Jimmy Durante in the circus movie "Jumbo" 1962.
“This great clown stays on with us, as great clowns always stay on in the hearts of men and women and children who seek in the refuge of merriment an hour of escape from the scowls of the long day. And in loving and admiring the clown, we cannot be expected to know that his art is most difficult to come by, or that his every success is challenged. The clown must make us laugh, although he himself may suffer pain, frustration, sadness, despair. To ask how he makes us laugh is almost as unanswerable as to inquire why we were born. Out of his seeming artlessness there shines a surviving sanity in a world gone daft. And against our modern will to destroy ourselves, and against our mad deeds that would undo the heritage that has made America so great, the sage laughter of the clown sounds high and wholesome, high and clean. It seems a glad summons to man’s dimming hope, a call to hold fast.”
from Gene Fowler's biography of Jimmy Durante, Schnozzola. 1951.
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