11 thoughts on “Jimmy Durante Movies”

1. Not too aware of his movies,but I know the name.

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   1. Hey Charlie… I am pretty much in the same boat as you….I know the name…but not too aware of his movie career.

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2. I have seen 14 Jimmy Durante movies.

   The HIGHEST rated movie I have seen is It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

   The highest rated movie I have NOT seen is Little Miss Broadway.

   The LOWEST rated movie I have seen is Hollywood Party.

   Favourite Jimmy Durante Movies;

   It’s a Mad, mad, Mad, Mad World
   Two Girls and a Sailor
   It Happened in Brooklyn
   Hell Below

   Other Jimmy Durante Movies I Have Seen:

   Music For Millions
   The Man Who Came To Dinner
   Two Sisters From Boston
   On an Island With You
   Blondie of the Follies
   Billy Rose’s Jumbo
   The Great Rupert (refers to a squirrel)
   The Passionate Plumber
   Speak Easily
   Hollywood Party

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   1. Hey Flora…thanks for the feedback on Jimmy Durante. Tally count: Dan with a stellar 32, you easily in second place with 14….and Bob and I barely on the board with 3 movies. I have seen one of your favorites (Mad * 4 times World) and two of your others….Billy Rose’s Jumbo and The Man Who Came To Dinner. I was not a big fan of either of those. Good stuff, hope your weekend is going awesome.

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3. HI BRUCE: You will of course have heard the expression “famous for being famous”. For a long time Jimmy was just that to me. I heard his name bandied-about quite a lot but as your tables above faithfully record the vast bulk of his movie career occurred pre-1950s before I started going to the cinema and reruns of them never seemed to appear over here either in the cinemas or on TV.

   Accordingly I have only ever seen 3 of his movies on your lists: The Man Who Came to Dinner; Beau James in which Leslie Townes Hope for once played a dramatic role and wasn’t bad in it actually – certainly better than Sly would have been in that part!!; and It’s a Mad World which I also thoroughly enjoyed. Billy Rose’s Jumbo is one of the few of my Doris’s movies that I didn’t like the sound of so I could have seen it but gave it a miss.

   To be honest I can’t remember Jimmy in Beau James or Man Who Came to Dinner and if my memory is correct he died at the start of Mad World. I think that the moment he died his foot collided with and knocked over a nearby bucket and someone quipped “He’s just kicked the bucket!” No? That certainly would have been Durante’s style of humor as I understand it.

   Of course I remember many of the other riotous scenes in that very funny movie; but I also vividly remember standing in a queue outside the cinema and a pal and I glancing-up at the posters on which the cast read: starring Spencer Tracy and in alphabetical order Milton Berle etc. My pal turned round to me and said “It seems that as long as Tracy is mentioned first it doesn’t matter about the rest!”

   So you see Work Horse even at a very young age and long before the Cogerson site came into being I was aware of Old Cantankerous’s addiction to the top spot!! Anyway thanks as this new page is most appreciated as it has belatedly acquainted me with Durante’s overall filmography so “Voted Up!”

   NOTE: Quotes of Durante’s net worth at time of death in 1980 are varied and therefore inconsistent; but one source quotes it at $53 million when adjusted for infation at 2022 prices by the US Bureau of Labor Stats Inflation Calculator.

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   1. Hey Bob. Thanks for the feedback on WoC’s granddad’s buddy Jimmy Durante. Tally count: Dan with 32, Flora with 14 and you and me at 3. Hmmm….your comment brought back some memories. First of all…let’s talk about It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad World. For years I saw a lot of the movie….but never the beginning of the movie…..so it literally took me decades to see his part in that movie. His part is the one that sets up all the action of the movie. Secondly, Billy Rose’s Jumbo….WoC and I were watching that movie when something happened in the house and we had to go to the emergency room. We can not remember what happened…but my weird mind remembers finishing the movie by myself….so WoC never saw the ending. Good stories on Tracy, Berle and Bob Hope. Good stuff.

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      1. .HI O ILLUSTRIOUS ONE!: Thanks for your detailed feedback. It’s always good to get your opinions about movies – so I’ll know the ones NOT to watch when I see what YOU like!!! [Who wants to watch films about a little dog barking all the time? – it would give an aspirin a headache!]

         You know: what I’m going to tell you next will make you realise how uncannily eerie it is that you should mention “The Schnoz” being W o C’s grandad’s buddy – amazing!

         I mentioned to you that whilst growing up I saw just a couple of Jimmy’s movies but was familiar with his name because I heard it mentioned a lot.

         It occurred to me as I was writing that passage that adults in particular in those days had a much greater fascination with movie stars than generally seems to be the case today.

         That’s probably because I grew up when TV for example was in its infancy over here and initially we got just a few programmes for a limited period each day so that the movies -and the radio – were mostly what we had to entertain us.

         Today we not only have wall-to-wall television 24/7 but the TV menu includes vast coverage of all kinds of sport and many other programme varieties and we have numerous additional entertainment outlets and pastimes as well including the internet. Also partially as a result most people seem to lead busier lives these days – take you for instance!!!

         Thus movie stars don’t have quite the monopoly in the public’s minds that they perhaps once had when there were more big-cinema household names around and adults seemed to imagine they had a greater bond with them than is maybe the case today.

         So when writing to you about Durante I recalled that my father and his contemporaries would often when round the dinner table casually drop into the conversation cosy references to “Humphrey” and “The Duke” as if Bogie and Wayne were close buddies of my dad and his mates – and then you come along and tell me that Durante actually WAS the buddy of a blood-relative of W o C’s! Eerie as I say – but it must have been great fun for W o C’s granda hanging-out with a live wire with The Schnoz.

         Mind you whilst in those days the grown-ups appear as I have said to have had a greater preoccupation and feeling of affinity with film stars than is possibly the case today I never came across an adult who idolised a movie CRITIC and quoted one at length.

         I had to wait 60 years for that experience – so no wonder Brando SEEMS to me to have gotten a kinder press in the 1950s than he does in some quarters nowadays!

         Anyway thanks for sharing that wonderful Schnoz story with your viewers; enjoy the rest of your weekend; and I hope you are now fully on the mend or at least nearing it. I’m cross with you for not keeping us informed about your progress.

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         1. Hey Bob…great stories of you and your dad. Sadly, WoC never got the chance to meet her granddad as Gus Coats passed away about 13 years before she was born. Mr. Coats sounds like he had a pretty impressive resume of meeting and knowing lots of stars back then. He went from vaudeville to movie theaters when they changed over. Good points about how things are now compared to then.

            Finally..Durante’s sign off phrase for his radio show was….”Goodnight Mrs. Calabash”….Durante never really explained it….but Mr. Coats was one of the few that knew the meeting of the phrase. Good stuff as always!

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            1. HI O GREAT PANJANDRUM! Apparently Durante did ultimately reveal the origins of “Goodnight Mrs Calabash wherever you are?” It was it seems a tribute to his first wife. While driving across the country they stopped in a small town called Calabash which name she had loved so he always associated it with her.

               Strange how many great cultural references have simple and innoicent origins, isn’t it? Who knows?: maybe in the distant future viewers will be scratching their heads and asking “Who on earth WAS The Thin Woman?”

               Anyway thanks for your reply to my own post. It was certainly interesting to learn of the magnitude of celebs that Gus Coates apparently rubbed shoulders with.

               My own father couldn’t really cope with meeting the great and famous. His brother, naturally my uncle, lived in London England and the pair used to go walkabout when my dad visited him.

               My uncle told me that on one of those occasions they passed a large garden belonging to English supporting actor George Coulouris and George was working in it gardening.

               According to my uncle my father leaned over the gate and grovelled to Coulouris to such an extent that my uncle thought dad was going to crawl under the ground!

               My uncle said to me “Harry made such an ass of himself falling at the feet of Coulouris that I hate to think of the exhibition he’d have made of himself if we had bumped into someone really great like John Wayne or Cary Grant!”

               I used to taunt dad with that story; but nowadays it occurs to me that maybe he knew his place and George fully-deserved to be grovelled to.

               Afterall Coulouris was born in Manchester England and look who else has come from there: Steve Lensman and your own grandparent Anyway keep safe.

               NB: IMDB lists 176 TV and movie credits for George and his movies include the roles of Walter Parks Thatcher in Welles’ 1941 Citizen Kane; Dr Chatal in McQueen/Hoffman’s 1973 Papillon; and a doctor again in Albert Finney’s 1974 Murder on the Orient Express. George is billed 16th in the latter film. His surname is sometimes spelt with just one u – Colouris

4. I have seen 32 of Jimmy’s films; the highest ranked I have not seen is George White’s Scandals.

   Jimmy Durante was never on the Oracle of Bacon Top 1000. These are the actors on the 2021 list he appeared with.

   16 ERNEST BORGNINE The Last Judgment (1961)
   111 JACK PALANCE The Last Judgment (1961)
   153 MICKEY ROONEY Broadway to Hollywood (1933)
   153 MICKEY ROONEY It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
   286 PETER FALK It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
   324 JACK LEMMON Pepe (1960)
   378 AVA GARDNER Two Girls and a Sailor (1944)
   435 CESAR ROMERO Pepe (1960)
   459 VITTORIO GASSMAN The Last Judgment (1961)
   472 TONY CURTIS Pepe (1960)
   475 ANOUK AIMEE The Last Judgment (1961)
   484 AKIM TAMIROFF The Last Judgment (1961)
   554 PETER LAWFORD It Happened in Brooklyn (1947)
   554 PETER LAWFORD On an Island with You (1948)
   554 PETER LAWFORD Pepe (1960)
   554 PETER LAWFORD Two Sisters from Boston (1946)
   788 FRANK SINATRA It Happened in Brooklyn (1947)
   788 FRANK SINATRA Pepe (1960)
   795 BRODERICK CRAWFORD Start Cheering (1938)
   831 BETTE DAVIS The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
   847 DEBBIE REYNOLDS Pepe (1960)
   892 TERRY-THOMAS It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
   926 MIKE MAZURKI It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
   972 PIPER LAURIE The Milkman (1950)

   Jimmy appeared with 20 Oscar winners

   ALICE BRADY Broadway to Hollywood (1933)
   BETTE DAVIS The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
   BING CROSBY Pepe (1960)
   BRODERICK CRAWFORD Start Cheering (1938)
   CHARLES COBURN Pepe (1960)
   CLAUDETTE COLBERT The Phantom President (1932)
   DEAN JAGGER Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962)
   DONNA REED Pepe (1960)
   ERNEST BORGNINE The Last Judgment (1961)
   FRANK SINATRA It Happened in Brooklyn (1947)
   FRANK SINATRA Pepe (1960)
   GIG YOUNG The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
   GIG YOUNG You’re in the Army Now (1941)
   GLORIA GRAHAME It Happened in Brooklyn (1947)
   JACK LEMMON Pepe (1960)
   JACK PALANCE The Last Judgment (1961)
   JANE DARWELL Little Miss Broadway (1938)
   JANE WYMAN You’re in the Army Now (1941)
   SHIRLEY JONES Pepe (1960)
   SPENCER TRACY It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963)
   WALTER BRENNAN George White’s Scandals (1934)
   WALTER HUSTON Hell Below (1933)
   WALTER HUSTON The Wet Parade (1932)

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   1. Hey Dan. Thanks for checking out our latest page…Mr. Jimmy Durante. Not surprised he was not on an Oracle list. For as long as his career was, he does not actually have that many IMDb acting credits. Looking at the tally counts: A big win for you….as your 32 tops the combined 20 that Flora, Bob and myself have seen (14 for her and 3 each for me and Bob).

      Looking at the most frequent Oracle co-star and we see his fellow MGM player Peter Lawford with 4 movies. 20 Oscar winning co-stars is good for the limited amount of movies he made. Thanks for the feedback on a “friend to the family” Jimmy Durante.

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