Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1946)

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The seven spiral hairs that adorn Jimmy Durante’s crown have grayed with the years but the soul has grown younger. The vocabulary has mellowed and the grammar climbed into unbelievable horizons beyond mere split infinitives but Jimmy went marching at the head of Yale class 1913 as proud as Punch and looking not unlike him. Jimmy, who’s the comic glee of “It Happened in Brooklyn,” vaguely remembers a third grade somewhere in his life, in spite of which he was chosen for that honor by the president of Yale himself for their annual 1946 reunion because during the thirty years as an entertainer Jimmy never became smutty or off color. Bankers, doctors, lawyers, bricklayers, women, children and bobbysoxers alike adore him. He stands as a symbol of American humor and American democracy. From New York’s East Side, where he was born, he climbed to the top by way of a piano that suffered outrageous indignities. Jimmy not only played it but annoyed it, beating the living daylights out of it while scattering the parts to convulsed audiences. “So he ups to him,” he says, and off comes the keyboard. “He was walking along mindin’ his own business,” and the top falls off. The customers love it. At seventeen he was playing his piano in Diamond Tony’s at Coney Island. At eighteen he was accompanying a singing waiter called Eddie Cantor at Terry Walsh’s Beach Club. A few years later he organized a five-piece Dixieland combination that moved from Harlem to midtown Broadway. Along the way he gathered up another singing waiter Eddie Jackson and a dancer Lou Clayton. The trio became the sensation of “Ziegfeld’s Show Girl,” “Roadhouse Nights” and “The New Yorkers.” When Jimmy came to Hollywood, the trio broke up but Clayton remains his manager and Jackson his partner at cafe benefits and fellow actor in every picture Jimmy makes. He never forgets. When the wife to whom he was married for twenty years became ill, Jimmy forgot the stage, the screen, the life he knew — to nurse and care for her. When she died two years later, Jimmy returned to Broadway for “Strike Me Pink” and back to Hollywood for more movies. He re calls two fellow actors Ethel Merman and Bob Hope in the Broadway success “Jumbo” but he isn’t quite sure “wot become of dem.” He detoured from his own radio show to guest star on Information Please, scattering knowledge like a miser. SEVERAL months ago the New York show world paid Jimmy a memorable tribute. They reclaimed and redecorated the old Silver Slipper Cafe where Jimmy, Lou and Eddie released frustration for so many years to so many “noive-racked” customers who relaxed under Durante’s spell like a pre-war garter. For that one night Broadway appeared in droves to pay tribute to a man whose thirty years of show business finds him only beginning and leaves him an example for others to shoot at. “The ting I liked about it,” Jimmy says, “nobody made speeches sayin’ wot a great guy Durante wuz. Everybody enjoyed each other and had fun. It wuz revivifyin.” v He writes his own songs, composing the music and occasionally asking help on the lyrics. It comes hard to him, he claims. He has to “woik” at the idea of telling a story in every song. Recently he sold his Beverly Hills home and bought another because the first house held too many memories of the wife he loved. When a contractor took Jimmy to the tune of $9,000, he felt sorrier for a guy misusing his faith than the money lost. His faith in, his genuine love for his fellow man, his joy in livin’ and givin’ and doin’, finds instant response and everlasting lodging in every heart. It’s warmin’, that’s wot it is. Through steel-rimmed spectacles he’s too busy spotting the youngsters scattered about the M-G-M commissary to eat. “Stand up and look this way,” he’ll say. “Now you can see Gene Kelly’s little girl. Ain’t that somepin!” His table becomes a mecca, an old home week reunion, a clan gathering for high and low, producers, directors, actors, prop men, children and just plain people. Waitresses greet him with outstretched hands. He knows them all by name. He’s one of them. He’s Jimmy, the “eyetalian” Durante, the Umbriago of America who loves everybody. And friends? He’s got a million of ’em. And he ain’t kiddin’. The End