Radio and television mirror (Jan-June 1950)

(Continued from page 78) went right out to the door with us, called a cab and paid the driver. It was all wonderful — just plain kindness, but you don't find it like that often." The one thing that will bother Jimmy is the feeling that he's hurt a person or passed by someone who needed him. A few months ago, Jimmy was driving back along the highway to Los Angeles, trying to make time so that he'd get in for his rehearsal. He saw a young fellow in a soldier's uniform step forward and put his thumb out for a ride. But Durante's car was going too fast. He couldn't stop. For weeks, Jimmy remembered. "Why did I have to go so fast?" he would say. "I could'a pick dat kid up." When Jimmy was in New York recently— a trip he made for a benefit performance — he stopped in at an Italian restaurant to have a quick dinner. He was, of course, with a group of friends — Jimmy always has people with him. As soon as he came in, the proprietor recognized the famous Schnozzola and rushed over, bringing his chef with him. The chef insisted that Jimmy come back into the kitchen and inspect his handiwork. "Now tell me what you want to eat," he said. "I'd like to make something special for you." Jimmy knew he had only a few minutes to spare for dinner, but he saw that the chef would be disappointed if he didn't accept. He asked for a chicken dish. The chef worked with great pains. But, unfortunately, time was pressing, and Jimmy could only take a mouthful before he had to leave. As he dashed over to the radio station where he was to perform on an Army broadcast, Jimmy kept saying: "Gee, I wish I could'a stayed. I hope the chef ain't mad." He wants to make people happy. Ever since he skyrocketed into the big-time when his Club Durante opened in 1923, Jimmy has been able to do this in different ways. For his own reward, he hopes for just one thing. He hopes that those he helps will be grateful to him. "Thanks a million," says Jimmy, "when someone says that to you and you know he means it . . . it's better than money." But suppose you don't get any gratitude for your pains? Many people will turn bitter and regret their generosity when it isn't appreciated. Jimmy says: "It don't make no difference. I'm gettin' paid back all I want. I'm gettin' paid back in God's respect." He wants to make people happy, and that's the best part of his success as a performer. It makes him feel he's doing that. Maybe he's doing even more. Durante not only makes people laugh, he makes them love him. The way one writer put it: "He makes you proud to be a member of the human race." Jimmy has always been very conscious of his responsibility to those who hear him. This mild, warm-hearted man is one of the toughest enemies of offensive humor in the business. When he started out in the twenties, everyone told Jimmy he was crazy not to use suggestive material. "You'll never get to first-base unless you do," they said. But, as Jimmy puts it: "I feel awful bad inside if I'm afraid that somethin' I'm saying is gonna hurt anyone." The closest Jimmy comes to telling R an off-color gag is the old chestnut w about the guy whose girl went off to Atlantic City for a vacation. In a few days, this fellow receives a postcard from his girl: "Having a great time. oU Room with running water." Whereupon the young swain sends her a stern message. "Glad you're enjoying yourself," he writes. "But get that Indian out of the room." Jimmy made his way up using humor that the whole family could take in together, and it's worked for him instead of against him. The customers not only came back, they brought their children with them when they did. It's still true that for all Jimmy's devoted audience among the grown-ups, he always has a fanatic following among the young fry — and their parents like nothing better. Recently, Jimmy's writers cooked up an idea for a new running gag on his radio show. One of the performers was to come on and speak a few lines with an intonation that gave them a double meaning. Jimmy turned thumbs down. "We got kids listenin' in," he said, and that was that. One of Jimmy's most deeply-rooted sentiments is the conviction that most of his fellow-men are good-hearted and well-meaning. For all his affection and warmth toward others, however, he's very quick to tell you that there are people he doesn't like. "The overbearin' ones, the ones that put on airs . . ." he shakes his head with distaste. Then he grins out of the corner of his mouth as though he's just thought of a joke. "It ain't that I don't like 'em," he adds. "They don't do nothin' to me. I just averds 'em." He can't understand self-centered, small-hearted people. Can't understand them, but feels sorry for them. How anyone can think and feel no further than their personal success and ambitions puzzles him. Whether he's on the East or West Coast, Jimmy makes a weekly trip to the cemetery to place flowers on the graves of his mother and father or his wife. Often he will stop to point at the array of tombstones, while he shakes his head with an almost-pitying gesture. "Look," he'll say to the friend with him, "everybody reads the same. There ain't no difference. Some of da big heads ought to take a look. They're all gonna wind up here like everyone else." Since his wife passed away in 1943, Jimmy has been without any immediate family — a sad irony for a man so blessed with the capability and need for close ties. Jimmy was an exceptionally devoted son while his parents were alive. And all of show business knows how he went into semi-retirement during his wife's last years of illness, cancelling engagements and turning down jobs in order to be at her side. Unfortunately they had no children. Sometimes, though, Jimmy likes to talk about what he'd want for children of his, how he would bring them up. "Da most important thing," he says, "is for a kid to have a personality dat makes people like him. Ya got people to care about and to care about you — and you'll always be okay." Jimmy has definite ideas, too, about the kind of career a youngster should take up. "I'd want a kid of mine to work at somethin' he really loved. Success don't mean a thing, without dat. Take me," Jimmy will go on, "when I started out everyone considered a piano player was a bum. So suppose I gave it up on account of dat? I'd a been miserable all my life." If somebody starts bewailing the loose ways of today's young people, Jimmy will lose his patience. "Listen," he'll say interrupting them. "You know what I'll tell you about these kids? We're lucky we come up with 'em — even in the conversation." Although he has no immediate family left, Jimmy is hardly alone. No man could have a greater number or a closer group of friends. Many of them — like Lou Clayton, Eddie Jackson and Jack Roth — have been like brothers to him since the beginning of his career. Wherever he is, you'll never see Jimmy without friends around him. Once when he did happen to go into a famous Hollywood restaurant all by himself, the headwaiter couldn't believe his eyes. "Either something is wrong," he exclaimed, "or you are not Jimmy Durante." Besides Jimmy's close friendships, he is in daily touch with his uncles and with his nephews, two of whom live near him in California with their families. One nephew, who lives in a New York suburb, has a little girl of four. When Jimmy came East last Spring, the circus was in town, and he found out that Rosemary with all the singlemindedness of a four-year-old wanted nothing in the world except to see it. "Don't worry," Jimmy assured her parents. "I'll get tickets for Rosemary and her friends." It turned out, however, not to be that simple. Circus tickets apparently were impossible to get. Jimmy was to be in town for only four days and his schedule was jammed tight with appointments during that time. But he made up his mind to get the tickets. Hour after hour, while his staff went wild trying to get him to his engagements, Jimmy sat at the phone calling up everyone he knew who could help him. "Jimmy," one friend argued, "so suppose the kid doesn't get to the circus? She's young. She'll go next year." Jimmy looked at him with the stubbornness of twenty mules. "The kid'll be heartbroken if she don't go. I promised her." Then he added with a tone of finality: "Heck, what good am I, if I can't give my own nephew's child a little thing dat's gonna make her happy?" Rosemary and her friends had a wonderful time seeing the wonders of the three-ringer. But the one who got the biggest kick was her great-uncle Jimmy who couldn't even get to go. What gives him the biggest kick of all, though, is when he sees other people giving of themselves with the same generosity. That's one reason he is still talking about the Easter radio program which he appeared on last Spring. Jimmy is a deeply religious man. "I was brought up dat way," he says. "I come from God-fearin' people." When Jimmy was asked to donate his talent to the hour of prayer, he was delighted. His name would be mentioned only once, together with the other performers at the beginning, and that was perfectly fine with him. Then came time for the program to be rehearsed and Jimmy's eyes opened. Some of the biggest stars in the movies and the theater were appearing also — all of them with no build-up, no publicity. "I'm tellin' ya," Jimmy says, "it's nice when you see somethin' like that. Unless you'da recognized the voices, you'd never know who they were. It makes ya feel good to see people do a wonderful thing like that." Jimmy has been doing wonderful things like that all his life. Too few people are as lucky as he. Jimmy is one of the most gifted performers of our day, but his greatest gift could be anyone's — he has always known how to be happy.