Jerry Colonna

Trivia

• Suffered a serious stroke in August 1966 from which he never fully recovered. He spent nearly two years in various hospitals recuperating, including the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, California. When he returned to performing it was for Bob Hope in his annual Christmas show in Vietnam but his participation was brief.
• Worked with the CBS staff orchestra as a musician. He broke up the other players so much during rehearsals that he started getting jobs doing comic warm-ups on live radio programs.
• Extensive work on radio with such stars as Bing Crosby and Fred Allen before his stint with Bob Hope.
• After high school graduation from Boston English High, he found a job working as a longshoreman.
• Known for his google-eyed roll, facial contortions, and wide, handlebar mustache, the madcap comic always looked like the tenor of a barbershop quartet. His renditions of "Sweet Adeline" and "Down By the Old Millstream" were classics.
• He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Radio at 1645 Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
• 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.
• 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.