Jimmy Durante — Legendary Figure of Show Business (1951) 🇺🇸
There are all kinds of lovable characters in show business but none tops that little wiry man with the big nose, big cigar and big smile. Jimmy Durante had what it takes and he used all of it when he took TV by storm right from the opening of his first video show in November 1950. He tore pianos apart, sang toe-tapping songs in that familiar raucous voice and bounced about the stage clowning with guests, cameramen and musicians alike. On each of his appearances studio audiences thundered its applause and in the viewers homes across half the country, the reaction was the same.
In a single season the Schnozzola won more plaudits, more laudatory revdews and more recognition than any other TV personality. And, that was topped off by winning the coveted Peabody Award, the highest recognition of achievement bestowed in the radio-television industry, for “best entertainment in television.”
Jimmy is beginning his second year in an expanded version of last year’s comedy series, this year titled “All-Star Revue” and telecast Saturdays at 8 P.M. on Channel 3. He’ll be star of the show at regular intervals during the coming 1951-52 season, with one of those much-anticipated appearances due this Saturday, October 6.
Now 57 years old, with 39 years of show business behind him, Jimmy needed the extra TV money about as much as he needs a bigger nose. But the new video medium did pose a challenge to Durante and he plunged in with awe-inspired enthusiasm.
Jimmy now gets as much as $7,500 a week at the nation’s top night clubs — and that’s plus what rolls in on the TV shows, radio and an occasional movie. He seldom goes to bed before 5 A.M.; his passion is hats, reading detective stories and American poetry. Eighteen people depend directly upon him for jobs.
It’s a far cry from Schnozzola’s modest beginnings as an entertainer. Jimmy got his start playing piano in New York’s Chinatown honkytonks, moving on to “Diamond Tony’s” a club in Coney Island, where he earned $25 a week. Later he played at Terry Walsh’s Club where he sometimes accompanied a singing waiter — a young fellow by the name of Eddie Cantor.
Jimmy continued to play piano at various other clubs and in 1916 organized a five-piece Dixieland band for the Club Alamo in Harlem. There he met a pretty, young singer, Jeanne Olsen, and married her. Mrs. Durante died in Hollywood in 1943, after a long illness.
While at the Alamo, Jimmy also met a singing waiter named Eddie Jackson, and they became friends. Later, when Jimmy opened his own place — the Club Durant — Jimmy took Jackson along as a partner. A few weeks after the opening of the club an ex-dancer named Lou Clayton dropped in and it wasn’t long before the famous trio of “Clayton, Jackson and Durante” was formed.
That team was one of the most successful night club attractions of all time. The late Damon Runyon once wrote; “I doubt if a greater cabaret combination ever lived.”
The team’s wonderful success was due largely to Jimmy’s great natural talent and when the depression came along the boys decided it would be in the best interests to disband. Durante then went on to even greater heights of success on Broadway and Hollywood appearing in a long string of hit movies… but he never forgot his old partners. Both Clayton and Jackson acted in managerial capacities for Durante until their long and close association was broken by the death of Clayton last year. Eddie Jackson is still seen in each of Durante’s TV shows.
He’s superstitious as could be and that’s why he never fails to mention “Mrs. Calabash” on all his shows. But don’t ask us who Mrs. Calabash Is… that’s something even his best friends don’t know — and if they did, they aren’t telling.
If you ask the Schnoz about Mrs. Calabash he just cocks his head and smiles. “A fella’s gotta have some secrets, ain’t he?”
Collection: TV Digest Magazine (Philadelphia), October 1951