Jimmy Durante’s Mrs. Calabash helped put NC fishing village on the map. But who was she?

Fried seafood is the main celebrity in Calabash, but the town’s mythology owes some of its fame to a star-kissed moment.

Jimmy Durante, a superstar of the 1930s radio era and the voice of an iconic rendition of “Frosty the Snowman,” put a national spotlight on Calabash with an enigmatic catchphrase: Durante would end each weekly radio show with the same line, “Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.”

But who is Mrs. Calabash?

“That’s her right there,” said Donna Morgan in the middle of the dining room at the Calabash Seafood Hut, pointing to a photo on the wall. “Ms. Lucy Coleman. She’s the one Jimmy Durante called Mrs. Calabash.”

The best known version of the Mrs. Calabash mystery is that Durante is referring to one of Calabash’s own native daughters, Lucille “Lucy” Coleman. The legend goes that Durante stumbled upon Calabash by accident, dined at Coleman’s restaurant and was so struck by the experience that he declared to a young Lucy Coleman, “I’m going to make you famous one day.”

The catchphrase was embraced throughout the town. On the dining room wall at Ella’s Restaurant, named for Ella High, who married Lucy Coleman’s older brother, Lawrence, were the painted words “Goodnight Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.” Some believe Ella was the Mrs. Calabash in question, but her grandchildren don’t think so.

“People like to say it was my grandmother Ella,” said Shaun Bellamy, who co-owns Ella’s with her brother, Curt Hardee. “But my mother said it was her aunt Lucy, who owned Coleman’s. The story is that he was with his entourage at dinner one night and got to talking to my great aunt Lucy, and before he left he told her, “I’m going to make you famous one day.’ She didn’t think anything about it and then he started signing off with Goodnight Mrs. Calabash.”

‘Women liked to say it was them’

Bellamy said the line elevated Calabash’s profile from a sleepy fishing village to a destination worth seeking out.

“It helped put Calabash on the map,” Bellamy said. “It just became a thing. ... A lot of the older women liked to say it was them.”

According to a seductively signed photograph, another Mrs. Calabash candidate could be Kathleen High Moore, a sister of Lucy Coleman. Moore’s daughter Suzy Moore King has a signed photo from Durante addressed to her mother, who may have met him when he stopped in town. It reads “To Kathleen, it was a pleasure, believe me.”

“You don’t know what’s true and what’s not true the way things are handed down,” King said.

Or maybe it’s Mrs. Durante

Part of the mystery of Durante’s Mrs. Calabash sign-off is that for years he declined to name her despite countless questions. But in a 1966 appearance at the National Press Club in New York City, Durante offered a possible revelation.

Durante said that on a cross-country trip they had come across Calabash and that his wife loved it so much he said he would buy it for her once he struck it rich.

“Mrs. Calabash that I refer to all the time on radio and television was Mrs. Jeanne Durante,” he said. “I used to call her Mrs. Calabash.”

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