Dear Ken: Recently I was watching a kiddie show about Frosty the Snowman, and it featured the voice of Jimmy Durante. I recall at the end of his weekly shows, he would say, “Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” Did anyone know who she was?
Alex Partyka / Tuckers Crossroads
Dear Alex: Here’s the lowdown according to David Bakish in his 1995 biography Jimmy Durante: His Show Business Career.
The famous big-nosed comedian starred in the mid-1940s on a radio show titled The Jimmy Durante-Garry Moore Show. Durante asked his writers for a funny line to end the show with, so they brainstormed over it late one night. Writer Phil Cohan looked at the calabash pipe he was smoking and suggested the name “Mrs. Calabash.”
Evidently, Durante flipped over it, and on Sept. 14, 1945, first uttered his famous closing line, “Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.”
The radio show was flooded with mail asking about the origin of the name, and Durante, wherever he went, was asked the same. The comic reportedly over the next year or so gave different phony explanations to different people.
Finally, Moore, who had been at the joke-writing session and knew the origin of the name, just point blank asked Durante about it, and Durante said he was referring to his wife, Jeanne.
So by this time, in his own mind, Durante had connected the name to his wife.
Meanwhile, another tale out there is hooked to the town of Calabash, N.C., where some residents believe he was referring to the late Lucy Coleman, who ran a restaurant there and to whom Durante reportedly told that he would one day make famous.
Dear Ken: Ricky Schroder starred in a version of Little Lord Fauntleroy back in the 1960s. I consider it a Christmas classic because he was reunited with his mother at Christmas and the movie ended with his character Cedric wishing everyone a merry Christmas. I watch for it every year, but no one seems to want to air it. Is there a chance it may ever come out on DVD?
Tom Sebille / Nolensville
Dear Tom: That was a 1980 TV movie and co-starred Alec Guinness. There’s always a chance for it to be released on DVD. I found several VHS copies for sale on Amazon.com, starting at $25.
Dear Ken: Please tell me if Richard Dawson is dead or not. A friend says yes. I say no. Please let me know.
G.A. / Murfreesboro
Dear G.A.: Dawson is alive and living in Beverly Hills at age 75. The former Family Feud host and Hogan’s Heroes co-star has two sons in their 40s, three grandkids and a teenage daughter.
Dear Ken: Can you tell me, regarding the Mills Brothers tune “Glowworm,” what is meant by “a cute vest-pocket Mazda?”
Gary Nichols / Nashville
Dear Gary: From 1909 to 1945, Mazda was a trademark name for incandescent light bulbs made by General Electric.
Dear Ken: I saw this movie when I was a kid on TV in black and white. I thought it was titled A Man, a Woman and the Devil but can’t find anything by that title. I also thought it starred Sidney Poitier and John Ireland, but I may be mistaken on that.
The plot has a black man working in a mine and there is a cave-in. He digs himself out to find he is the only person left on Earth, or so he thinks. He has mannequins in his apartment to keep him company, knocks one off the balcony and hears a woman scream. She thought somebody jumped. She survived the apocalypse by staying in an oxygen chamber.
There is a lot of sexual tension between the man and woman but nothing happens. One scene I remember is the Poitier character driving a new Cadillac out through a showroom window and coming back with the Hope Diamond for the woman. Then a man comes in on a boat who is near starved to death. After being nursed back to health, he and the black man fight over the woman. I can’t remember what happens, but at the end the three people are in a bar surrounded by people, and you realize they are working on a plot for a new book.
If you can tell what this is from my description, I’d appreciate it. Also, is this available on video? With I Am Legend, the remake of The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man, coming out, it really came back to mind.
Ted Copeland / Spring Hill
Dear Ted: Your film is The World, the Flesh and the Devil from 1959. The black actor is Harry Belafonte, the woman is Inger Stevens and the second man is Mel Ferrer.
Your description goes awry at the end because it did not conclude with the trio at a bar working on a book (maybe that was a Twilight Zone episode your memory tossed in).
The film does not appear to be available on DVD or VHS.
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