Jimmy, That Well-Dressed Man

(See Cover)

It is just 21 years this week since James ("Schnozzle") Durante, one of history's great clowns, first drew attention to his fine, foaming gifts at the old Club Durant off Broadway. In recent times he has had somewhat less than appreciative handling in Hollywood. But the past year has been one of his best.

Not only has he been able to dominate the Camel programs (CBS, 10 p.m., E.W.T.) in his own most explosive and sidesplitting manner--with much credit to an understanding producer (Phil Cohan) and an admiring young foil (Garry Moore). Jimmy has also, after twelve years, made a sensational comeback in nightclub hilarity at Manhattan's Copacabana.

Those who have not heard Jimmy recount his morning adventures in a car pool have missed the funniest incident in the civilian war effort (Driver Durante, trying his best to keep proper control of the brake and '"exhilarator,'" is nudged so far over by "Share-the-ride-Schwartz" and other multiplying members of the pool that finally '"I'm standin' on da corner waitin' for a streetcar'").

There is also a great deal to be said for Jimmy's experience as chief inspector of the English Mint, charged with firing his best coiner ("Samuel did a good job on the pound notes, and he was all right with the half-pound notes and shillings. But Sam, he made da pence too long").

Those who have not had the luck or money to get into Manhattan's Copacabana (or other Durante nightspots in the past) have missed the full effect of Jimmy's comedy, which comes only from watching him work in a small joint where his extraordinary gusto can not only bounce forth but also reach him on the rebound from a close and delighted audience. Then Jimmy reaches a comic violence that makes his audience feel like spectators at a small Balkan war.

He may insult the Copacabana's boss ("He can't even spell da name!"). He may insult the menu ("Dere goes a load of ice with three olives. Twelve-fifty for dat load. Somebody's got to pay for da cocktail room!"). He may insult labor when a busboy knocks over a chair ("He's gotta pick it up. No one else can touch it. Union!"). He may challenge the whole situation when a microphone is lowered toward his expectant and famous nose ("Go ahead! Touch da nose! Just once! I'll sue da jernt for every dollar dey got! I'll turn da jernt inta a bowlin' alley!"). But the conspiratorial gleam which accompanies Jimmy's every imprecation ("Surrounded by assassins!") is a token of the vast human warmth he pours into giving pleasure and derives from having it received ("I know dere's a million good-lookin' guys, but I'm a novelty!").

Such an irresistible affection for the human scene, communicating itself at once to the audience, has been at the bottom of much great clowning. On this basis, Jimmy Durante builds a ludicrous structure of many ramifications. His less discerning admirers have been apt to call him a big-nosed, uproarious zany and let it go at that. But the fact that Jimmy's nose is big is no more important per se than the fact that W. C. Fields's nose is red. Jimmy, like Fields, is no gagster, however appealing, depending on the card indexes of teams of gagmen (he has used many of the same jokes for years). Jimmy, like Fields, is a high comedian, who can convulse both children and sophisticates. Not only do millions laugh at him, but they laugh for a rich variety of reasons.

"Pardon Me, Madame . . ." Jimmy Durante is, for example, no ordinary word mangler. There are manglers galore in show business, but Jimmy has a poet's ear for the mot injuste ("Let me hear that high note, maestro ! . . . What a note ! . . . A promissory note, if I ever heard one!'") And Jimmy is a past master of timing--that comedian's sine qua non. In the grand old days of the comedy team of (Lou) Clayton, (Eddie) Jackson and Durante, which broke up in 1931, Jimmy led them in a repertory of nightclub shenanigans (elaborately punctuated by a disreputable-looking jazz band) which spiraled into the highest humorous mathematics.

Jimmy is also a pinwheel satirist. He constantly kids the formalities of human discourse ('"Dat's da conditions dat prevail!'"). He is a relentless lampooner of high society who, in his nightclubs, has often suddenly leered over an especially low neckline with a solicitous '"Pardon me, madame, dew you feel a draft?'" Jimmy's own show business takes a constant beating from him. Perhaps the subtlest of all his comic achievements is his parody of the way in which many people from his own proletarian background maltreat the culture they so earnestly desire to achieve. A great deal of his highest comedy is deeply rooted in his own past.

Barber's Boy. Jimmy was born Feb. 10, 1893, on Manhattan's swarming Lower East Side, the youngest of three boys and a girl. His mother was a Neapolitan, and gave Jimmy her nose. His father, Barthelmeo was a French-Italian barber. As his father's helper, Jimmy lathered the faces of many a Tammany politician. He quit school around the seventh grade, ran errands, worked as a glasswasher, photo-engraver, took piano lessons. At 17 Jimmy got his first professional job as a pianist--in Diamond Tony's saloon at "Cooney Island." The skinny, homely piano pounder in a black turtleneck sweater did not drink much (nor does he to this day, save occasionally, out of politeness).

"Ragtime Jimmy" played in the classic razzmatazz style-- heavy chording in the bass and light finagling in the treble--of which he is still in perfect possession. He worked in a motley of joints, including Chinatown's Chatham Club. Around 1916 Jimmy got together a five-piece Dixieland combination for the Club Alamo in Har lem. Their output is best described by their leader: '"When we played a fox trot in dem days, we had to put up a sign and say 'Fox Trot' so a guy could know what to expect. . . . Playin' pianner, I used to have a racin' form instead of notes.'"

At the Alamo, Jimmy met Eddie Jack son, a gentle, sentimental, onetime singing waiter. And one day a cute little singer named Jeanne Olson dropped in by mistake (she was booked at the Ritz around the corner). Durante married her.

The Big Hello. The beginning of the postwar boom found Jimmy making $100 a week with his band at Broadway's Club Nightingale. A waiter named Frank Nolan told him that with a place of his own he could make "a million.'" On his own hook, Nolan rented a 20-by-70 ft. loft above a used-car salesroom on 58th Street, just east of Broadway. There the Club Durant was opened on the cold night of Jan. 22, 1923. Jackson was present. Clayton, a magnificent soft-shoe dancer, who had split with his partner (Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards), popped in later. He took a look around the Club Durant and bought a piece of it. Says Jimmy: "If I didn't open dat club, and become a boss, I wouldn't a stood up and started singing. . . . I knew everybody, started to give dem da big hello. . . ."*

Clayton and Jackson joined in the fun, and the great team was in the making. One of their first and most obvious triple plays was the establishment of Durante's nose as a stage prop. Clayton, who always stood to his left, and Jackson, who strutted on the right, would grab at the nose or whack at it with their hats, as if it were something untamed and menacing. An early dialogue about the phenomenon:

Durante: "Whaddya think will happen ta my nose if youse guys don't quit hangin' onta it?"

Jackson: "By the end of the year it will grow into a banana."

Durarite: "Wat'll we do with it den?"

Clayton: "We'll have bananas and cream."

Three Clubmen. Many of their routines are now remembered by Broadway's elder denizens with a nostalgia like their memories of Barrymore's Hamlet or Lillian Russell's corsetry. There was, for example, the team's greeting to customers who were also their personal friends:

"Here comes a friend of mine,

Sit him down at table nine.

See dat he don't buy no wine,

Because he is a friend of mine.

Skeet, skat, skat, skeet, skat, skoo."

The "old friend" was then invited to strike a spotlighted pose. During one of these, Paul Whiteman overreached himself and his pants fell down.

Jimmy's personally written songs (he has copyrighted dozens) were at once a vigorous ribbing of Tin Pan Alley and a ragtime celebration of places and moods of significance to the daft composer. The titles included: I'm Jimmy That Well-Dressed Man; Who Will Be With You When I'm Far Away, Out in Far Rockaway? and Did You Ever Have the Feelin' That You Wanted To Go, Still You Have the Feelin' That You Wanted To Stay? I Know Darn Well I Can Do Without Broadway (Can Broadway Do Without Me?).

The team's most famous act sprang out of Jimmy's reading of an advertisement by the National Lumber Manufacturers Association. It said: "Almost everyone has been induced to believe that this country is confronted by an acute shortage of timber. This is not true. . . . Wood built America. Without wood there could have been no America. . . . Wood built the homes . . . churches . . . stockades . . . corncribs . . . WOOD ENDURES . . . Wood is friendly, wood is economical."

This inspired Jimmy to develop a highly philosophical scene which began with Jackson casually remarking that Jimmy was a blockhead. Jimmy at once protested, "You paid me a compliment when you said my head was made of wood," and launched into a lecture on the virtues of timber. As this reached religious heat, the other members of the team, thoroughly sold on wood, joined Durante in a search for samples. They proceeded to a methodical separation of the nightclub, snatched violins from the orchestra, went backstage and to the kitchen for mixing bowls and stepladders. Gradually they covered the dance floor with assorted woodwork (pushcarts, wooden Indians, rickshaws), reaching a climax by carrying in a birchbark canoe or an outhouse.

A Nose for the Times. The team sang their hilarious swan song in the Broadway musical The New Yorkers. This engagement led to a story which, if apocryphal, is characteristically and profoundly Durante. In The New Yorkers, Father Durante, 81, is said to have seen Jimmy perform for the first time. After the show, Jimmy confidently asked: "Well, pop, how'd ya like my work?" Said aged Father Durante: "Lissen son, les not get in an argument."

It was 1931 and depression had struck the nightclubs. Jimmy went to Hollywood. Clayton went along as manager. Jackson joined another trio, but returned as one of Jimmy's backstage assistants. Jimmy's oldtime admirers hate to recall what happened to him in Hollywood. His more obvious buffoonery was played up, but the subtle, split-second comic counterpoint between Clayton, Jackson & Durante and their jazz band never penetrated Hollywood. In 1936 Jimmy gave himself a change by touring Europe. In Glasgow, his act so moved Sir Harry Lauder that the classic old Scottish comedian rose from his seat and joined Jimmy on the stage in spontaneous partnership.

The high-hatted critic of the London Times meditated upon Durante's nose.

Wrote he: "As a promontory among noses it would have earned the admiration of Slawken-Bergius.*. . . It is indeed a very remarkable nose . . . and one which differentiates itself from other remarkable noses. It has not the tremendous hook of Lord Chatham's; it is not aspiring, like the Younger Pitt's, nor wildly ambitious, like Lady Hester Stanhope's, nor grandly aquiline, like the Iron Duke's; but as one studies it there is a temptation to think that it must be prehensile, like an elephant's trunk. . . ."

Mr. Umbriago. Last February Jimmy was left alone. His wife, to whom he was singularly devoted, died. His father had died in 1940; his mother, sister and two brothers were also dead. His only near relatives were two nephews, and they were in the armed forces.

Jimmy turned to his old tonic: intimate, free-style comedy in a Manhattan nightclub. His triumph in eight weeks at the Copacabana enraptured his friends and customers, who saw a great clown resume mastery of his profession. He was, in his own tongue, "colossial." His take ($2,750 weekly from radio, $3,500 more from the nightclub) helped add up to his best fiscal year--about $250,000. He moved into his old suite at the Astor (No. 472) with Eddie Jackson, Jack Roth, for a quarter of a century his drummer, hat buyer, trainer, secretary, valet, friend--and Mr. Umbriago.

Umbriago, whom Durante calls "that lifelong chum," is partly a creation of Jimmy's far-fetching imagination and partly a figment of Italian folklore. The folklore Umbriago is a friendly, lusty, happy little man who is always the life of the party, and Jimmy is sure he knows what he looks like (see cover). But in Jimmy's comedy, Umbriago may assume many shapes--clarinetist, bank president, farmer--according to whatever mischief Durante is up to. Umbriago is also at war. One U.S. Army paratroop division has abandoned the classic paratrooper cry Geronimo! in favor of Umbriago!

Thanks to Lou Clayton, who has assumed firm control of the Durante finances, Jimmy is a millionaire. He is grateful to Clayton, but his partner's propensity for high living disturbs him. Clayton wears $35 shirts. He also sometimes buys them for Jimmy. Jimmy takes them around to his own haberdasher and exchanges them for his own $6 variety.

Jimmy has almost forgotten about the days when he played the races. His friends haven't. Those days seem funnier to them than anything since. Jimmy tried to beat the whole horse industry. If eight tracks were operating, he played a horse in every race on every track. Sometimes he would have dozens of horses in scores of parlays all over the nation. The hours he spent handicapping them were as nothing to the time consumed in trying to figure out whether he had won $10 or lost $70. Ultimately his bookie took pity on him, ar ranged to return 50% of the money, win, lose or scratch.

Jimmy wears glasses now ('"for readin' da racin' form'") and his hair, despite violent applications of every tonic known to barbers, has thinned ("I'm known as the surrey with the fringe on top"). But his Gargantuan energy is unabated. Suite No. 472 is never locked. Friends swarm through the place.

Sweet Encyclopedist. Jimmy is probably the hardest-working millionaire extant. He eats little (two raw eggs for breakfast), sleeps little (about five hours), reads widely (keeps an encyclopedia in the bathroom). Jackson and Roth never leave him alone; all three continually fuss over each other's colds, headaches. Jimmy goes to the cemetery every Sunday--in New York, to visit his father's grave; in Holly wood, to decorate his wife's.

One of the few truly modest men in show business, Jimmy spends almost nothing on himself and gives away about as much money as Clayton will let him get his hands on. He is superstitious (no hats on the bed). The nearest he ever comes to telling a dirty joke, either on or off stage, is his standard wheeze about the card from his girl telling him that she has a room with running water ("You better get rid of dat Indian!"). Lou Clayton, who is not given to sentimentality, describes Jimmy as "the sweetest god damned guy that ever lived." And, as his every accent suggests, Jimmy is a considerable democrat and libertarian. In 1938, when he heard of a campaign to clean up his beloved Broadway, Jimmy exploded:

"Whatta dey wanna go messin' around faw? Whatta dey wanna scrape up da choon gum of fa da sidewalks faw? Maybe dey wanna have a Park Avenoo over here instead of Broadway. Leave it ta hell alone or it won't be Broadway no more. Put up a sign dat says spit out your choon gum folks, dis is old Broadway; spit er out. Don't put no constrictions on da people. Leave 'em ta hell alone."

* Jimmy still gives it--but not to everybody. Introduced recently to one of the more piercing journalists, he stuck out his hand and said: "I give you the small hello."

* Long-nosed, nonexistent authority on nasology, out of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy.

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