James Francis Durante (/dəˈrænti/ də-RAN-tee, Italian: [duˈrante]; February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American actor, comedian, singer, vaudevillian, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. He often referred to his nose as the schnozzola (Italianization of the American Yiddish slang word schnoz, meaning "big nose"), and the word became his nickname. Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Rosa (Lentino) and Bartolomeo Durante, both immigrants from Salerno, Campania, Italy. Bartolomeo was a barber. Young Jimmy served as an altar boy at St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel. 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. It was a family act, but he was too professional for his cousin. 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. Durante was the only member not from New Orleans. 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.
Hal Simms (June 10, 1919 – July 2, 2002) was an American television announcer, known for his long career on the CBS television network. Simms was born on June 10, 1919, in Boston. He graduated from the Boston Latin High School[1] and in 1940, he received a degree from the University of Michigan. Simms started his career at a radio station in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and a CBS affiliate station in Philadelphia before moving to New York City. He was persuaded to move to New York by Robert Q. Lewis and Mike Wallace, whom Simms knew from college. Beginning in the early 1950s, he became a frequent television and radio announcer on CBS programs, known for saying the tagline "CBS presents this program in color." Among the programs that Simms announced were Beat the Clock The Guiding Light The Frank Sinatra Show The Edge of Night, Go Lucky, I'll Buy That,[6] What's My Line?, Rate Your Mate, and The Steve Allen Show. Simms appeared with Jack Paar on The Morning Show. For his last ten years at CBS, Simms was announcer-in-chief. After a fifty-year career, Simms retired in 1992. Simms lived in White Plains, New York, for many years. He served as president of the Brotherhood at Temple Israel Center in White Plains and as president of the New York chapter of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). Simms died on July 2, 2002, at the age of 83, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Simms was married to Renée Simms, with whom he had three children.[1][2] Simms is interred at Ferncliff Cemetery.