page_title: Jerry Colonna (entertainer)
section_title: Films
hierarchical_section_title: Jerry Colonna (entertainer) / Films
caption_attribution_description: Cropped screenshot of Jerry Colonna from the trailer for the film Road to Singapore.
context_page_description: Gerardo Luigi "Jerry" Colonna was an American musician, actor, comedian, singer, songwriter and trombonist best remembered as the zaniest of Bob Hope's sidekicks in Hope's popular radio shows and films of the 1940s and 1950s.
  With his pop-eyed facial expressions and walrus-sized handlebar moustache, Colonna was known for singing loudly "in a comic caterwaul," according to Raised on Radio author Gerald Nachman, and for his catchphrase, "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!"
context_section_description: Colonna featured in three of the popular Hope-Crosby Road films: Road to Singapore (1940) as Achilles Bombassa, Road to Rio (1947) as a Cavalry captain and The Road to Hong Kong (1962) in a cameo role. He can also be seen in the Fred Allen vehicle, It's in the Bag! (1945), as psychiatrist Dr. Greenglass, and he made a brief appearance with Hope in the "Wife, Husband and Wolf" sketch in Star Spangled Rhythm. In 1956 he performed the featured song "My Lucky Charm" in the film Meet Me in Las Vegas, starring Dan Dailey and Cyd Charisse.
  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 from Make Mine Music (1946) and The Brave Engineer (1950).
caption: Colonna in Road to Singapore, 1940.
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