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"You can't explain Durante, he just is," says Leonard Maltin in this affectionate and thoroughly entertaining tribute to the Great Schnozzola. A bald saloon-bar piano player with a huge nose and a sandpaper voice might not seem like a candidate for stardom, but Durante's show was a huge hit on NBC in the '50s. The best early TV shows built a close rapport with their viewers--perhaps because it was still a novelty to invite an entertainer into your home for the evening--and Durante had an instinctive grasp of this relationship. Audiences both in the studio and at home fell in love with his self-mocking wit, his rough-and-ready charm, and his habit of forgetting lines and cracking up his guests with adlibs. Among the stars we see goofing around with Jimmy are Bette Davis, Carmen Miranda, Frank Sinatra, Liberace, and John Wayne. The sight of Wayne (at the height of his stardom in 1953) attempting to sing is worth the price of this show. Yet for all the wisecracks and gags, Durante's relationship with his audience is so strong that when he sits at his piano, hat pushed back, to sing "Try a Little Tenderness," it's surprisingly moving. The Unknown Jimmy Durante contains almost an hour of clips from his TV show, with comments from Maltin, Durante's wife, and his daughter CeCe. Far more than just a historical documentary or a nostalgia fix, this is a chance to see an extraordinary entertainer at work. --Simon Leake
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