Eddie Cantor

Eddie Cantor
Born	Edward Israel Iskowitz January 31, 1892(1892-01-31) New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	October 10, 1964(1964-10-10) (aged 72) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, comedian, dancer, singer-songwriter
Years active	1907–53
Spouse	Ida Cantor (1914-62) 5 daughters

Eddie Cantor (January 31, 1892 – October 10, 1964) was an American "illustrated song" performer, comedian, dancer, singer, actor and songwriter.^[1] Familiar to Broadway, radio, movie and early television audiences, this "Apostle of Pep" was regarded almost as a family member by millions because his top-rated radio shows revealed intimate stories and amusing anecdotes about his wife Ida and five daughters. Some of his hits include "Makin' Whoopee", "Ida", "If You Knew Susie", "Ma! He's Makin' Eyes at Me", "Margie" and "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?)" He also wrote a few songs, including "Merrily We Roll Along", the Merrie Melodies Warner Bros. cartoon theme.

His eye-rolling song-and-dance routines eventually led to his nickname, "Banjo Eyes". In 1933, the artist Frederick J. Garner caricatured Cantor with large round eyes resembling the drum-like pot of a banjo. Cantor's eyes became his trademark, often exaggerated in illustrations, and leading to his appearance on Broadway in the musical Banjo Eyes (1941).

His charity and humanitarian work was extensive, and he is credited with coining the phrase and helping to develop The March of Dimes.

Biography

Cantor was born Edward Israel Iskowitz ^[2] in New York City, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Meta and Mechel Iskowitz. His mother died in childbirth one year after his birth, and his father died of pneumonia when Eddie was two, leaving him to be raised by his beloved grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz.^[3] As a child, he attended Surprise Lake Camp.^[4] A misunderstanding when signing her grandson for school gave him her last name of Kantrowitz (shortened by the clerk to Kanter). Esther died on January 29, 1917, two days before he signed a long-term contract with Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. to appear in his Follies.

He had adopted the first name "Eddie" when he met his future wife Ida Tobias in 1903, because she felt that "Izzy" wasn't the right name for an actor. Cantor married Ida in 1914. They (famously) had five daughters, Marjorie, Natalie, Edna, Marilyn and Janet, who provided comic fodder for Cantor's longtime running gag, especially on radio, about his five unmarriageable daughters. Several radio historians, including Gerald Nachman (Raised on Radio), have said that this gag did not always sit well with the girls.

He was the second president of the Screen Actors Guild, serving from 1933-1935. He invented the title "The March of Dimes" for the donation campaigns of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which was organized to combat polio. It was a play on the March of Time newsreels popular at the time. He began the first campaign on his own radio show in January 1938, asking people to mail a dime to the nation's most famous assumed polio victim, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Other entertainers joined in the appeal via their own shows, and the White House mail room was deluged with 2,680,000 dimes.

Following the death of daughter Marjorie at the age of 44, both Eddie's and Ida's health declined rapidly. Ida died in August 1962 of "cardiac insufficiency".^[3][5] On October 10, 1964 in Beverly Hills, California, Eddie Cantor suffered another heart attack and died, aged 72. He is buried in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery. Cantor was awarded an honorary Academy Award the year of his death, for distinguished service to the film industry.

Stage

Saloon songs to vaudeville

By his early teens Cantor began winning talent contests at local theaters and started appearing on stage. One of his earliest paying jobs was doubling as a waiter and performer, singing for tips at Carey Walsh's Coney Island saloon, where a young Jimmy Durante accompanied him on piano. He made his first public appearance in Vaudeville in 1907 at New York's Clinton Music Hall. In 1912, he was the only performer over the age of 20 to appear in Gus Edwards's Kid Kabaret, where he created his first blackface character, "Jefferson". He later toured with Al Lee as the team "Cantor & Lee". Critical praise from that show got the attention of Broadway's top producer, Florenz Ziegfeld, who gave Cantor a spot in the Ziegfeld rooftop post-show, Midnight Frolic (1917).^[3]

Broadway

A year later, Cantor made his Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917. He continued in the Follies until 1927,^[6] a period considered the best years of the long-running revue. For several years Cantor co-starred in an act with pioneer African-American comedian Bert Williams, both appearing in blackface; Cantor played Williams's fresh-talking son. Other co-stars with Cantor during his time in the Follies included Will Rogers, Marilyn Miller, Fanny Brice and W.C. Fields.^[7] He moved on to stardom in book musicals, starting with Kid Boots (1923), Whoopee! (1928) and Banjo Eyes (1941).^[6]

• Ziegfeld Follies of 1917 (1917) - revue - performer
• Ziegfeld Follies of 1918 (1918) - revue - performer, co-composer and co-lyricist for "Broadway's Not a Bad Place After All" with Harry Ruby
• Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 (1919) - revue - performer, lyricist for "(Oh! She's The) Last Rose of Summer"
• Ziegfeld Follies of 1920 (1920) - revue - composer for "Green River", composer and lyricist for "Every Blossom I See Reminds Me of You" and "I Found a Baby on My Door Step"
• The Midnight Rounders of 1920 (1920) - revue - performer
• Broadway Brevities of 1920 (1920) - revue - performer
• Make It Snappy (1922) - revue - performer, co-bookwriter
• Ziegfeld Follies of 1923 (1923) - revue - sketch-writer
• Kid Boots (1923) - musical - actor in the role of "Kid Boots" (the caddie master)
• Ziegfeld Follies of 1927 (1927) - revue - performer, co-bookwriter
• Whoopee! (1928) - musical - actor in the role of "Henry Williams"
• Eddie Cantor at the Palace (1931) - solo performance
• Banjo Eyes (1941) - musical - actor in the role of "Erwin Trowbridge"
• Nellie Bly (1946) - musical - co-producer

Radio and recordings

Radio

Cantor appeared on radio as early as February 3, 1922, as indicated by this news item from Connecticut's Bridgeport Telegram:

Local radio operators listened to one of the finest programs yet produced over the radiophone last night. The program of entertainment which included some of the stars of Broadway musical comedy and vaudeville was broadcast from the Newark, N. J. station WDY and the Pittsburgh station KDKA, both of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company. The Newark entertainment started at 7 o'clock: a children's half-hour of music and fairy stories; 7:[35?], Hawaiian airs and violin solo; 8:00, news of the day; and at 8:20 a radio party with nationally known comedians participating; 9:55, Arlington time signals and 10:01, a government weather report. G. E. Nothnagle, who conducts a radiophone station at his home 176 Waldemere Avenue said last night that he was delighted with the program, especially with the numbers sung by Eddie Cantor. The weather conditions are excellent for receiving, he continued, the tone and the quality of the messages was fine.^[8]

Cantor with Bert Gordon, aka "the Mad Russian".

Cantor's appearance with Rudy Vallee on Vallee's The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour on February 5, 1931 led to a four-week tryout with NBC's The Chase and Sanborn Hour. Replacing Maurice Chevalier, who was returning to Paris, Cantor joined Chase and Sanborn on September 13, 1931. This hour-long Sunday evening variety series teamed Cantor with announcer Jimmy Wallington and violinist Dave Rubinoff. The show established Cantor as a leading comedian, and his scriptwriter, David Freedman, as “the Captain of Comedy.” Cantor soon became the world's highest-paid radio star. His shows began with a crowd chanting, "We want Can-tor, We want Can-tor," a phrase said to have originated when a vaudeville audience chanted to chase off an opening act on the bill before Cantor. Cantor's theme song was his own lyric to the Leo Robin/Richard Whiting song, "One Hour with You." His radio sidekicks included Bert Gordon, (comic Barney Gorodetsky, aka "The Mad Russian") and Harry Parke (better known as "Parkyakarkus"). Cantor also discovered and helped guide the career of singer Dinah Shore, first featuring her on his radio show in 1940, as well as other performers, including Deanna Durbin, Bobby Breen and Eddie Fisher.

Indicative of his effect on the mass audience, he agreed in November 1934 to introduce a new song by the songwriters J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie that other well-known artists had rejected as being "silly" and "childish." The song, "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town", immediately had orders for 100,000 copies of sheet music the next day. It sold 400,000 copies by Christmas of that year.

His NBC radio show, Time to Smile, was broadcast from 1940 to 1946, followed by his Pabst Blue Ribbon Show from 1946 through 1949. He also served as emcee of The $64 Question during 1949-'50, and hosted a weekly disc jockey program for Philip Morris during the 1952-'53 season. In addition to film and radio, Cantor recorded for Hit of the Week Records, then again for Columbia, for Banner and Decca and various small labels.

His heavy political involvement began early in his career, including his participation in the strike to form Actors Equity in 1919, provoking the anger of father figure and producer, Florenz Ziegfeld. At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Cantor publicly denounced Father Charles Coughlin and was dropped by his sponsor, Camel cigarettes. A year and a half later, it was his friend Jack Benny who was able to get him back on the air.

Recordings

Cantor began making phonograph records in 1917, recording both comedy songs and routines and popular songs of the day, first for Victor, then for Aeoleon-Vocalion, Pathé and Emerson. From 1921 through 1925 he had an exclusive contract with Columbia Records, returning to Victor for the remainder of the decade.

Cantor was one of the era's most successful entertainers, but the 1929 stock market crash took away his multi-millionaire status and left him deeply in debt. However, Cantor's relentless attention to his own earnings in order to avoid the poverty he knew growing up caused him to use his writing talent, quickly building a new bank account with his highly popular, bestselling books of humor and cartoons about his experience, Caught Short! A Saga of Wailing Wall Street ^[9] in "1929 A.C. (After Crash)" and "Yoo Hoo Prosperity."

Cantor was also a composer, with his most famous song seldom attributed to him. In 1935, along with Charles Tobias and Murray Mencher, Cantor wrote "Merrily We Roll Along," which he recorded in the 1950s. It was adapted as the themesong for the Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons, distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures between 1937 and 1964. Cantor himself was frequently caricatured in Warner cartoons of the period, (see Tributes).

Film and television

Cantor also bounced back between movies and on radio. He had previously appeared in a number of short films (recording him performing his Follies songs and comedy routines) and two silent features (Special Delivery and Kid Boots) in the 1920s, and was offered the lead in The Jazz Singer when that was turned down by George Jessel (Cantor also turned it down, so it went to Al Jolson), but he became a leading Hollywood star in 1930 with the film version of Whoopee! in two-strip Technicolor. Over the next two decades, he continued making films until his last starring role in If You Knew Susie in 1948.

Filmography

Television

Cantor as host of The Colgate Comedy Hour, 1952.

In the 1950s, he was one of the alternating hosts of the television show The Colgate Comedy Hour, in which he would introduce variety acts and play comic characters like "Maxie the Taxi." However, the show landed Cantor in an unlikely controversy when a young Sammy Davis, Jr. appeared as a guest performer. Cantor embraced Davis and mopped Davis's brow with his handkerchief after his performance. Worried sponsors led NBC to threaten cancellation of the show; Cantor's response was to book Davis for two more weeks.

On May 25, 1944, pioneer television station WPTZ (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia presented a special telecast featuring Eddie Cantor, which was also fed to the NBC television station in New York City, WNBT (now WNBC). Cantor, one of the first major stars to agree to appear on television, was to sing "We're Havin' a Baby, My Baby and Me". Arriving shortly before airtime at the Philadelphia studios, Cantor was reportedly told to cut the song because the NBC New York censors considered some of the lyrics too risqué. Cantor refused, claiming no time to prepare an alternative number. NBC relented, but the sound was cut and the picture blurred on certain lines in the song. This is considered the first instance of television censorship.^{[citation needed]}

Books and merchandising

In addition to Caught Short!: A Saga of Wailing Wall Street, Cantor wrote or co-wrote at least seven other books, including booklets released by the then-fledgling firm of Simon & Schuster, with Cantor’s name on the cover. (Some were "as told to" or written with David Freedman). Customers paid a dollar and received the booklet with a penny embedded in the hardcover. They sold well, and H. L. Mencken asserted that these books did more to pull America out of the Great Depression than all government measures combined.

Bibliography

• My Life Is in Your Hands by Eddie Cantor (1928) with David Freedman; Harper & Bros.
• Caught Short! by Eddie Cantor (1929) Simon & Schuster
• Between the Acts by Eddie Cantor (1930) Simon & Schuster
• Yoo-Hoo, Prosperity!: The Eddie Cantor Five-Year Plan by Eddie Cantor (1931) with David Freedman; Simon & Schuster
• The Rise of the Goldbergs by Gertrude Berg, Forward by Eddie Cantor (1931) Barse & Co.
• Your Next President! by Eddie Cantor (1932) with David Freedman, Illus. by S.L. Hydeman; Ray Long & Richard R. Smith, Inc.
• Eddie Cantor in An Hour with You: A Big Little Book (1934) Whitman
• Eddie Cantor Song and Joke Book (1934) Illus. by Ben Harris; M. Witmark & Sons
• Ziegfeld: The Great Glorifier by Eddie Cantor (1934) with David Freedman; Alfred H. King
• World's Book of Best Jokes by Eddie Cantor (1943) World Publishing Co.
• Hello, Momma by George Jessel, Illus. by Carl Rose, Forward by Eddie Cantor (1946) World Publishing Co.
• As I Remember Them by Eddie Cantor (1965) Duell, Sloan & Pearce
• Take My Life by Eddie Cantor (1957) with Jane Kesner Ardmore; Doubleday
• No Man Stands Alone by Barney Ross, Forward by Eddie Cantor (1957) B. Lippincott Co.
• The Way I See It by Eddie Cantor (1959) with Phyllis Rosenteur, ed.; Prentice-Hall
• Yoo-Hoo, Prosperity! and Caught Short! by Eddie Cantor (1969) Greenwood Press
• The Golden Age of Sound Comedy: Comic Films and Comedians of the Thirties by Donald W. McCaffrey (1973) A.S. Barnes
• Radio Comedy by Arthur Frank Wertheim (1979) Oxford University Press
• The Vaudevillians: A Dictionary of Vaudeville Performers by Anthony Slide (1981) Arlington House
• American Vaudeville as Seen by Its Contemporaries (1984) Charles W. Stein, ed., Alfred A. Knopf
• Eddie Cantor: A Life in Show Business by Gregory Koseluk (1995) McFarland
• Eddie Cantor: A Bio-Bibliography by James Fisher (1997) Greenwood Press
• Banjo Eyes: Eddie Cantor and the Birth of Modern Stardom by Herbert G. Goldman (1997) Oxford University Press
• The Great American Broadcast: A Celebration of Radio's Golden Age by Leonard Maltin (1997) Dutton
• My Life Is in Your Hands; and Take My Life by Eddie Cantor (2000) Cooper Square Press
• Film Clowns of the Depression: Twelve Defining Comic Performances by Wes D. Gehring (2007) McFarland
• Eddie Cantor in Laugh Land by Harold Sherman (2008) Kessinger Publishing

Cantor's popularity led to merchandising of such products as Eddie Cantor's Tell It to the Judge game from Parker Brothers. In 1933, a set of 12 Eddie Cantor caricatures by Frederick J. Garner were published by Brown & Bigelow. These advertising cards were purchased in bulk as a direct-mail item by such businesses as auto body shops, funeral directors, dental laboratories and vegetable wholesale dealers. With the full set, companies could mail a single Cantor card each month for a year to their selected special customers as an ongoing promotion.

Cantor was often caricatured on the covers of sheet music and in magazines and newspapers. Cantor was depicted as a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade,^[10] one of the very few balloons based on a real person.

Tributes

This section may be written from a fan's point of view, rather than a neutral point of view. Please clean it up to conform to a higher standard of quality, and to make it neutral in tone. (December 2011)

Cantor was profiled on the program This Is Your Life, in which an unsuspecting person (usually a celebrity) would be surprised on live television by host Ralph Edwards, with a half-hour tribute. Cantor was the only subject who was told of the surprise in advance; he was recovering from a heart attack and it was felt that the shock might harm him.

On October 29, 1995, as part of a nationwide celebration of the 75th anniversary of radio, he was posthumously inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame at Chicago's Museum of Broadcasting Communication.

In 1953 Warner Bros., in an attempt to duplicate the box-office success of The Jolson Story, filmed a big-budget Technicolor feature film, The Eddie Cantor Story. The film found an audience but might have done better with someone else in the leading role. Actor Keefe Brasselle played Cantor as a caricature with high-pressure dialogue and bulging eyes wide open; the fact that Brasselle was considerably taller than Cantor didn't lend realism either. Eddie and Ida Cantor were seen in a brief prologue and epilogue set in a projection room, where they are watching Brasselle in action; at the end of the film Eddie tells Ida, "I never looked better in my life"... and gives the audience a knowing, incredulous look. George Burns, in his memoir All My Best Friends, claimed that Warner Bros. created a miracle producing the movie in that "it made Eddie Cantor's life boring".

Something closer to the real Eddie Cantor story is his self-produced 1944 feature Show Business, a valentine to vaudeville and show folks that was RKO's top-grossing film that year. Probably the best summary of Cantor's career is in one of the Colgate Comedy Hour shows. The Colgate hour was a virtual video autobiography, with Cantor recounting his career, singing his familiar hits, and re-creating his singing-waiter days with his old pal Jimmy Durante. This show has been issued on DVD as Eddie Cantor in Person.

Cantor is caricatured in numerous Looney Tunes cartoons produced for Warner Bros., beginning with I Like Mountain Music (1933). His other cartoon cameos include Shuffle Off to Buffalo (Harman-Ising, 1933), Billboard Frolics (Friz Freleng, 1935) and Farm Frolics (Bob Clampett, 1941), in which a horse, asked by the narrator to "do a canter," promptly launches into a singing and dancing impression. Eddie Cantor is one of the four "down-on-their luck" stars snubbed by Elmer Fudd in What’s Up, Doc? (Bob McKimson, 1950). The Cantor gag that got the most mileage, however, was his oft-repeated wish for a son after five famous daughters. Slap Happy Pappy (Clampett, 1940) features an “Eddie Cackler” rooster who wants a boy, to no avail. Other references can be found in Baby Bottleneck (Clampett, 1946) and Circus Today (Tex Avery, 1940). In Porky’s Naughty Nephew (Clampett, 1938) a swimming Cantor gleefully adopts a "buoy." ^[11] An animated Cantor also appears prominently in Walt Disney's Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (Wilfred Jackson, 1938) as Little Jack Horner, who sings "Sing a Song of Sixpence."

As talented as Cantor was, he is an excellent example of the mega star who virtually vanishes with the passing of time. His biographer, Gregory Koseluk, wrote in 1995 that Eddie "is all but forgotten," (from Eddie Cantor: A Life in Show Business [Introduction]). In recent years, Eddie Cantor has been a recurring character on HBO's series Boardwalk Empire, where he is played by Stephen DeRosa. He appeared in three episodes of the show's first season and one episode of the second season.

Sources

Goldman, Herbert G. (1997). Banjo Eyes: Eddie Cantor and the Birth of Modern Stardom. New York: Oxford University Press. 

Watch

• A Few Moments with Eddie Cantor, Star of "Kid Boots" (1923) A six-minute film made in Phonofilm by Lee De Forest featuring Cantor telling monologues and singing two songs.

Listen to

• Command Performance 1942-03-01 ep001 - Eddie Cantor
• Command Performance 1942-04-01_ep006 Kay Kyser & Eddie Cantor
• The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Eddie Cantor (excerpts)
• Free OTR: The Eddie Cantor Show (30 1936-52 episodes)
• OTR Network Library: The Eddie Cantor Show (11 1936-52 episodes)

References

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Eddie Cantor

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Eddie Cantor

• Eddie Cantor at the Internet Movie Database
• Eddie Cantor at the Internet Broadway Database
• Eddie Cantor official site
• Cantor's Sidekick: Bert 'The Mad Russian' Gordon @WFMU