Jerry Colonna (entertainer)
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Jerry Colonna (b. Gerardo Luigi Colonna, September 17, 1904, Boston, Massachusetts - November 21, 1986) was an Italian-American comedian, singer and songwriter, remembered best as the zaniest Bob Hope sidekick on Hope's popular radio shows and films of the 1940s and 1950s. With his pop-eyed facial expressions and walrus-sized handlebar mustache, Colonna was known for singing loudly, "in a comic caterwaul," according to Raised on Radio author Gerald Nachman, for dropping the catch phrase "Who's Yehudi?" after many an old joke, even if it had nothing to do with the joke. It was believed to be named for violin virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin, and the search for Yehudi became a running gag on the Hope show.
Colonna played a range of nitwitted characters, the best remembered of which was the moronic professor. "Colonna brought a whacked-out touch to Hope's show", Nachman wrote. "In a typical exchange, Hope asks, 'Professor, did you plant the bomb in the embassy like I told you?', to which Colonna replied, in that whooping five-alarm voice, 'Embassy? Great Scott, I thought you said NBC!' "
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[edit] Musical madness
Colonna's career actually began musically: In the 1930s, he had been a trombonist with the CBS house orchestra, the Columbia Symphony--developing a reputation for prankishness. His off-stage antics were so infamous that CBS nearly fired him on more than one occasion. Fred Allen, then on CBS, gave Colonna periodic guest slots, and a decade later he joined John Scott Trotter's band on Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall.
In an opera parody, Colonna hollered an aria "in a deadpan screech that became his trademark on Bob Hope's show," Nachman noted. Colonna was one of three 1940s Kraft Music Hall discoveries. The others were pianist-comedian Victor Borge and the Trotter band's drummer, music "depreciationist" Spike Jones.
According to radio historian Arthur Frank Wertheim, in Radio Comedy, Colonna was responsible for many of the Hope show's catch phrases--particularly, "Give me a drag on that before you throw it away", a crack the cast came to use to lance anyone's bragging. Colonna's usual greeting to Hope or other characters on the show was, "Greetings, Gate," and the show's listeners began using it as well.
Colonna was part of several of Hope's early USO tours during the 1940s. Jack Benny's singing sidekick Dennis Day, a talented impressionist as well as singer, was known to do a superb imitation of Colonna's manic style and expressions.
[edit] Films
He appeared in two of Hope's famous Road films (with Crosby), The Road to Singapore (1940, as Achilles Bombassa) and The Road to Rio (1947, as a Cavalry captain), along with a memorable appearance in the 1945 Fred Allen vehicle, It's in the Bag!, as the psychiatrist Dr. Greenglass. He also made a brief appearance with Hope in the "Wife, Husband, & Wolf" sketch in Star-Spangled Rhythm.
He provided the voice of the March Hare in the Walt Disney animated film version of Alice in Wonderland (1951) (another radio legend, Ed Wynn, voiced the Mad Hatter) and also lent his zany narration style to several Disney shorts, including Casey at the Bat (1946) and The Brave Engineer (1950).
[edit] Television
Colonna left the Hope show as a regular in 1950, but he continued appearing with Hope on subsequent holiday television specials and live shows. He also hosted his own television comedy series, The Jerry Colonna Show which lasted only a single season. He was host of the "Revenge with Music" episode on The Colgate Comedy Hour in 1954. His TV work also included serving as the second and last ringmaster/host/performer on Super Circus (1955-56), The Gale Storm Show (1959), a version of Babes in Toyland on Shirley Temple's Storybook in 1960 and a guest role as Dr. Mann in "Don't Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth," an episode of the manic rock situation comedy The Monkees in 1966.
Colonna joined ASCAP in 1956; his songwriting credits include "At Dusk," "I Came to Say Goodbye," "Sleighbells in the Sky" and "Take Your Time." He released an LP of Dixieland-style music, He Sings and Swings (Mercury-Wing MGW 12153), in the late 1950s.
Colonna married Florence Purcell, whom he reportedly met on a blind date in 1930; the couple adopted a son, Robert, in 1941. The marriage lasted 56 years. After his guest shot on The Monkees, Colonna suffered a stroke whose paralytic effect forced his retirement from show business, and a 1979 heart attack forced him to spend the last seven years of his life in the Motion Picture and Television Hospital. Florence stayed by his side to the end, when he died of kidney failure in 1986. She followed him in death eight years later at the same hospital.
There was also a family of nobles in Italy called the Colonna family. It is not known if Jerry was related to it, but the spelling is the same.
[edit] Pop culture references
- Colonna was a popular radio and film figure at the same time that Warner Bros. cartoons hit their stride. Accordingly, Colonna's facial expressions and catch phrases were often caricatured in the cartoons. Along with "Greetings!" variations, there was his oft-used observation, "Ah, yes! [appropriate adjective], isn't it?!" The Warner cartoons The Wacky Worm and Greetings Bait both star a worm who is a Colonna caricature, complete with moustache and exaggerated voice (supplied by Mel Blanc). The latter cartoon also features an animated human Colonna as a fisherman. The most direct reference might have been in What's Cookin' Doc?, in which Bugs Bunny is saying "Hi" to various (unseen) Hollywood figures as they walk by his table at the Oscar banquet, and Bugs mimics them. At one point he bugs his eyes, opens his mouth wide to display squared-off, gapped teeth, and says, "Ah! Greetings, Jerry!". A jury of Jerry Colonnas also featured in the cartoon Daffy Doodles.
- In 1999, Jeff MacKay portrayed Colonna in the JAG episode "Ghosts of Christmas Past."
- Colonna was mentioned in Jack Kerouac's On The Road.
[edit] References
- Gerald Nachman, Raised on Radio (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998).
- Arthur Frank Wertheim, Radio Comedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
