His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of the United States' most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s.

When the trio played Broadway's famed Palace Theater during the week of June 4, 1928, Betty Felsen's production of Ballet Caprice headlined the bill.

Earlier the same year, the team appeared in the film Roadhouse Nights, ostensibly based on Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest.

[citation needed] By 1934, Durante had a major record hit with his own novelty composition, "Inka Dinka Doo", with lyrics by Ben Ryan.

Durante then replaced Cliff Edwards as the comic foil in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's Buster Keaton comedies: Speak Easily (1932), The Passionate Plumber (1932), and What!

Columbia Pictures offered him a major role in its college musical Start Cheering, filmed in 1937, and he received excellent critical notices, re-establishing him in movies.

On September 10, 1933, Durante appeared on Eddie Cantor's NBC radio show, The Chase and Sanborn Hour, continuing until November 12 of that year.

Their Armed Forces Radio Network Command Performance[7][8] with Frank Sinatra remains a favorite of radio-show collectors today.

Billboard magazine reviewed the appearance: "Without script, rehearsal or make-up he went on and gave a top performance, proving that a star of Durante's caliber shines in any entertainment medium.

[citation needed] From 1950 to 1951, Durante was the host once a month (alternating with Ed Wynn, Danny Thomas, and Jack Carson) on NBC's comedy-variety series Four Star Revue, airing on Wednesday evenings at 8 p.m. Jimmy continued with the show until 1954.

Several times in the 1960s, Durante served as host of ABC's variety hour The Hollywood Palace, which was taped live (and consequently included ad-libs by the seasoned vaudevillian).

[10] As her death was not immediately expected, Durante was touring in New York at the time and returned to Los Angeles right away to complete the funeral arrangements.

Durante's radio show was bracketed with two trademarks: "Inka Dinka Doo" as his opening theme, and the invariable signoff that became another familiar national catchphrase: "Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are."

[11] At a National Press Club meeting in 1966 (broadcast on NBC's Monitor program), Durante finally revealed that it was indeed a tribute to his wife.

[13] On August 15, 1958, for his charitable acts, Durante was awarded a three-foot-high brass loving cup by the Al Bahr Shriners Temple in San Diego, California.

One of the projects built using money from the Durante Fund was a heated therapy swimming pool at the Hughen School in Port Arthur, Texas.

In Las Vegas, he was seen regularly after Sunday Mass outside of the Guardian Angel Cathedral, standing next to the priest and greeting parishioners as they left the church.

In 1933, he appeared in an advertisement shown in theaters supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs and wrote a musical score titled Give a Man a Job to accompany it.

He performed at both the inaugural gala for President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and a year later at the famous Madison Square Garden rally for the Democratic party that featured Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to JFK.

The television work also included a series of commercial spots for Kellogg's Corn Flakes cereals in the mid-1960s, which introduced Durante to millions of children.

After reading the material Hyman had compiled for the book, Durante commented on it: "COLOSSAL, GIGANTIC, MAGNANIMOUS, and last but not first, AURORA BOREALIS.

He received Catholic funeral rites four days later, with fellow entertainers Desi Arnaz, Ernest Borgnine, Marty Allen, and Jack Carter in attendance, and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

In MGM's Tom and Jerry cartoons with father-and-son bulldogs Spike and Tyke, Durante was referenced with a raspy voice and an affectionate "Dat's my boy!"

One Harman-Ising short from 1933, Bosko's Picture Show, featured a caricature of Adolf Hitler chasing Durante with a meat cleaver.

Three examples from the 1940s include A Gruesome Twosome, which features a cat based on Durante, and Baby Bottleneck, which in unedited versions opens with a Durante-like stork.

He also appears as a walrus in the 1945 United States Armed Forces World War II-era training film In the Aleutians – Isles of Enchantment.

In The Mouse-Merized Cat, Catstello (a Lou Costello mouse) briefly is hypnotized to imitate Jimmy Durante singing "Lullaby of Broadway".

One of the main characters in Terrytoons' Heckle and Jeckle cartoon series also takes to imitating Jimmy in 1948's "Taming The Cat" ("Get a couple of song birds today...").

Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger performed impressions of Durante from The Man Who Came to Dinner, singing "Did You Ever Have the Feeling" in 1988's My Stepmother Is an Alien.

[19] His performance of "Young at Heart" was featured in City Slickers (1991),[20] and his versions of "As Time Goes By" and "Make Someone Happy" played over the opening and closing credits of Sleepless in Seattle (1993).