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Max Liebman Presents Spotlight. Mothers-in-Law The. Wynken, Blynken and Durante. The four men started one of the most notorious and legendary speakeasies of the Prohibition era, the Club Durant, its odd spelling -- so legend has it -- the simple result of the partners running out of money for the extra "e" on the neon sign.

Despite Durante's notable local following, the club was not an immediate hit. But one of the regular clients was Lou Clayton, pretty big stuff in vaudeville circles as a soft-shoe dancer. Clayton saw potential in the venture, especially as a springboard for showcasing the largely unused comedic talent of Durante. Buying out Harris' share and joining forces with Clayton and Durante on-stage, the three men came up with an act that made the audience packed into the tiny club feel like they were in the middle of a very violent cartoon or all three acts of a three-ring circus.

As noted critic John Fisher pointed out, "The extraordinary gusto of their comic performance, as it bounced from one to the other with Jimmy storming backwards and forth, always the center of attention, set a standard for improvised cabaret humor that has never been surpassed. It would be inaccurate to say that they pulled out all the stops, but only for the simple reason that in their crazy world the stops were inexhaustible.

The shows became legendary, the tiny club became the hot ticket in town, and their star-studded audience on any given night could include writers like Damon Runyon , Ed Sullivan , and Walter Winchell , Broadway stars like George Jessel , Al Jolson , and regular George M. Cohan , to notorious gangsters such as Waxey Gordon and Legs Diamond. Once the cops padlocked the place in the late '20s, the trio immediately found work elsewhere, making successful forays on Broadway and the night club circuit of the period.

When Hollywood came calling, the offer was for Durante alone. He soon started working solo in a no less frenzied manner, with Clayton staying on as his manager and Jackson hanging around as one of one of many "vice presidents," still contributing material to the stage act.

Although it was reported that the two men didn't enjoy working together -- each feeling the other one was impeding their own personal styles -- they made a number of fine films together, including 's Speak Easily.

It was Durante's appearance two years later in Palooka that introduced the song that would soon become his enduring theme, "Inka Dinka Doo. The Durante schnozzola also made several cameo "appearances" in assorted Walt Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons of the period, truly becoming a national star, an instantly recognizable comedic icon. By the late '40s, he was on radio with his own show, sometimes working with partners as varied as Alan Young and Garry Moore.

But he truly hit his second? Recreating Club Durant with Eddie Jackson for television brought Durante to a whole new audience who had never seen him work in a night club setting and proved to be enormously successful. Many of the old songs and routines were recycled for this new audience, but the biggest change in Durante's act came with the show's closing. Instead of his trademark head-waggling, fedora-shaking "hot cha cha" set-closing walk-off, the new TV ending was a far more somber affair.

A night with Durante ended with him walking into successive spotlights -- each one further away than the other til he disappeared -- turning to both the studio and the unseen television audience and delivering the immortal line, "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. The '60s saw him busy as ever with more TV projects and a great deal of night club work. Although his character stayed the same, his twilight years imbued it with an old man wistfulness that made him even more lovable.

At the age of 70, his recordings of old standards, issued by Warner Bros as September Song , became an unexpected Top 40 album hit in Homophones, Homographs, and Homonyms The same, but different. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Nov. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively". Literally How to use a word that literally drives some pe Is Singular 'They' a Better Choice? The awkward case of 'his or her'.

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