The Unknown: Jimmy Durante - The Great Schnozzola

Starring:Jimmy Durante
Studio: Winstar
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
"You can't explain Durante, he just is," says Leonard Maltin in this affectionate and thoroughly entertaining tribute to the Great Schnozzola.

A bald saloon-bar piano player with a huge nose and a sandpaper voice might not seem like a candidate for stardom, but Durante's show was a huge hit on NBC in the '50s. The best early TV shows built a close rapport with their viewers--perhaps because it was still a novelty to invite an entertainer into your home for the evening--and Durante had an instinctive grasp of this relationship. Audiences both in the studio and at home fell in love with his self-mocking wit, his rough-and-ready charm, and his habit of forgetting lines and cracking up his guests with adlibs.

Among the stars we see goofing around with Jimmy are Bette Davis, Carmen Miranda, Frank Sinatra, Liberace, and John Wayne. The sight of Wayne (at the height of his stardom in 1953) attempting to sing is worth the price of this show. Yet for all the wisecracks and gags, Durante's relationship with his audience is so strong that when he sits at his piano, hat pushed back, to sing "Try a Little Tenderness," it's surprisingly moving.

Amazon.com

"You can't explain Durante, he just is," says Leonard Maltin in this affectionate and thoroughly entertaining tribute to the Great Schnozzola.

The Unknown Jimmy Durante contains almost an hour of clips from his TV show, with comments from Maltin, Durante's wife, and his daughter CeCe. Far more than just a historical documentary or a nostalgia fix, this is a chance to see an extraordinary entertainer at work. --Simon Leake

Description

Filled with lengthy clips, interviews with Mrs. Jimmy Durante, daughter CeCe and Leonard Maltin, one of America's leading authorities on television and film history, Jimmy Durante: The Great Schnozzola showcases the talents and life of this comedy legend

Customer Reviews:

If You LIke Leonard Maltin.......2006-03-11

Too often on DVD's that are retrospective, contemporary people who have nothing to do with the subject of the DVD are included with their silly opinions. On this it is Leonard Maltin whose head and moving mouth comprise about 1/4 to 1/3 of the one hour. Seeing Mr. Durante's wife and daughter speak today is fine. They were there. Maltin was not and while a Maltin DVD can include his opinions and insight, he does not belong here. With the plethora of people from then, both then and now, who can be included, it befuddles and annoys me why Leonard Maltin peppers this DVD so generously that it should be called "Maltin on Durante."

Finally, something from a legend.......2004-01-29

There are few of the early television performers from my childhood that I remember more than Jimmy Durante. He is one of a kind, and, as this retrospective points out, it's not easy to define why he was so beloved.

There could be better jobs of putting a retrospective together, but, this is all we have so far of Durante's television variety/comedy years, so it will have to do. There were times I would liked to have seen a bit more of a particular bit, but this is a good taste of what those performances were like.

The transfer to DVD is quite good considering the age of the kinescopes and film.

If you remember Durante, you'll enjoy this video and wish there were more.

He's the top, he's the schnozz on the great Durante..........2001-06-09

Jimmy Durante's comic persona is one of the great inventions of the 20th century. Out of the bitterest of lemons -- gnomish stature, bald pate, Homeric nose, a voice like gravel pouring down a tin chute -- the Schnozzola concocted pure lemon gin fizz.

Keaton and Chaplin may've been greater artists, Groucho had better material, and W.C. Fields was a more acute observer of the human condition, but nobody was more fun to watch than Jimmy at full throttle: that strut, that battered fedora, that passionate, if aggrieved, air of the master beset by lesser lights ("Everybody wants ta get inta de act!") -- it's all here, and if you're as susceptible to his high-voltage charm as I am, you'll be left helpless with laughter.

One quibble: For a tape compiled of clips from a variety show, there's really not much variety. Delightful as Jimmy's song and dance routines are, I'd like to have seen a few complete skits, too (rather than the handful of snippets we get featuring showbiz legends like John Wayne and Frank Sinatra). And didn't anyone ever film an interview with Jimmy? Informative as the segments with his wife, daughter and Leonard Maltin are, seeing how The Schnozz comported himself offstage and out of the spotlight (no performer was ever more "on" when he was on) would've been "da piece of resistance!"

Something to watch for: since it's not mentioned in the narration or on the box, the producers apparently didn't realize that one of the "Durante Girls" sitting next to Jimmy during an early production number is a very young Mary Tyler Moore!

Really enjoyable.......2001-06-05

I first caught this on PBS. I laughed, I cried, I ordered a copy for myself and one for my mom. Really great nostalgic stuff, many of the best numbers from Jimmy's NBC TV show from the early fifties, along with some (not too many) recent interviews and commentary from Jimmy's family and the film critic Leonard Maltin. If you are old enough to remember Jimmy Durante, black and white TV, live broadcasts with ad libs, and Inka-Dinka-Do, this is a must see.

Really enjoyable.......2001-06-05

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