Background
James Francis Durante was born on February 10, 1893, in New York City, the son of Bartolomeo Durante, a barber, and Rosa Millino, both Italian immigrants.
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James Francis Durante was born on February 10, 1893, in New York City, the son of Bartolomeo Durante, a barber, and Rosa Millino, both Italian immigrants.
Raised in an impoverished neighborhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he left public school at age ten to earn money as a newspaperboy, coal-wagon driver, stable hand, and photo engraver's assistant. Never a pretty child, young Jimmy resented his playmates nicknaming him "Naso, " Italian for "nose. " Bitter over such slights, he turned inward, becoming a sensitive and lonely boy. Later, as an entertainer, although he made his famous nose the hallmark of his humor, he scrupulously avoided poking fun at others with similar features.
Encouraged by his father to study classical piano, Durante soon discovered ragtime music, embracing its exuberant chords as a release from his personal introversion.
Calling himself "Ragtime Jimmy, " at age sixteen he played in the cabarets, honky tonks, and smoky dives of Coney Island, Harlem, and Chinatown. By 1917, Durante was earning $45 per week at Harlem's infamous Club Alamo. Self-effacing dialogue, mispronounced words and scrambled syntax, a raspy voice, and brilliant timing characterized the unique humor of the mature Durante. But in his early years this shy entertainer hid behind the piano, refusing to banter with his audience for fear that they might laugh at him.
Durante first made his mark as a composer of ragtime scores, often collaborating with black musician Chris Smith and journalist Walter Winchell. While working at Club Alamo he formed a friendship with Eddie Jackson, a singing waiter, and together they opened a Manhattan speakeasy called Club Durant in 1923.
Within a few weeks they added as a third partner Lou Clayton, a cabaret dancer with vague connections to the New York underworld. Prompted by Jackson and Clayton, a reticent Durante began interspersing his piano playing with humorous monologues and jokes. After Sime Silverman, editor of Variety, gave the antics of Durante, Clayton, and Jackson ebullient reviews, Club Durant drew an eclectic audience of businessmen, journalists, show people, politicians, artists, and gangsters who howled at the trio's zany anarchy. Performances often climaxed with Durante demolishing his piano.
Clayton recognized Durante's star potential and charted the course of his friend's career. He endowed Durante with the moniker "Schnozzola, " which, together with a battered fedora, became the performer's signature. Shortly after Prohibition agents closed Club Durant, Clayton led his partners onto the Broadway stage, where for three years the Durante entourage grew in popularity. Booked at Loew's State Theatre in March 1927, they played to record audiences and weeks later drew even larger crowds into the Palace, vaudeville's premier venue.
Florenz Ziegfeld signed the comedy team to play slapstick "stagehands" in his 1929 review Show Girl. Their buffoonery stole the show, with the great "Schnozzola" receiving the highest raves. Hollywood producers soon recognized Durante's appeal, and in 1931 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed him to a five-year contract. Ever loyal to his friends, he retained Clayton as his business manager and Jackson as his personal assistant.
His film The New Adventures of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (1931) brought Durante immediate popularity with millions of Americans who responded to his sidewalk humor. Unfortunately, there followed a series of low-budget pictures that little enhanced his reputation. In 1933 he returned to Broadway, starring in the successful musical comedy Strike Me Pink. After a three-month run he was recalled to California because of his movie contract. Trapped by Hollywood's studio system and forced to act in mediocre films and short features, Durante dutifully fulfilled his obligations. He eventually completed twenty-nine largely forgettable movies, but in one, Palooka, he introduced the tune "Inka Dinka Doo, " which became his trademark song.
Throughout his career Durante wrote melodies that fitted his cheerful public image, including "I Ups Ta Him, and He Ups Ta Me, " "I'm Jimmy, That Well-Dressed Man, " "I Know Darn Well I Can Do Without Broadway (Can Broadway Do Without Me?). "
Free of his MGM obligations in 1935, Durante went to New York City to appear in Billy Rose's spectacular musical Jumbo, playing an unscrupulous press agent for a bankrupt circus. He left his critically acclaimed role the following year for a European tour that included two weeks at London's Palladium. Thereafter his career entered a brief eclipse. Critics complained that his humor was old-fashioned and dated, and Durante endured personal tragedies. Profoundly depressed by his father's death in 1940, he soon learned that his wife was stricken with cancer. She died in February 1943.
In the spring of 1943, the Columbia Broadcasting System hired Durante to cohost a weekly radio program, and his popularity revived. Teamed with the fast-talking and popular Garry Moore, Durante found the medium well suited to his talents. No stranger to the airwaves (he first appeared on radio in 1934) he delighted listeners with his working man's responses to the sophisticated Moore. Whenever Moore corrected his diction, Durante retorted, "You teach me to say dem woids right and we're both outa a job. "
In 1947 the partnership ended amiably as Moore moved on to other stages. Beginning with his 1943 radio show, Durante closed each of his performances by saying "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. " Journalists speculated that it might have been a mystic message to his late wife, and he once hinted that it was a secret greeting to a long lost sweetheart of his grammar school days.
One radio performance earned Durante a footnote in legal history. Following his reading of the poem "One-Room House" by Alfred Kreymborg, its author sued the comedian and the network for copyright infringement. A federal judge eventually dismissed the suit, ruling that poems did not possess the same copyright protections as dramatic scripts. Before Lou Clayton died in 1950 he urged Durante to enter the new medium of television. Complying with his friend's wish, the "Schnozzola" burst into American homes, finding the small screen ideal for his spontaneous clowning, singing, and butchered English.
He ended his Saturday evening program at the height of its popularity in 1956, and thereafter he appeared on television once or twice each year as a guest on variety or comedy shows.
He began to limit his activities to occasional club performances and charitable benefits. Durante's benefits raised millions of dollars for the Damon Runyon Foundation for Cancer Research, and he gave away much of his wealth to panhandlers and acquaintances down on their luck.
In 1962 he starred in the film Billy Rose's Jumbo, which was based on the earlier musical. The following year he made a memorable cameo appearance in the comedy hit Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Felled by a stroke in 1972, he lingered until his death at his Santa Monica, California, home.
Durante was an active member of the Democratic Party. In 1933, he appeared in an advertisement shown in theaters supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs and wrote a musical score titled Give a Guy a Job to accompany it. He performed at both the inaugural gala for President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and a year later at the famous Madison Square Garden rally for the Democratic party that featured Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to JFK.
Quotations: "Maybe we ain't all born equal, but it's a cinch we all die equal".
Durante's ever-smiling, merry public persona masked an intensely lonely, almost pathetic private man. He craved the company of others, insisting upon the constant attendance of his closest friends, especially Clayton, Jackson, and Jack Roth, his longtime drummer. Possessed by a compelling desire to be loved by everyone, he feared to offend anyone and cleansed his material of all indecent references, especially double entendres. Identifying with the working masses, he became famous for his altruism. When teased for his easy touch, he responded: "Maybe we ain't all born equal, but it's a cinch we all die equal. "
On June 19, 1921, Durante married Jeanne Olsen, who was a singer at Club Alamo. They had no children. On June 19, 1921, Durante married Jeanne Olsen, who was a singer at Club Alamo. They had no children.
Durante married Marjorie Little on December 14, 1960, and they had one daughter by adoption.
