Jimmy Durante biography

Profile

When he was 17, Jimmy Durante started playing the piano at Diamond Tony's Saloon. With the vaudevillians Eddie Jackson and Lou Clayton, he opened the Club Durante in 1923. The partners performed there and in other clubs throughout the 1920s. Durante had roles in Broadway productions. He starred in several radio programs during the '40s. In 1963, he acted in the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Durante died on January 29, 1980, in Santa Monica, California.