The Toughest Job in the Woild? A Comedian

Milton Berle. Ed Wynn. Abbott and Costello. Ken Murray. Jack Carson. They all had early success on television. And they were all gone after a handful of seasons.

TV audiences proved more fickle than those of network radio—albeit they were the same people. Perhaps it was a case of viewers got tired of seeing the same thing over again, week after week. Jack Benny and Red Skelton seemed to be exceptions.

Jimmy Durante suffered the same problem. He was one of the rotating hosts of Four Star Revue starting in 1950, then got his own variety show in 1954 that was finally cancelled two years later. But that wasn’t the end of Durante, of course. He travelled the route of other comedians and singers—along the I-15 to Las Vegas—and filled TV time with guest appearances and occasional specials.

Durante was quizzed about the conundrum of comedians who had been popular for years suddenly being punted off television. He talked about it to Hearst’s International News Service in a feature story that appeared in newspapers on June 18, 1957. How could TV do without a Cantor or a Berle? The same way radio did when Joe Penner and Al Pearce faded away. New talent came along. And it always will. But it won’t be the same. After all, there was only one Durante and there’ll never be another.

Unfortunately, this is an edited version of the story. Due to OCR errors, I can’t make out the full text on a lengthy version I found that mentions Durante relaxing at the Del Mar track and refusing to work when he’s watching the ponies.

TV Discard Of Comics A Favor, Says Durante
By Charles Denton
HOLLYWOOD ( INS ) – Jimmy Durante, who dislikes making a point of his long tenure as a “top banana,” believes television is doing his colleagues a favor by discarding them in bunches this season.
A year or two out of sight of the great glass eye, Durante contends is just what the doctor ordered for comics whose nerves have been rasped raw by the file of falling ratings.
Those with genuine, tested talent have nothing to fidget about, the Schnoz insists.
Durante, about to begin his second season without a TV show to call his own, was the picture of an unruffled vacationeer from video as he tucked his wiry frame into the corner of a leather couch in his den, lilted stocking feet to a chair and put the torch to a cigar.
"How can they ever do without laughs?” he demanded with a snort. “How can they ever do without a Gleason, a Berle, a Cantor? They’ll never be off for long. "What is it? You think talent that just come up in a month is gonna beat talent it's took 20 years to develop? That's like throwin' a Steinway out the window and takin' a piano some guy just made outta chicory wood."
Durante's snort grew even more disdainful at the widespread notion that the comic has had his day in the TV sun and the medium is now entering a "singers' era."
"Ahhh," he said meaningfully. "A guy writes a song and another guy goes out and sings it. What is that? It means the guy has a God-given voice, that's all. "A comedian has the toughest job in the world—THE TOUGHEST—and they never get no academy awards neither.

"In pictures the comic has the position the piano player had when I started in the business—a bum! But when they want somebody to emcee their awards, who do they look for? They want a Jerry Lewis or somebody like that."
Durante's present position in television is unique. Although still under contract to NBC, he made only one guest appearance last season and frankly admits that "I didn't want to do any. I wanted to be off a year, after six years.”
He would have undertaken another regular weekly show next season if he had been offered the right format—"just music and entertainment. What we tried to do before. Where can you get music and a couple of laughs?"
And if he could have done the shows "on fillum."
"Change? What do you change to?" he said almost wistfully. "There's only one thing to do. Either go dramatic or stay the way you are."
Like most veterans. Durante is sold on filmed shows because they can be shown dozens of times, each time bringing the performers welcome "residual."
But for the most part, Durante’s antics for the rest of the year will be confined to nightclubs, where he first began building himself into a show business legend an undetermined number of years ago.
Some say this is Jimmy's 50th year in show business. Others say he's been around much longer. Jimmy says he started in 1912 "but what the hell, who goes by anniversaries?"
Whatever his years, Durante is a long, long walk from the wheelchair. He returned only recently from a five-month nightclub tour.
Night club performing, a killer to most TV and movie-raised young performers, is caviar and champagne to Durante.
"After the first night, what's tough about it?" he scoffs. "So you don't finish up 'til two in the morning, you don't go to bed at home 'til then, do you?"
Bedtime is more often 3 or 4 a.m., a habit formed by decades of pounding pianos and cracking gags in smoky bistros. This is what might be called "clean dissipation," since Jimmy does not drink and compensates for the late hours he keeps by sleeping away most of the morning. When he does shake himself out of the feathers, however, he literally vibrates with activity.
"I'm a very busy man, very busy," he sighed. "And not a nickel coming in. That phone rings all day, and at the end of the day I look in the book and I ain't got a dollar more."