Jimmy DuranteFilmography

Classic Comedy Teams

Synopsis: A documentary video that looks at the many hilarious comedians in history. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

Best of 50's Comedy

The Lost Stooges

Synopsis: This documentary, narrated by respected film critic Leonard Maltin, focuses on the year or so that The Three Stooges spent at MGM studios, from 1933 to 1934. At the time, the trio -- Moe Howard, Larry Fine and newest Stooge Jerry, better known as Curly Howard, were still sidemen to Ted Healy. The Read More

Entertaining the Troops: American Entertainers in World War II

Synopsis: Entertainment history. Uses film clips and contemporary interviews to show what Hollywood did during World War II in raising money for the war and entertaining the troops. Shows entertainer Bob Hope and his performing troupe today. Other entertainers include Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, The Andrews Sisters Read More

Milton Berle: The Second Time Around - Funny Fifties

Steve Allen's Golden Age of Comedy

Synopsis: This video contains some of the most memorable moments from Steve Allen's long-running talk show. Featured guests include Mel Brooks, Jimmy Durante and Johnny Carson. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film, Vol. 4 - Hollywood Goes to War

Synopsis: This nostalgic video uses five short films to look back at Hollywood's efforts to bolster both overseas G.I.s and the folks back home during WW II. Each of the five shorts features an all-star cast doing things to cheer people up during a difficult time. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Frosty the Snowman

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Jackie Vernon, Billy De Wolfe

Synopsis: Frosty the Snowman is an animated television special based on the classic song about a magic snowman who comes to life and befriends several children. Jimmy Durante narrates the special and sings the title song. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide Read More

The Lucy Show: Lucy Goes to a Hollywood Premiere

Actors: Reta Shaw, Bert Freed, Beverly Hills, Flip Mark, Evan Pearson

Synopsis: Once again, Lucy (Lucille Ball) has a hankering to see some movie stars close-up. Her first step in this direction is to take over the "maps to the movie stars' homes" kiosk owned by her recently departed neighbor (Reta Shaw). One thing leads to another, and by episode's end Lucy has become an Read More

Alice Through the Looking Glass

Actors: Robert Coote, Jimmy Durante, Nanette Fabray, Ricardo Montalban, Agnes Moorehead, Jack Palance

Synopsis: No TV or movie producer has yet to resist the temptation of turning Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass into an all-star musical. Certainly the folks at ABC were unable to resist turning out the 1966 taped TV special Alice Through the Looking Glass, but the end result Read More

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Actors: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers, Dick Shawn, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton

Synopsis: With this all-star Cinerama epic, producer/director Stanley Kramer vowed to make "the comedy that would end all comedies." The story begins during a massive traffic jam, caused by reckless driver Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), who, before (literally) kicking the bucket, cryptically tells the Read More

Candid Hollywood

Billy Rose's Jumbo

Actors: Doris Day, Stephen Boyd, Jimmy Durante, Martha Raye, Dean Jagger

Synopsis: Inasmuch as the spectacular Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart Broadway musical Jumbo was written in 1935, this 1962 film version can't help but seem a little quaint. Still, the film features the original production's star Jimmy Durante, energetically recreating his stage role as circus owner Pop Read More

II Giudizio Universale

Actors: Vittorio Gassman, Renato Rascel, Fernandel, Akim Tamiroff

Synopsis: An episodic, funny, though uneven spoof of human manners and foibles, this comedy by Vittorio de Sica begins in Naples when a disembodied voice announces to the city's residents "The Last Judgment will begin at 6:00 p.m." Naturally, not all are immediately willing to accept this statement -- but Read More

Pepe

Actors: Cantinflas, Dan Dailey, Shirley Jones, Carlos Montalban, Vicki Trickett, Bing Crosby

Synopsis: Popular Mexican comedian Cantinflas (Mario Moreno) plays the title character in this star-studded, amusing comedy drama by George Sidney. Pepe is the same sort of impoverished stereotype Cantinflas made famous in several of his comedies; in this case he is a hired hand on a ranch who chases down a Read More

The All-Star Christmas Show

Actors: Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, George Burns, Milton Berle, Jack Benny

Synopsis: Produced for the Armed Forces overseas, this is a holiday spectacular created for Christmas. Fifty of the top stars of Hollywood in the 1950s turned out to be a part of this special. Some of these included: Bob Hope, George Burns, Bing Crosby, Danny Thomas, Dinah Shore, Shirley MacLaine, and Jane Russell Read More

Beau James

Actors: Bob Hope, Vera Miles, Paul Douglas, Alexis Smith, Darren McGavin

Synopsis: New York City is known for choosing colorful characters for its mayors. One its most illustrious was the wisecracking, dancing and singing Mayor James J. Walker (as played by Bob Hope in a rare, serious role) who helmed the Big Apple in the 1920s. This biopic chronicles his surprising rise to Read More

The Great Rupert

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Terry Moore, Tom Drake, Frank Orth, Sara Haden

Synopsis: Jimmy Durante plays the patriarch of a down-on-their-luck family of acrobats, who suddenly finds a great deal of money hidden in his house amid the depths of the Great Depression. The authorities suspect Durante of being a thief, but in fact the culprit is a benevolent little squirrel named Read More

The Milkman

Actors: Donald O'Connor, Jimmy Durante, Joyce Holden, William Conrad, Piper Laurie

Synopsis: The Milkman is a low-key variation of a theme explored in such slapstick festivals as The Fuller Brush Man and The Yellow Cab Man. Donald O'Connor plays Roger Bradley, who hopes to become a top-flight milkman to please his father (Henry O'Neill), the owner of the milk company. Jimmy Durante Read More

On an Island with You

Actors: Esther Williams, Peter Lawford, Ricardo Montalban, Jimmy Durante, Cyd Charisse

Synopsis: The title of this MGM musical alone should tip you to the fact that Esther Williams is the star. In this one, she plays a movie star (what an innovation!), Rosalind Reynolds, who is on location in Hawaii to shoot a picture. Peter Lawford plays the film's naval technical advisor, Lt. Lawrence Y. Read More

This Time for Keeps

Actors: Esther Williams, Johnny Johnston, Lauritz Melchior, Jimmy Durante, Xavier Cugat

Synopsis: In this aqueous musical comedy, an opera singer brings his son to Michigan's Mackinac Island where the son falls in love with the star of the "aquacaper." It is difficult to woo her as she is constantly surrounded by her piano-playing bodyguard and her ever-present grandmother. It's musical and Read More

It Happened in Brooklyn

Actors: Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Peter Lawford, Jimmy Durante, Gloria Grahame

Synopsis: It Happened in Brooklyn was released at a time when the mere mention of the eponymous New York borough elicited loud laughter and extended applause. Frank Sinatra stars as ex-GI Danny Webson Miller, who makes a sentimental journey to the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. Danny moves in with Read More

Two Sisters from Boston

Actors: Kathryn Grayson, June Allyson, Lauritz Melchior, Jimmy Durante, Peter Lawford

Synopsis: By 1946, MGM's musical output was in the hands of two men: the incisive, progressive Arthur Freed, and the sentimental, old-fashioned Joe Pasternak. It was Pasternak who held the reins on Two Sisters from Boston, a period piece set in New York. June Allyson and Kathryn Grayson arrive fresh from Read More

Ziegfeld Follies

Actors: Fred Astaire, Lucille Ball, Lucille Bremer, Fanny Brice, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly

Synopsis: The presence of William Powell as legendary showman Flo Ziegfeld at the beginning of Ziegfeld Follies might lead an impressionable viewer from thinking that this 1946 film is a Technicolor sequel to the 1936 Oscar-winning The Great Ziegfeld. Not so: this is more in the line of an all-star revue Read More

Music for Millions

Actors: Margaret O'Brien, Jimmy Durante, June Allyson, Marsha Hunt

Synopsis: Musical producer Joe Pasternak moved from Universal to MGM in the early 1940s, taking his pet director Henry Koster (the two men had teamed to make a star of Deanna Durbin) with him. The Pasternak/Koster collaboration Music for Millions features child star Margaret O'Brien as a Durbin-like Miss Read More

Two Girls and a Sailor

Actors: Van Johnson, June Allyson, Gloria de Haven, Jimmy Durante, Lena Horne

Synopsis: Two Girls and a Sailor is another of those all-star, no-plot wartime musicals turned out by the bushel basket in the 1940s. Its lack of nuance does not lessen its entertainment value in the least. Gloria DeHaven and June Allyson play a couple of well-meaning sisters who stage their own USO shows Read More

This Time for Keeps

Actors: Ann Rutherford, Robert Sterling, Guy Kibbee, Irene Rich, Virginia Weidler

Synopsis: This Time for Keeps is a followup to 1940's Keeping Company, with Ann Rutherford repeating her role from the earlier film. Rutherford is cast as newlywed Katherine White, at present undergoing a rocky "period of adjustment" with her husband Lee (Robert Sterling, replacing the original film's John Read More

You're in the Army Now

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Jane Wyman, Phil Silvers, Regis Toomey, George Meeker, Donald MacBride

Synopsis: In the wake of Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates, every studio in Hollywood began cranking out service comedies. Warner Bros.' contribution to this trend was You're in the Army Now, featuring the unlikely but undeniably chucklesome duo of Jimmy Durante and Phil Silvers. The stars are cast as Read More

The Man Who Came to Dinner

Actors: Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolley, Billie Burke, Jimmy Durante, Richard Travis

Synopsis: The George S. Kaufman/Moss Hart Broadway hit The Man Who Came to Dinner was inspired by the authors' mutual friend, waspish critic/author Alexander Woollcott. Generously bearded ex-Yale professor Monty Woolley, no mean curmudgeon himself, plays the Woollcott character, here rechristened Sheridan Read More

Melody Ranch

Actors: Gene Autry, Jimmy Durante, Ann Miller, Barton MacLane, Barbara Jo Allen

Synopsis: Beautifully restored to its original theatrical length of 84 minutes by the Gene Autry Foundation, Melody Ranch is a bright, tuneful, and at times quite action-packed piece of B-Western extravaganza, Republic style. The victim of both a drop in ratings and a tardy leading lady, radio star Gene Read More

Sally, Irene and Mary

Actors: Alice Faye, Tony Martin, Fred Allen, Jimmy Durante, Gregory Ratoff

Synopsis: Three manicurists hope to become entertainers through the auspices of their wisecracking agent (Fred Allen). Sally (Alice Faye) is the smart one, Irene (Joan Davis) the funny one, and Mary (Marjorie Weaver) the cute-and-innocent one. The girls secure work in a Greenwich village nitery, where Sally Read More

Little Miss Broadway

Actors: Shirley Temple, George Murphy, Jimmy Durante, Phyllis Brooks, Edna May Oliver

Synopsis: Child star Shirley Temple was getting a bit long in the tooth (at age 10!) by the time she made Little Miss Broadway. Facing the possibility that Temple's appeal was beginning to slip, the producers overstocked the film with top musical-comedy performers and character actors. The curly-topped Read More

Start Cheering

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Joan Perry, Charles Starrett

Synopsis: Start Cheering is Columbia Pictures' idea of a college musical: Practically everyone in the cast is past the age of 30. Charles Starrett plays a movie star who wearies of Hollywood and decides to get a college education. He enrolls incognito in a small university, much to the discomfort of his Read More

Forbidden Music

Synopsis: Imagine a whole country where music is outlawed! Director Walter Forde and writer Marian Dix dreamed up such a horrendous state of affairs for Forbidden Music (original British title: Land Without Music). It seems that the citizens of the mythical duchy of Lucco spend so much time singing that Read More

Land without Music

Actors: Richard Tauber, Jimmy Durante, Diana Napier, June Clyde, Derrick de Marney

Carnival

Actors: Lee Tracy, Sally Eilers, Jimmy Durante, Dickie Walters

Synopsis: In this melodramatic comedy a carnival puppeteer must cope with the death of his wife who expired while birthing his daughter. His father-in-law, decides to sue him for custody of the little girl because he believes carnival life with a single father will be harmful to her. The puppeteer takes the Read More

Hollywood Party

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Charles Butterworth, Lupe Velez, Polly Moran

Synopsis: Hollywood Party was planned as a lavish, star-studded MGM musical titled Hollywood Revue of 1933. Under the less-than-sterling guidance of "kicked upstairs" MGM producer Harry Rapf, production dragged on interminably, using up the talents of five directors (none of whom were credited) and Read More

Palooka

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez, Stuart Erwin, Robert Armstrong, Mary Carlisle

Synopsis: Based on the popular comic strip by Ham Fisher, this fast-paced and funny boxing outing follows the exploits of a boxing manager and the up-and-coming fighter he mentors to. The film is also known as Joe Palooka. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Strictly Dynamite

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Lupe Velez, Norman Foster, William Gargan, Marian Nixon

Synopsis: Six writers were involved in the RKO Radio musical comedy Strictly Dynamite; ironically, the plot concerns a radio comedian who's running out of material. Jimmy Durante stars as Maxie Slaight, an airwaves mirthmaker who hires young Nick Montgomery (Norman Foster) as his new gag man. Before he Read More

George White's Scandals

Actors: George White, Rudy Vallee, Alice Faye, Jimmy Durante, Dixie Dunbar, Gregory Ratoff, Adrienne Ames

Synopsis: Legendary Broadway impresario George White made his Hollywood debut with this musical, which he wrote, co-directed, and starred in as himself. Reporter Miss Lee (Gertrude Michael) is looking for a story and approaches White as he's assembling the latest edition of his famous revue. As it turns Read More

Student Tour

Actors: Jimmy Durante, Charles Butterworth, Maxine Doyle, Phil Regan, Florine McKinney

Synopsis: Student Tour looks like an MGM musical two-reeler that was expanded to feature length as it went along. Charles Butterworth and Jimmy Durante are teamed respectively as fey philosophy professor Lippincott and brash athletic coach Hank. The two comics shepherd a co-ed college rowing team on a world Read More

Meet the Baron

Actors: Jack Pearl, Jimmy Durante, ZaSu Pitts, Ted Healy, Edna May Oliver

Synopsis: In this comedy, a man masquerading as the notorious Baron Munchausen and his partner arrive from the African jungles and create quite a stir in New York. Eventually he ends up a women's college involved in a number of interesting musical production numbers. Look for an early appearance by the "The Read More

What! No Beer?

Actors: Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Roscoe Ates, Phyllis Barry, John Miljan

Synopsis: In this comedy, Jimmy Potts (Jimmy Durante) and Elmer J. Butts (Buster Keaton, Jr.) come up with a scheme to start up a beer brewery with the hope that Prohibition will soon be over. However, things don't work out exactly as they planned, and they end up in a mess of trouble. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Read More

Broadway to Hollywood

Actors: Alice Brady, Frank Morgan, Madge Evans, Russell Hardie, Jackie Cooper

Synopsis: Broadway to Hollywood is a through-the-years saga about a show business family. Frank Morgan and Alice Brady play vaudeville headliners of the 1880s whose fame is eclipsed by their son (played as a youth by Jackie Cooper, then as an adult by Russell Hardie). Morgan and Brady are reduced to bit Read More

Hell Below

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Walter Huston, Madge Evans, Jimmy Durante, Eugene Pallette

Synopsis: Hell Below transcends its hackneyed World War I plot to emerge as a drama of rare originality and gutsiness. Walter Huston stars as a submarine commander whose lieutenant (Robert Montgomery) falls in love with Huston's daughter (Madge Evans). All cliches (including the intrusive comedy relief of Jimmy Durante Read More

Speak Easily

Actors: Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Ruth Selwyn, Thelma Todd, Hedda Hopper

Synopsis: Buster Keaton's best sound feature casts the Great Stone Face as Professor Post, a naïve college pedant who mistakenly believes he has inherited $750,000. Hoping to use this windfall to bring the Fine Arts to the waiting world, Post gets mixed up with a two-bit theatrical troupe, headed by Jimmy Read More

The Passionate Plumber

Actors: Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Irene Purcell, Polly Moran, Gilbert Roland

Synopsis: Previously filmed with Marion Davies in 1928, Jacques Deval's warhorse stage property Her Cardboard Lover was revamped four years later as the Buster Keaton vehicle The Passionate Plumber. The Great Stone Face stars as Elmer Tuttle, a Parisian plumber who is hired by dizzy heroine Patricia Alden (Irene Purcell Read More

The Phantom President

Actors: George M. Cohan, Claudette Colbert, Jimmy Durante, George Barbier, Sidney Toler

Synopsis: Legendary songwriter and vaudevillian George M. Cohan made his first appearance in a sound film with this satiric musical comedy. Theodore Blair (Cohan) is a politician running for president; while he has talent and intelligence, he's unfortunately as exciting as warm milk, and he is not doing Read More

Le Plombier Amoureux

Actors: Polly Moran, Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante

The Wet Parade

Actors: Dorothy Jordan, Neil Hamilton, Emma Dunn, Robert Young

Synopsis: Directed by Victor Fleming, Wet Parade chronicles the effects of alcoholism and the Prohibition on the lives of two families from very different backgrounds. The Tarletons reside in New York City, where the family patriarch (Walter Huston) repeatedly drowns himself in liquor and local bars. The Read More

Blondie of the Follies

Actors: Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Billie Dove, Jimmy Durante, James Gleason

Synopsis: Marion Davies and Billie Dove, both veterans of the real-life Ziegfeld Follies, star in the entertaining comedy-drama Blondie of the Follies. Having both grown up in the New York tenement district, Blondie (Davies) and Lurleen (Dove) hope to escape their shabby surroundings in favor of the Read More

Wallingford

Actors: William Haines, Jimmy Durante, Ernest Torrence, Leila Hyams, Guy Kibbee

Synopsis: Officially released as The New Adventures of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, this William Haines vehicle was snappily adapted by Charles MacArthur from the "Wallingford" short stories by George Randolph Chester. Haines of course plays the title character, a breezy con artist in league with personable Read More

The Cuban Love Song

Actors: Lawrence Tibbett, Lupe Velez, Karen Morley, Hale Hamilton

Synopsis: MGM had hopes of turning Metropolitan opera singer Lawrence Tibbett into a movie star, but Cuban Love Song brought this two-year project to an end. Tibbett plays a cocky marine stationed in Havana, who devotes his attention to voluptuous Cuban peanut vendor Lupe Velez. He serenades her with "The Read More

Roadhouse Nights

Actors: Helen Morgan, Charlie Ruggles, Fred Kohler, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Jackson

Synopsis: Jimmy Durante made his movie debut in Roadhouse Nights, a strange amalgam of musical comedy and gangster melodrama. In truth, Durante is a special added attraction, together with his nightclub partners Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson. The film's nominal star is Helen Morgan, a nitery chanteuse whose Read More

Jimmy Durante Show and Spike Jones Show

Synopsis: This historic presentation features an episode from each of these vintage comedy series with Jimmy Durante. ~ All Movie Guide Read More