8/10
The Great Schnozzola
5 June 2012
Don't be deceived by the billing. This is a Frank Sinatra Timex special with Bing and Dean, Mitzi Gaynor and at the tail end the one and only Jimmy Durante got into the act. The great Durante always complained that something everyone else was getting into. For your added pleasure the commercials for Timex watches were included with the great tag line delivered by John Cameron Swayze about those Timexes taking a licking and keeping on a ticking. Those were to show the endurance those sturdy watches had.

Of course with this cast we got a lot of singing and since it was Sinatra's show he got the most of it. But the real purpose of the show was to plug a picture that never was made. Frank Capra I believe was to direct Dino as Jimmy Durante in a biographical picture about Jimmy Durante. Frank Sinatra was to play Durante's former vaudeville partner Lou Clayton and Bing Crosby was to play his other partner Eddie Jackson. To bad it never got made.

What's interesting here is that if you look in Nick Tosches superb biography of Dean Martin you'll see some early pictures of Dean Martin and before he had a nose job he had a schnoz that rivaled the great Durante himself. What casting that would have been had Dino had his old nose. But if the proboscis was the key, Capra should have cast Danny Thomas.

But for entertainment it don't get better than this.
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