James Francis Durante was an American comedian, actor, singer, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of the United States' most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. He often referred to his nose as the schnozzola, and the word became his nickname.
Durante in 1964
Buster Keaton, Thelma Todd and Durante in Speak Easily (1932)
With Garry Moore in the "Durante-Moore Show" (1943–1947)
Durante on The Jumbo Fire Chief Program, 1935
The Lower East Side, sometimes abbreviated as LES, is a historic neighborhood in the southeastern part of Manhattan in New York City. It is located roughly between the Bowery and the East River from Canal to Houston streets. Historically, it was understood to encompass a much larger area, from Broadway to the East River and from East 14th Street to Fulton and Franklin Streets.
The corner of Orchard and Rivington Streets in the Lower East Side in 2005
Tenement buildings on the Lower East Side
The Lower East Side in the early 1900s
The Lower East Side and Lower Manhattan skyline photographed using Agfacolor in 1938.