The Jimmy Durante Show

CD 4 A: Vacations - March 24, 1948 THE JIMMY DURANTE SHOW B: Guest: Rose Marie – March 31, 1948 Program Guide by Elizabeth McLeod CD 5 A: Guest: Dorothy Lamour – April 7,1948 One of the great advantages of being a radio star in the medium’s Golden Era was B: Guest: President Harry Truman – April 14, the relative anonymity it afforded. A performer might entertain tens of millions 1948 of listeners every week, and yet walk the streets in broad daylight without being annoyed by fans. In radio it was the voices, not the faces, that mattered. But there CD 6 were exceptions. A: Guest: Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson – April 21, 1948 Some radio favorites had a background in stage or film, and their faces were part B: Guest: Lucille Ball – April 28, 1948 and parcel of their appeal. Eddie Cantor, Bob Hope, and even Fred Allen had Lucille Ball physical attributes that matched their voices…and made them easy to pick out in CD 7 any crowd. And there was no performer who could boast a more perfect match A: Transportation Problems – May 5, 1948 of face and voice -- or was more instantly recognizable -- than the beloved Old B: A President’s Wife – May 12, 1948 Schnozzola, Jimmy Durante. CD 8 In a career that extended from the first decade of the 20th Century to the 1970s, A: The Small Businessman – May 19, 1948 Jimmy Durante had two trademarks that transcended every medium in which B: Choice Of Champions – May 26, 1948 he worked. Whether you knew him from his nightclub act, motion pictures, phonograph records, radio programs, or television, you needed no master of ceremonies to tell you who Elizabeth McLeod is a journalist, author, and broadcast historian. She received he was. All you needed was the 2005 Ray Stanich Award for excellence in broadcasting history research a glimpse of that magnificent from the Friends Of Old Time Radio. proboscis -- or hear a short snatch of that unforgettable rasping voice -- and you knew exactly what was coming. You were in for a distinctive www.RadioSpirits.com blend of raucous slapstick and PO Box 1315, Little Falls, NJ 07424 aggressive wordplay, overlaid with just a touch of lovable © 2017 RSPT LLC. All rights reserved. For home use only. sentimentality. Durante was, Unauthorized distribution prohibited. as he often declared, “one in a million.” Program Guide © 2017 Elizabeth McLeod and RSPT LLC. All Rights Reserved. Jimmy Durante is not a performer remembered first and 47322 foremost as a radio star, no doubt because he was so pervasive in every form of show business. And oddly, getting up in years, and as he moved through his sixties he focused more on for a performer whose voice was such a distinctive part of his persona, he didn’t guest-star spots than on a program of his own. He became a popular Las Vegas achieve his greatest radio success until late in the medium’s development. He stage attraction and, during the 1960s, alternated stage work with selected TV only emerged as a microphone favorite during World War II, and his popularity and movie appearances. In 1968, he endeared himself forever to Baby Boomers in the medium lasted less than a decade. He rushed headlong into television in as the host/narrator of the perennial holiday TV classic Frosty The Snowman. A the early 1950s, without looking back. But what it lacked in longevity, Durante’s stroke in 1972 finally forced his retirement, and he passed away in 1980. radio work certainly made up for in laughs. Jimmy Durante was eulogized for his charity work, his dynamic stage presence, Durante sounded, acted, and looked for all the world like a caricature of a rough- and his unique way with a song. His radio work, if mentioned at all, was just scrabble New York street urchin -- and that is exactly what he was. Born on a footnote to his long career. But as this collection of his broadcasts will well Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1893, little Jimmy was known for the remarkable attest, radio did much to capture the unmistakable charisma of this unique and size of his nose before he was out of short pants. This distinctive feature helped beloved performer. him to stand out from the legion of dancing-for-pennies street kids then rampant in the neighborhood, but it was his musical talent that really got him his start in show business. As a child he was swept up by the ragtime music craze. Although THE REXALL DRUG COMPANY he had no formal instruction on the piano, he had a flawless ear and soon picked presents up the fundamentals of ragtime technique. By the time he was twelve years old, THE JIMMY DURANTE SHOW he was skilled enough to quit school and pursue music as a fulltime career. Featuring Music was everywhere in the New York of the early 1900s. Saloons, restaurants, Arthur Treacher, Victor Moore, Candy Candido, and Peggy Lee beer gardens, and brothels all provided a bouncy musical soundtrack for their customers. Pianists were especially in demand, and Durante never wanted Howard Petrie announcing for work. He grew to manhood in this environment -- always playing, always laughing and, increasingly, always singing and joking. It was while playing a Produced and directed by joint in Harlem called the Alamo that he met a fellow performer who’d become Phil Cohan a lifelong crony. Eddie Jackson (below) was a singing waiter at the club, and shared Durante’s taste for lowbrow clowning. After years of knocking around together, Durante and Jackson decided to open their own club. CD 1 A: Guest: Victor Moore – December 17, 1947 It was 1923, and Prohibition extended B: Jimmy Returns After Illness – January 28, 1948 its bony arm across the land. The drought, however, only extended as CD 2 far as the nearest speakeasy. In the A: Courtin’ Cora Bell – February 4, 1948 basement of a building on West 58th B: Going To Ciro’s – February 18, 1948 Street, the Club Durant offered an intimate dining, drinking, and dancing CD 3 experience (with a seating capacity of A: Jimmy Goes To The Race Track – less than 150). The Durant lasted about February 25, 1948 a year and a half before the Prohibition B: Guest: Van Johnson – March 10, 1948 Eddie Jackson and Jimmy Durante agents put a slug in the lock. But that Victor Moore 2 7 Show, mournful-voiced stage veteran Victor Moore became a regular, allowing was long enough for Durante and Jackson to take on a third partner. A two-fisted for the creation of a new “Durante and Moore” team. soft-shoe dancer named Lou Clayton had walked in for a drink one night and stuck around to join the floor show. Cohan understood that an entirely unrestrained Durante would be too much to feed an audience for half an hour every week -- but Durante as the comic head of The team of Clayton, Jackson, and Durante developed a routine specializing a varied ensemble made for enjoyable listening. A new feature of the revamped in snappy, comic novelty songs, clever dancing, and broad, physical slapstick series was a slant toward topical comedy. While Durante was never in the league comedy. The trio moved from club to club, refining and developing its routines of Fred Allen as a comic observer of the passing parade, his series of 1947-48 -- culminating in the famous “Wood” number, in which Durante portrayed a skits parodying developments in the news offered a fresh field for his humor, and man so obsessed with wooden objects that he felt compelled to destroy them. ample space for his sidekicks to offer their own specialties. This routine ended with Durante tearing up the stage and demolishing the piano barehanded. This finale grew more outrageous with every performance and Rexall carried the program until the end of the 1947-48 season, when Justin Dart never failed to (figuratively speaking) bring down the house. decided that Phil Harris was funnier. Camel picked up the program again for the new season, and would carry it for the rest of Durante’s radio run. Cohan stuck It was during these years that Durante and his partners made their radio debuts. to his basic format regardless of sponsorship, and when Victor Moore moved on, The Parody Club, an establishment where they cut a broad swath during 1927, Cohen brought in Alan Young. His style failed to mesh with Durante’s, however, had a radio wire -- and broadcast its floor show on a regular basis over station so Cohen turned to Don Ameche to play Durante’s regular foil. Other comic WMCA. What listeners actually heard on these occasions is lost to the ages, but stooges came along as well, including Barbara Jo Allen (below) as “Vera Vague” it was undoubtedly quite unlike anything else then presented over the generally and Florence Halop as a Brooklyn sexpot called “Hotbreath Houlihan.” dignified air. These broadcasts proved just a short detour for the trio as they turned to bigger money in vaudeville and on the Broadway revue stage. Clayton, Perhaps the most notable feature of Durante’s later radio career was his Jackson and Durante provided high-powered laughs in Show Girl and The New mysterious signoff. During his run with Garry Moore, Durante began closing Yorkers -- but Broadway crashed with the stock market and, by 1931, the act was his performances each week with a strange and wistful aside, murmuring into a unable to find work. The three friends were forced to go their separate ways.

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