Actors - Jimmy Durante

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	Actors - Jimmy Durante

Jimmy Durante (b. James Francis Durante, February 10, 1893, New York City; d. January 29, 1980, Santa Monica, California) was an American singer, pianist, comedian, and actor, whose distinctive gravel delivery, comic language butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and large nose--his frequent jokes about it included a frequent self-reference that became his nickname: "Schnozzola"---helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1960s.

The early years

A product of working-class New York, Durante dropped out of school in the eighth grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist, working the city circuit and earning the nickname "Ragtime Jimmy," before he joined one of the first recognisable jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band---Durante was the only member of the group who didn't hail from New Orleans. But his outgoing personality and ability to sell a song to the audience---with or without the jokes---began attracting wider attention by 1920, when the group was renamed Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band.

Inka Dinka Doing It

Durante became a vaudeville star and radio attraction by the mid-1920s, with a music and comedy trio called Clayton, Jackson and Durante. The billing didn't stop Durante from becoming the obvious star of the trio. By 1934, he had a major record hit, his own novelty composition "Inka Dinka Doo," and it became his signature song for practically the rest of his life. A year later, Durante starred in the Billy Rose stage spectacle, Jumbo, in which a police officer stopped him while leading a live elephant and asked him, "What are you doing with that elephant?" Durante's reply---"Elephant? What elephant?"---was a regular show-stopper.

He began appearing in motion pictures at about the same time, beginning with a comedy series pairing the Ol' Schnozzola with silent film legend Buster Keaton and continuing with such offerings as The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

On the Air

But Durante made himself a bigger name with his nationally-broadcast radio variety show in the 1940s. Durante all but lucked into radio: the creators of Eddie Cantor's popular The Chase and Sanborn Hour (which also made stars out of Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy) contacted Durante to fill in for Cantor---and Durante was such a hit he was offered his own show.

In 1943, Durante hit his radio stride with future television favourite Garry Moore as his sidekick. Already successful as a solo, Durante's comic chemistry with the young, brushcut Moore---"Dat's my boy dat said dat!" became an instant catchphrase---brought Durante an even larger audience. He became one of the nation's favourite radio stars for the rest of the decade, including a well-reviewed Armed Forces Radio Network command performance with Frank Sinatra that remains a favourite of radio collectors today. And he managed to survive Moore's 1947 departure for three more years---including a reunion of Clayton, Jackson and Durante on his 21 April 1948 broadcast.

Durante graduated to television in the 1950s, though he kept a presence in radio as one of the frequent guests on Tallulah Bankhead's two-year, NBC comedy-variety show, The Big Show. Durante, in fact, was one of a cast on the show's premiere 5 November 1950 that surely ranks it as among the most high-talent gatherings in the history of American broadcasting---the rest of the cast included humourist Fred Allen, singers Mindy Carson and Frankie Laine, stage musical legend Ethel Merman, actors Jose Ferrer and Paul Lukas, and comic-singer Danny Thomas (about to become a major television star in his own right). A highlight of the show was Durante and Thomas, whose own nose rivaled Durante's, in a hilarious routine in which Durante accused Thomas of stealing his nose. ("Stay outta dis, No-Nose!" Durante barked at Bankhead to a big laugh.)

Beginning in the early 1950s, Durante teamed with sidekick Sonny King, a collaboration that would continue until Durante's death.

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Actors - Jimmy Durante

The early years

Inka Dinka Doing It

On the Air

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