many causes, raised money for disabled and abused children. At Durante's first appearance at the Eagles International Convention in 1961, Judge Bob Hansen inquired about his fee for performing. Durante replied, "Do not even mention money, judge or I'll have to mention a figure that'll make ya sorry ya brought it up." "What can we do then?" asked Hansen. "Help da kids," was Durante's reply. Durante performed for many years at Eagles conventions free of charge, even refusing travel money. The Fraternal Order of Eagles changed the name of their children's fund to the Jimmy Durante Children's Fund in his honor, and in his memory have raised over $20 million to help children. A reporter once remarked of Durante after an interview: "You could warm your hands on this one." One of the projects built using money from the Durante Fund was a heated therapy swimming pool at the Hughen School in Port Arthur, Texas. Completed in 1968, Durante named the pool the "Inka Dinka Doo Pool".

Later years

Durante continued his film appearances through It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and television appearances through the early 1970s. He narrated the Rankin-Bass animated Christmas special Frosty the Snowman (1969), re-run for many years since. The television work also included a series of commercial spots for Kellogg's Corn Flakes cereals in the mid-1960s, introducing Durante's gravelly growl and narrow-eyed, large-nosed countenance to millions of children. "Dis is Jimmy Durante, in puy-son!" was his introduction to some of the Kellogg's spots. One of his last appearances was in a memorable television commercial for the 1973 Volkswagen Beetle, where he proclaimed that the new, roomier Beetle had "plenty of breathin' room... for de old schnozzola!"

In 1963, Durante recorded the album of pop standards "September Song". The album became a best-seller and provided Durante's re-introduction to yet another generation, almost three decades later. From the "Jimmy Durante's Way of Life" album came the gravelly interpretation of the song "As Time Goes By", which accompanied the opening credits of the romantic comedy hit Sleepless in Seattle, while his version of "Make Someone Happy" launched the film's closing credits. Both are included on the film's best-selling soundtrack. Durante also recorded a cover of the well-known song "I'll Be Seeing You", which became a trademark song on his 1960s TV show and was featured in the 2004 film The Notebook.

He wrote a foreword for a humorous book compiled by Dick Hyman titled "Cockeyed Americana". In the first paragraph of the "Foreword!", as Durante called it, he describes meeting Hyman and discussing the book and the contribution that Hyman wanted Durante to make to it. Durante wrote "Before I can say gaziggadeegasackeegazobbath, we're at his luxurious office." After reading the material Hyman had compiled for the book, Durante commented on it: "COLOSSAL, GIGANTIC, MAGNANIMOUS, and last but not first, AURORA BOREALIS. [Capitalization Durante's] Four little words that make a sentence—and a sentence that will eventually get me six months."

Durante retired from performing in 1972, after a stroke confined him to a wheelchair. He made a public appearance in 1974 when MGM held a reunion of its former stars, in connection with its new That's Entertainment! film.

Jimmy Durante died of pneumonia in Santa Monica, California, on January 29, 1980, 12 days before he would have turned 87. He received Catholic funeral rites four days later, with fellow entertainers including Desi Arnaz, Ernest Borgnine, Marty Allen, and Jack Carter in attendance, and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Jimmy Durante among hundreds of artists whose material was destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

Legacy

Since Durante's death, his songs have been featured in several films. Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger performed impressions of Durante from The Man Who Came to Dinner singing "Did You Ever Have the Feeling" in 1988's My Stepmother Is an Alien. His performance of "Young at Heart" was featured in City Slickers (1991) and his versions of "As Time Goes By" and "Make Someone Happy" played over the opening and closing credits of Sleepless in Seattle (1993). Michael J. Fox performed an impression of Durante singing "Inka Dinka Doo" in 1994's Greedy. His rendition of "Smile" featured in the film, and trailer for, Joker (2019). His rendition of "The Glory of Love" was also used in the end credits of the horror film Orphan (2009), and in its prequel Orphan: First Kill (2022), with a rendition of it sung by Isabelle Fuhrman.

Filmography

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Wikipedia article: Jimmy Durante Filmography

Radio

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Wikipedia article: Jimmy Durante Radio

Discography

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Wikipedia article: Jimmy Durante Discography

Television

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Wikipedia article: Jimmy Durante Television

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Wikipedia article: Jimmy Durante
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Note:   Jimmy Durante was a volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen

External links

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