When he died little more than a year ago, Durant had lived more than eighty years and had run the successful bar and restaurant bearing his name on Central Avenue since 1950.
He died without heirs. Reportedly, there was $500,000 in certificates of deposit in a safe deposit box, as well as the restaurant that reportedly still grosses nearly $2 million a year.
The irascible Durant had been married five times. Each marriage ended, as they say, irrevocably. That means you don't do business with each other anymore.
That left Humble, Durant's English bulldog, then eight years old, as one of his chief beneficiaries.
I learned this when I came across a copy of Durant's will last week.
Here's how it reads in respect to Humble.
"To my dog, Humble, I leave my home, furniture and cash in the sum of $50,000."
The will also provided for a caretaker to be hired to care for Humble so he might live out his years comfortably in Durant's home. There was even a provision for veterinary care when necessary.
There was an ironclad provision that the home could not be sold as long as Humble lived.
I went out to Durant's house at 15 East Marshall, just off North Central Avenue, to see how Humble was getting along.
There was a "for sale" sign on the front lawn of the 2,500-square-foot house, which has four bedrooms, two baths and a large, tree-shaded backyard.
I saw a young woman drive into the driveway and then get out of her car and walk to the door.
I approached her.
"Isn't this Jack Durant's old house?" I asked.
"Yes," she said pleasantly. "I took care of the place until a short time ago."
"You were Humble's caretaker?" I asked. "How is Humble?"
Her face turned sad.
"We had to put Humble to sleep last month," she said. "Humble was a wonderful dog. He loved this house and he had the complete run of it until he died."
"How much is the house worth?" I asked.
"They say it's worth $300,000, given the location and all, but they've put it on the market for a lot less. Humble was pretty rough on it and so all the furniture and everything will have to be torn out and replaced by the new owner. Besides, they want to sell it quick."
I called the real estate firm handling the sale. They told me they were asking $165,000. Someone had already made a firm offer.
I went back home and checked Durant's will again.
The will provides that the house should be sold in the event of Humble's death and the proceeds added to a trust estate that Durant set up for 21 long-time employees of the restaurant.
Durant left the handling of this to First Interstate Bank of Arizona with instructions that it be administered as the "Durant's Employees' Trust Fund." He ordered that the money from the fund be distributed "in convenient installments not less frequently than annually."
The restaurant shares went to Jack McElroy, his silent partner, as well as Thomas O'Malley, a long-time friend, and Russell Hoag, the restaurant's long-time manager.
Indeed, the young lady who had been hired to take care of Humble the Dog was Hoag's daughter, Laurie.
I called O'Malley, who is one of the owners of the O'Malley hardware and building-supplies companies.
"Can you tell me about Jack Durant's will?" I asked.
"I'd better not talk about that," O'Malley said. "But thanks for calling."
There was a click on the other end of the phone line.
I called McElroy.
He chuckled when I asked about Humble.
"You know Jack," McElroy said.
I called Joseph Melczer, the lawyer who signed the will.
"Ethics prevent me from commenting," Melczer said.
I called several of the employees listed as beneficiaries of the trust and asked them what they knew about the will.
"All we know is that we were supposed to have been left money by Mr. Durant. But none of us have ever seen a penny. It's more than a year since he's been dead. Wouldn't you think we'd have heard something by now?"
Durant's been dead now for thirteen months.
Humble the Dog died a year to the day after Durant. Some of the employees think the dog may have been stricken by anniversary depression. He was, however, put to sleep, reportedly suffering from cancer.
Durant also left $30,000 to Gary R. Allen, described as grandnephew, and another $50,000 to the Denis Hogerty family of Colorado.
All this is typical of the irascible Durant, who loved practical jokes and always lived by his own rules.
When people tell you he ran Durant's saloon, they mean exactly that. Durant ran the joint with a firm hand.
There was never any doubt that it was Durant's place and that what he said was the law. His employees always called him "Mr. Durant." Now, a year after his death, they look toward the large color portrait of Durant on the rear wall in the barroom and still refer to him as Mister.
His customers, however, always called him Jack. In return, Durant called them by their first or last names, whichever struck his fancy. He always gave credit generously, and when folks fell far behind in their food and bar bills he wouldn't send a bill collector after them. Durant would simply approach them openly when their friends were around them at the bar and growl: "Hey, you son of a bitch, don't you think it's time you started paying your bar bill?"
This was no ordinary saloon keeper. He was clearly one of the best of all time, rating right up there with the legends like Toots Shor in New York and Eli Shulman in Chicago.
Durant sometimes bought billboard ads which infuriated his competitors in the restaurant business.
They read simply:
"In my humble opinion, Durant's is the finest eating and drinking establishment in the world." --Jack Durant
He was quick-tempered and generous, witty and sarcastic, often overbearing and sometimes sentimental. After being married five times he boasted in his will that he was an unmarried man. But he didn't dislike women. One year he donated $50,000 to get a women's golf tournament started.
Durant had been a professional ballplayer in the minor leagues; he'd run a whorehouse in Globe-Miami; had been a casino operator and gambler who left Las Vegas under a threat of death from the Mafia; and finally opened the saloon that bears his name.
A few years back, I spent a couple of days hanging around with Durant. He was wonderful company.
He told me how the sign came about.
"We were sitting around at the end of the bar one morning and I was saying I didn't want a conventional sign. So the guys sitting with me kept telling me to say something about it being the best place on Central Avenue.
"So I went them one better. `Why don't I just tell the truth and say it's the best place in the whole goddamn world?' I said. And that's what I did."
Durant laughed and took a sip on a long-necked Budweiser.
"Hell, I never had a humble opinion in my whole life," he said. I looked around the place. Then and now, it's like a time tunnel. Walk through the front door and you're stepping into a New York or Chicago chophouse of the 1950s. And none of that is an accident.
"When I started," Durant said, "I went up to New York and Chicago and walked up and studied the most successful places. I went to Toots Shor's in New York and every place in Chicago up and down Rush Street.
"So, now, my restaurant is the oldest of its class in the state, and there ain't nothin' like it. The Pink Pony over there in Scottsdale and those fancy places that keep opening and closing all over town can't hold a candle to it."
Durant bought the place at a tax sale for $26,000. He never bought the property on which it stands, however. There was a dairy farm across the road then and Durant used to go across the street to shoot doves in season.
But he didn't become a success just by throwing open the doors.
"You have to be here every morning to watch the food come in the back door," he said. "You have to be tough about it, too. One time I had to order the meat purveyor to drop 1,100 pounds of meat out in the back lot instead of my kitchen. The meat didn't look right to me and I simply wouldn't accept it.
"Another time meat from Chicago came through forty pounds light. Then, the next time, it was sixty pounds light. I called them on it.
"`Don't you allow for shrinkage?' they said. `Hell, no, you son of a bitch,' I said. `Do you allow for shrinkage in my check?'"
Durant recalled the day a muscle man from Las Vegas came around to lobby for the meat purveyors.
"`I knew what you did in Vegas,' he tells me. `Here, you been running this joint less than ten years and you act like you know everything about the restaurant business.'"
Suddenly, there was a glint in Durant's eye.
"I looked at him just the way I'm looking at you now," Durant said, fixing me with a hard eye.
"I told him, `Hell, I've been in this business almost eight years. It takes only four years to go through goddamn Harvard college. Of course I know all there is to know about the goddamned restaurant business."'
It's a restaurant that's sui generis, a place where customers who came in the first week are still regulars.
The steaks and roast beef still come to the table fast and hot. The whiskey at the bar is poured with a heavy hand count and the beer is always deeply chilled.
And even with Durant gone, the place continues to run as if the cooks, bartenders and waiters are working with a watchful eye on the door, fearful that the tempestuous Durant will come roaring back from the grave if they slack off.
In short, Durant's "humble opinion" was right on target. It is "the best eating and drinking establishment in the world.
