From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jerry Colonna
in Road to Singapore (1940)
Born	Gerardo Luigi Colonna September 17, 1904(1904-09-17) Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	November 21, 1986 (aged 82) Woodland Hills, California, U.S.

Jerry Colonna (Gerardo Luigi Colonna, September 17, 1904, Boston, Massachusetts - November 21, 1986, Woodland Hills, California) was an Italian-American comedian, singer and songwriter, remembered best as the zaniest of Bob Hope's sidekicks 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, and for his catch phrase, "Who's Yehudi?", uttered after many an old joke, although it usually had nothing to do with the joke. The line 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 a moronic professor. Nachman wrote:

Colonna brought a whacked-out touch to Hope's show. 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!"

Musical madness

Colonna started his career as a trombonist in orchestras and dance bands in and around his native Boston; he can be heard with Joe Herlihy's orchestra on discs recorded for Edison Records in the late 1920s. During the 1930s, Colonna played with the CBS house orchestra, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, and developed 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 the John Scott Trotter 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 memorable 1940s Kraft Music Hall discoveries. The others were pianist-comedian Victor Borge and Trotter's drummer, music "depreciationist" Spike Jones.

Colonna had the ability to stretch a syllable to extreme lengths. In addition to songs (such as "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall, or nothing at aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall..."), he worked this bit into The Road to Rio along with another of his catch phrases. The action periodically cuts to a cavalry riding to the rescue of Bing and Bob. At one point he exhorts his riders, "Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge!" At the end of the film, when all is resolved and he is still "charging," he pulls up and tells the audience, "Well, what do you know... we never quite made it. Exciting, though... wasn't it?!"

According to radio historian Arthur Frank Wertheim, in Radio Comedy, Colonna was responsible for many of the catch phrases on Hope's show, notably, "Give me a drag on that before you throw it away", a crack the cast came to use to lance any bragging. Colonna's usual salutation was, "Greetings, Gates," and listeners soon began saying it.

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 a singer, did an effective imitation of Colonna's manic style and expressions.

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.

Films

Colonna featured in three of the popular Hope-Crosby Road films: The Road to Singapore (1940) as Achilles Bombassa and The Road to Rio (1947) as a Cavalry captain and a cameo role in "The Road to Hong Kong" (1962). He can also be seen in the 1945 Fred Allen vehicle, It's in the Bag!, as psychiatrist Dr. Greenglass, and he made a brief appearance with Hope in the "Wife, Husband and 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).

Television

Jerry Colonna and Bob Hope as caricatured by Sam Berman for NBC's 1947 promotional book.

Colonna left the Hope show as a regular in 1950, but he continued appearing with Hope on holiday television specials and live shows. He hosted his own television comedy series, The Jerry Colonna Show which lasted 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," a 1966 episode of The Monkees. Jerry Colonna also appeared in the 1965 episode of McHale's Navy. In the episode "Hello McHale?-Colonna" McHale's men meet the famous WWII troubadour who promises to do a show for them at their Tarratupa base. However, when the men learn that shows are only limited to bases who have a 50-bed hospital, they take steps to correct the shortage. This disrupts Captain Binghamton's base hospital inspection by the Admiral who is looking for overcrowded hospitals and malingering patients, thereby putting Binghamton in the hot seat again.

Personal life

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. Its 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 died eight years later at the same hospital.

In television's early days that he used to appear on the Sunday morning Christopher Club religious program and would say the rosary. One funny stunt was also on the old Steve Allen Sunday show, where he brought out a saint Bernard dog and showed Steve his cat, whereupon Steve say's "a cat? thats a saint Bernard!!". Jerry picks up the dog, throws it out the window and calls out after it "Lie ta me willya!!!". It is not known if he was related to the Italian Colonna family of nobles.

Pop culture references

Colonna was a popular radio and film figure at the same time that Warner Bros. cartoons hit their stride. Accordingly, his facial expressions and catch phrases were often caricatured in the cartoons. Along with "Greetings, Gates!" variations and references to "Yehudi", 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.

• In What's Cookin' Doc?, 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 featured in the cartoon Daffy Doodles.

• Jerry Colonna was one of the party going celebrities in the Warner cartoon Hollywood Steps Out.

In 1999, Jeff MacKay portrayed Colonna in the JAG episode "Ghosts of Christmas Past."

Colonna was mentioned in Jack Kerouac's 1950s novel On The Road.

References

• Gerald Nachman, Raised on Radio (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998).
• Arthur Frank Wertheim, Radio Comedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).

External links

• WFMU's Jerry Colonna Homage
• Jerry Colonna at the Internet Movie Database
• Find-A-Grave profile for Jerry Colonna
• The Encyclopedia of Disney Animated Shorts