Jimmy Durante: There’s Only One Genuine Schnozzle

The Milwaukee Journal – Apr 4, 1943

There’s Only One Genuine Schnozzle

FROM the eminence of a barker’s booth, a frantic voice shouted out over the heads of the passing Coney Island crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen! Ladies and gentlemen, hear the gr-r-reat JimmyDurante. Yes, it’s on a record, madam. Hear him sing his own songs. Yessir, yessir! The great Jimmy Durante!”

And the person who thus gloriously advanced the fame of Jimmy Durante was none other than the Schnozzle himself, now heard regularly over NBC-WTMJ on the Garry Moore show (9 P. M., Thursday) For it was his privilege in the pauses between the piano playing and gags to step up on the stand and stimulate the sale of his own records.

At Diamond Tony’s of Coney Island fame, where he wore a black turtle neck sweater and played a frenzied “ Wild Cherries Rag,” the exhilarated patrons called for more. Jimmy got $25 a week here, though he couldn’t read music except casually. But who should know anything about that except Jimmy?

At Carey Walsh’s, his job was to play the piano for Eddie Cantor’s solos. But it was not at Coney Island that Jimmy learned his trade.

His father had a barbershop on Manhattan’s lower east side. Durante junior acquired his education from poolrooms, corner cigar stands and back alleys. His professional activities at that time consisted of shining shoes, selling papers, delivering dough for Italian bakers and helping in his father’s barbershop.

This latter job bore the most important fruit as far as Jimmy’s future was concerned. Whenever there were six or seven customers sitting patiently in their chairs, waiting their turns, they always had their faces lathered in quick session by the Durante heir, who meanwhile practiced the art of repartee. When he was still a lad he began harmonizing with amateur quartets for the nickles and pennies that passers-by were willing to throw their way.

He took a few piano lessons, and sang roustabout songs in roustabout Bowery places. Then he migrated to Brooklyn with a church charity or a lodge benefit sandwiched in between. Finally he got to Coney Island where the Durante talent really flowered for the first time.

Somewhere along the road he fell in with Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson and the trio started doing night club turns.

Here Jimmy learned to gag in the breaks between songs. In vaudeville the team immediately achieved stardom. Their phonograph recording of “So I Ups to Him!” (lyrics by Durante) was voted the epitome of musical madness and sold thousands From Vaudeville they graduated to Broadway. Hollywood and the airwaves.

For the statistically minded, Durante’s birthdate was Feb. 18, 1994. He is 5 feet, 7 ½ inches tall and weighs 155 pounds. His sparse hair is light brown, and his eyes are blue.