My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe.

Beginning in the early 1950s Durante teamed with sidekick Sonny King a collaboration that would continue until Durante's death. Later years

Durante continued his film appearances through It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and television appearances through the early 1970s. Durante retired from performing in 1972 after suffering a stroke that left him confined to a wheelchair.

His jokes about his nose included referring to it as a Schnozzola and the word became his nickname. His distinctive clipped gravelly speech comic language butchery jazz-influenced songs and large nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s.