Dominick DeLuise was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian American parents Vincenza DeStefano and John DeLuise. DeLuise graduated from Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts and later attended Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts where he majored in biology. 

In 1961, DeLuise played in the Off-Broadway musical revue Another Evening with Harry Stoons, which lasted nine previews and one performance. Another member of the cast was 19-year-old Barbra Streisand. DeLuise generally appeared in comedic parts, although an early appearance in the movie Fail-Safe as a nervous USAF technical sergeant showed a broader range. His first acting credit was as a regular performer in the television show The Entertainers in 1964. He gained early notice for his supporting turn in the Doris Day film The Glass Bottom Boat (1966). 

TV producer Greg Garrison hired DeLuise to appear as a specialty act on The Dean Martin Show. DeLuise ran through his “Dominick the Great” routine, a riotous example of a magic act gone wrong. Dom’s catch phrase, with an Italian accent, was “No Applause Please, Save-a to the End.” The show went so well that DeLuise was soon a regular on Martin’s program, participating in both songs and sketches. 

DeLuise was probably best known as a regular in Mel Brooks’ films. He appeared in The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Silent Movie, History of the World, Part I, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Brooks’ late wife, actress Anne Bancroft, directed Dom in Fatso (1980)

In the 1970s and 1980s, he often co-starred with his real-life friend Burt Reynolds, in films like The Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit II. DeLuise was the host of the television show Candid Camera from 1991 to 1992. He was a mainstay of Burke’s Law, an American television series that aired on CBS in the mid 1990’s.

An avid cook and author of several books on cooking, he appeared as a regular contributor to a syndicated home improvement radio show, On The House with The Carey Brothers, giving listeners tips on culinary topics. 

DeLuise died of kidney failure on May 4, 2009 at age 75. He had been battling cancer for more than a year prior to his death.

Source: Wiki 

James Francis Durante was born in 1893 on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Rosa (Lentino) and Bartolomeo Durante, both of whom were immigrants from Salerno, Italy. Durante dropped out of school in seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first played with his cousin, whose name was also Jimmy Durante. He continued working the city’s piano bar circuit and earned the nickname “ragtime Jimmy”, before he joined one of the first recognizable jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band. His routine of breaking into a song to deliver a joke, with band or orchestra chord punctuation after each line, became a Durante trademark. In 1920 the group was renamed Jimmy Durante’s Jazz Band.

By the mid-1920s, Durante had become a vaudeville star and radio personality in a trio named Clayton, Jackson and Durante. By 1934, Durante had a major record hit with his own novelty composition, “Inka Dinka Doo”. It became his theme song for the rest of his life. 

During the early 1930s, Durante alternated between Hollywood and Broadway. His early motion pictures included an original Rodgers & Hart musical The Phantom President (1932), which featured Durante singing the self-referential Schnozzola. Durante went on to appear in The Wet Parade (1932), Broadway to Hollywood (1933), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942, playing Banjo, a character based on Harpo Marx), It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and many more. 

Durante had a half-hour variety show – The Jimmy Durante Show – on NBC from 1954 to 1956. His television work also included a series of commercial spots for Kellogg’s Corn Flakes cereals in the mid-1960s, which introduced Durante’s gravelly growl and narrow-eyed, large-nosed countenance to millions of children. “Dis is Jimmy Durante, in puy-son!” was his introduction to some of the Kellogg’s spots. One of his last appearances was in a memorable television commercial for the 1973 Volkswagen Beetle, where he proclaimed that the new, roomier Beetle had “plenty of breathin’ room… for de old schnozzola!”

In 1963, Durante recorded the album of pop standards September Song. The album became a best-seller and provided Durante’s re-introduction to yet another generation, almost three decades later. From the Jimmy Durante’s Way of Life album came the gravelly interpretation of the song “As Time Goes By”, which accompanied the opening credits of the romantic comedy hit Sleepless in Seattle, while his version of “Make Someone Happy” launched the film’s closing credits. Durante also recorded a cover of the well-known song “I’ll Be Seeing You”, which became a trademark song on his 1960s TV show. This song was featured in the 2004 film The Notebook.

Jimmy Durante is known to most modern audiences as the character who narrated and sang the 1969 animated special Frosty the Snowman. Durante died in 1980 in his home in Santa Monica, California, and was 86 years old.

Source: Wiki