The Corner

Schnozzle

A nostalgic reader:

John:  I must be reader #3,478 to mention this, but on the off chance that I’m not:  I would take solace at the Inca/Inka switch by noting that our youth, doing a Google search for “Inka,” will now be exposed to the work of the great Jimmy Durante.

(My own favorite Durante moment: on his radio show, he once had Lucille Ball as a guest. He greeted her with — paraphrase, I may have missed a word or two — “I’m overwhemin’ Lucille. The exuberance of this unctious occasion, and the mere quintessence of your celestial radiance, permeates my boutiful soul with palpatations of grandiosious joconunity.”  She: “Jimmy, if you think that over, I’m sure you’ll take it back.”  He: “Take it back, nuthin’! I had a hard enough time getting rid of it!”)

[Me]  You were in fact reader #1 with that, Sir, so thanks for taking the trouble.  Durante was one of America’s 1940s/50s entertainers who somehow we never heard about on the other side of the pond, and by the time I got here, he was gone. Judging from that clip, I missed something.

John Derbyshire — Mr. Derbyshire is a former contributing editor of National Review.
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