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