My Love and Hate Relationship with Jimmy Durante

Television reruns are nothing new. Growing up in the 60’s, we watched The Mouseketeers, I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and so many others. But long before then, when our parents were young and didn’t have television to rot their brains, they went to the movies. For a dime, they could see movie serials like The Bowery Boys and The Little Rascals. They watched The Marx Brothers, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, Laurel and Hardy, Red Skelton, and then later Abbot and Costello. All of these actors and their movies found their way to a new audience via our black and white TV screens in the 50’s and 60’s.

I remember watching them all, but I don’t remember when I first became interested in these shows. However, I can tell you that I was 4 years old when I began my imitation of Jimmy Durante. The 8mm home movies my Dad took of us actually recorded my obvious obsession with this silver screen comedian. Don’t ask me why I chose Jimmy Durante. I think because he was my father’s favorite. My dad would say “Ha-cha-cha-cha-cha…I gotta million of ‘em!” to make us smile. In fact, my imitation was likely more of my Dad’s imitation of Jimmy Durante, rather than Durante himself. In any case, as a goofy looking 4 year old with missing front teeth, my dad thought it was cute when I did it and it made everyone laugh. The more they laughed, the more it encouraged me.

Soon, I added plastic, fake glasses courtesy of my father. You know the kind - the ones with the enormous nose and bushy eyebrows and mustache attached. Also added to my repertoire was the catch phrase, “that ain’t my banana, that’s my nose!” and a dance that began with a Russian leg kick and finished off with a Chubby Checker Twist where I shook my fanny. I knocked ‘em dead with the act whenever anyone came to visit.

On one particular day, however, my siblings’ laughter turned into teasing and ridicule. Was it out of jealousy? Perhaps they were just tired of the act or the attention it drew. All I know is what I am told now by my brothers who recount the events. Apparently, their teasing turned my “Make ‘Em Laugh” demeanor into “I’m going to Kill ‘Em!” My brothers tell me I picked up the first thing I could swing and chased them around the yard. It was an Al Kaline autographed Louisville Slugger bat and it was bigger than me. There they all were - Tom, Mark, and maybe even Dan – all running far enough away from me to stay out of harm’s way, but close enough to appear to me to be within reach through my wet, rage-filled eyes.

Crying, swinging, screaming, and running – the event was all too much for me and I tripped over the very instrument of destruction I was wielding – ass over teakettle. My brothers, the antagonists of my tirade, were now roaring with laughter as my father captured the entire show on his precious movie camera. As I laid on our lawn chair sobbing from the humiliation and the taunting, my dad shot a closeup of my sad face. It was a movie clip that all of my family remembers. If it weren’t for the video that has since been transferred from 8mm to VHS, to now DVD format, I would only remember the one thing from that fateful day – the punishment I got from my Dad after I slapped his face and knocked his precious camera down to the sweet summer grass of 1962. I never did Jimmy Durante imitations again.