Jimmy Durante

Durante married his first wife, Jeanne in 1921 but she died in 1943, due to a heart disease that lingered on for two years.

He got married again in 1960 to a former Beauty Queen of the New Jersey State Fair, Margaret ‘Margie’ Little, when he was 67 years old and Margie was 47. The couple adopted a girl baby, Cecilia Alicia.

Durante retired from the entertainment business after suffering from a stroke that left him in the wheelchair. He died in 1980 because of severe pneumonia, in California.

Jimmy Durante was born in Lower East Side of New York to Rosa Lentino and Bartolomeo Durate. His family had immigrated to America from Salerno, Italy, and his father was a barber.

Durante dropped out of eighth grade to pursue ragtime piano. Initially he started playing with a cousin. Both of them used to perform only for the family but Durante realized the far reach of his talent.

He started playing for city’s piano bars and adopted a nickname ‘Ragtime Jimmy’. Soon enough, Durante was hired as a professional pianist by one of the first popular jazz bands of New York––Original New Orleans Jazz Band.

Durante remained a part of the Original New Orleans Jazz Band for considerable number of years and his trademark routine of breaking into a song to deliver a joke with orchestra chord punctuation made him famous in 1920s.

By the mid-1920s, Durante became a famous performer and got himself into vaudeville entertainment and radio. He worked with two other artists, Clayton and Jackson and from-time-to-time he got together with them to do different entertainment projects.

The trio of Clayton, Jackson and Durante came together in a movie based on Dashiell Hammett’s ‘Red Harvest’, titled ‘Roadhouse Nights’ in 1930. Also, in the same year he teamed up with Jackson for Cole Porter musical ‘The New Yorkers’.

In 1934, his innovative composition ‘Inka Dinka Doo’ became a super hit record; the lyrics for which were written by Ben Ryan and Durante composed the music. ‘Inka Dinka Doo’ stuck with him as his theme song, for life.

In 1935, Duranted acted in musical Broadway, ‘Jumbo’. The most famous part of the show was when a police officer catches him leading a life with an elephant and on being questioned he says, “What elephant?”.

Durante’s entertainment career stated with ‘Original New Orleans Jazz Band’ which took him to acting in Broadways and entertainment shows. His comic timing earned him a place in the movies, ‘Roadhouse Nights’, ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’.

Not Just that, his talent took him to television with ‘4-Star Revue’, to radio with ‘The Durante-Moore Show’ and later ‘The Jimmy Durante Show’. He was also a singer and his album ‘September Song’ was a hit of its time.