What was Jimmy Durante's nickname
Jimmy Durante Jimmy Durante James Francis Durante (February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American singer, pianist, comedian, and actor. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech, Lower East Side Manhattan accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. He often referred to his nose as "the schnozzola" (from the Yiddish slang word "schnoz" [big nose]), and the word became his nickname. Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Rosa (Lentino)
Jimmy Durante and Bartolomeo Durante, both of whom were immigrants from Salerno, Italy. Bartolomeo was a barber. Young Jimmy served as an altar boy at St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel. Durante dropped out of school in seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first played with his cousin, whose name was also Jimmy Durante. It was a family act, but he was too professional for his cousin. He continued working the city's piano bar circuit and earned the nickname "ragtime Jimmy", before he joined one of the first recognizable jazz bands in New York, the