1. Jimmy Durante often referred to his nose as the schnozzola, and the word became his nickname.
41 Facts About Jimmy Durante
1. 2.
Jimmy Durante was the youngest of four children born to Rosa and Bartolomeo Durante, both immigrants from Salerno, Campania, Italy.
3.
Jimmy Durante served as an altar boy at St Malachy Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel.
4.
Jimmy Durante dropped out of school in seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist.
5.
Jimmy Durante 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.
6.
Jackson and Jimmy Durante appeared in the Cole Porter musical The New Yorkers, which opened on Broadway on December 8,1930.
7.
Jimmy Durante appeared on Broadway in Show Girl, Strike Me Pink and Red, Hot and Blue.
8.
MGM gave Jimmy Durante leads in moderately budgeted comedies like Meet the Baron and Hollywood Party, but he couldn't carry an entire feature film; he was more effective as somebody's sidekick, and MGM released him in 1934.
9.
Jimmy Durante went to England to work in a Richard Tauber film musical, Land Without Music.
10.
Jimmy Durante went on to appear in the Gene Autry musical western Melody Ranch, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Ziegfeld Follies, Billy Rose's Jumbo, and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
11.
On September 10,1933, Jimmy Durante appeared on Eddie Cantor's NBC radio show, The Chase and Sanborn Hour, continuing until November 12 of that year.
12.
When Cantor left the show, Jimmy Durante took over as its star from April 22 to September 30,1934.
13.
Jimmy Durante then moved on to The Jumbo Fire Chief Program.
14.
Jimmy Durante teamed with Garry Moore for The Jimmy Durante-Moore Show in 1943.
15.
Jimmy Durante continued the show for three more years and featured a reunion of Clayton, Jackson, and Jimmy Durante on his April 21,1948 broadcast.
16.
Jimmy 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.
17.
Jimmy Durante's brief, unannounced, appearance on The Missus Goes a-Shopping seg apparently surprised most of the staff as well as the audience.
18.
From 1950 to 1951, Durante was the host once a month on NBC's comedy-variety series Four Star Revue, airing on Wednesday evenings at 8 pm Jimmy continued with the show until 1954.
19.
Durante then hosted a half-hour variety show, The Jimmy Durante Show, on NBC from October 2,1954, to June 23,1956.
20.
Several times in the 1960s, Jimmy Durante served as host of ABC's variety hour The Hollywood Palace, which was taped live.
21.
Jimmy Durante 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.
22.
Jimmy Durante was so taken by the food, the service, and the chitchat that he told the owner that he would make her famous.
23.
At a National Press Club meeting in 1966, Jimmy Durante finally revealed that it was indeed a tribute to his wife.
24.
Jimmy Durante married his second wife, Margaret "Margie" Little, at St Malachy Roman Catholic Church in New York City on December 14,1960.
25.
Jimmy Durante attended New York University before being hired by the legendary Copacabana in New York City.
26.
Jimmy Durante and Durante met there 16 years before their marriage, when he performed there and she was a hatcheck girl.
27.
Jimmy Durante was 41 and he was 67 when they married.
28.
Jimmy Durante performed for many years at Eagles conventions free of charge, even refusing travel money.
29.
Jimmy Durante 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.
30.
Jimmy 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.
31.
Jimmy Durante narrated the Rankin-Bass animated Christmas special Frosty the Snowman.
32.
In 1963, Jimmy Durante recorded the album of pop standards September Song.
33.
Jimmy Durante 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.
34.
Jimmy Durante retired from performing in 1972, following a stroke that left him reliant on a wheelchair.
35.
Jimmy Durante died as a result of pneumonia in Santa Monica, California, on January 29,1980,12 days before he would have turned 87.
36.
Jimmy Durante received Catholic funeral rites four days later, with fellow entertainers Desi Arnaz, Ernest Borgnine, Marty Allen, and Jack Carter in attendance, and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
37.
Jimmy Durante is known to most modern audiences as the character who narrated the 1969 animated special Frosty the Snowman.
38.
Jimmy Durante was caricatured as early as 1933, alongside Buster Keaton in the Ub Iwerks cartoon Soda Squirt.
39.
The "so big" refers to his nose, and as a runaway criminal turns the corner by the book, Jimmy Durante turns sideways using his nose to trip the criminal, allowing his capture.
40.
Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger performed impressions of Jimmy Durante from The Man Who Came to Dinner, singing "Did You Ever Have the Feeling" in 1988's My Stepmother Is an Alien.
41.
Michael J Fox performed an impression of Durante singing "Inka Dinka Doo" in 1994's Greedy.