Facts about Jimmy Durante

Jimmy Durante died at 86 years old
Best known as: Big-nosed comedian of 20th-century radio and TV



Jimmy Durante Biography

Name at birth: James Francis Durante

Big-nosed and boisterous, Jimmy Durante was a vaudeville favorite who continued on as a star in the early days of radio and TV.

Originally a saloon piano player, Durante combined his ragged musical talents with a rumpled charm and endless jokes about his nose, a mighty instrument which earned him the nickname “Schnozzola” or just “the Schnoz.”


Jimmy Durante’s dese-and-dose New York accent was much parodied by impressionists of the day. He had a musical hit with the novelty tune “Inka Dinka Doo,” and his famous sign-off phrase was “Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.”

Extra credit

Jimmy Durante is the guy who “kicks the bucket” at the start of the 1963 film It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World… Hotbreath Houlihan, a character from Jimmy Durante’s radio show, was the inspiration for the nickname of ‘Hotlips’ Houlihan in the film and TV sitcom M*A*S*H… Jimmy Durante recorded a popular version of the song “Frosty the Snowman” in 1950; two decades later, he narrated the 1969 TV cartoon special Frosty the Snowman… The origin of the phrase “Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash” is unknown, and Jimmy Durante wouldn’t say what the funny phrase meant; his first wife died in 1943 and may or may not have been the “Mrs. Calabash” referred to.


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