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Jimmy Durante: The Great Schnozzola: Directed by David Leaf, John Scheinfeld. With Fred Applegate, Ethel Barrymore, Jimmy Durante, CeCe Durante-Bloum. Looks at the life of entertainer Jimmy Durante. Includes segments from his television series and interviews with his wife, daughter and film and television historian Leonard Maltin.
- (12)
- Documentary, Biography
- David Leaf, John Scheinfeld
- 60
- Early Life
- Stardom
- Radio
- Television
- Marriages
- Charitable Work
- Religion
- Politics
- Later Years and Death
- Animation
Childhood
Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Rosa (née Lentino) and Bartolomeo Durante, both immigrants from Salerno, Campania, Italy. Bartolomeo was a barber. Durante 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 played in piano bars under the name "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.[c...
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. E...
On September 10, 1933, Durante appeared on Eddie Cantor's NBC radio show, The Chase and Sanborn Hour, continuing until November 12 of that year. When Cantor left the show, Durante took over as its star from April 22 to September 30, 1934. He then moved on to The Jumbo Fire Chief Program(1935–1936). Durante teamed with Garry Moore for The Durante-Mo...
Durante first appeared on television showing up at the end of 1944 on John Reed King's audience participation show on the local New York CBS television station WCBW (now WCBS-TV). His brief, unannounced, appearance on The Missus Goes a-Shopping seg apparently surprised most of the staff as well as the audience. Arrangements were made in the late af...
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 immediate...
On August 15, 1958, for his charitable acts, Durante was awarded a three-foot-high brass loving cup by the Al Bahr Shriners Temple in San Diego, California. 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, Aug...
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 select...
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 Man 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 ...
Durante continued his film appearances through the popular 1963 It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and a number of television appearances through the early 1970s. He narrated the Rankin-Bass animated Christmas special Frosty the Snowman (1969). The television work also included a series of commercial spots for Kellogg's Corn Flakes cereals in the mid-...
Durante is known to most modern audiences as the character who narrated the 1969 animated special Frosty the Snowman. He also performed the title song of the 1968 comedy-adventure movie Monte Carlo or Bust! (titled Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies in the U.S.) over the film's animated opening credits.[citation needed]
Apr 9, 2020 · Jimmy Durante - The Great Shnozzola. eugenecheese. 4.43K subscribers. Subscribed. 933. 60K views 4 years ago. From - Videotape Collection - Paul Eugene Jay ...more.
Clips of the entertainer Jimmy Durante from the 1950s and interviews with his wife Marjorie Little, his daughter and film critic Leonard Maltin. Directors David Leaf
Jimmy Durante: The Great Schnozzola (TV Movie 2001) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more.
Nov 16, 2020 · Durante is the proud possessor of an ugly, oversized nose. He is short, almost entirely bald, recessive-chinned, weasel-eyed, and sloping-headed. He is also barely literate.
Apr 10, 2001 · Filled with lengthy clips, interviews with Mrs. Jimmy Durante, daughter CeCe and Leonard Maltin, one of America's leading authorities on television and film history, Jimmy Durante: The Great Schnozzola showcases the talents and life of this comedy legend.
- DVD
