Eddie Cantor


Edward "Eddie" Cantor was an American comedian, actor, dancer, singer, songwriter, film producer, screenwriter and author. Cantor was one of the prominent entertainers of his era.
Some of his hits include "Makin' Whoopee", "Ida ", "If You Knew Susie", "Ma! He's Making Eyes at Me", "Mandy", "My Baby Just Cares for Me", "Margie", and "How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm ?" 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, 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.
He helped to develop the March of Dimes and is credited with coining its name. Cantor was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1956 for distinguished service to the film industry.

Early life

Reports and accounts of Cantor's early life often conflict with one another. He was born in New York City, the son of Mechel Iskowitz, an amateur violinist; and his wife Meta Kantrowitz Iskowitz, a young Jewish couple from Russia. It is generally accepted that he was born in 1892, though the day is subject to debate, with either January 31 or Rosh Hashanah, which was on September 10 or September 11, being reported. Although it was reported Cantor was an orphan, his mother dying in childbirth and his father of pneumonia, official records say otherwise; Meta died from complications of tuberculosis in July 1894, and the fate of Mechel is unclear, as no death certificate exists for him. There is also discrepancy as to his name; both his 1957 autobiography and The New York Times obituary for Cantor report his birth name as Isidore Iskowitch, although some articles published after the 20th century give his birth name as Edward or Israel Itzkowitz. His grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz, took custody of him, and referred to him as Izzy and Itchik, and his last name, due to a clerical error, was thought to be Kantrowitz and shortened to Kanter. No birth certificate existed for him, though this is not unusual for someone born in New York in the 19th century.

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 and 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.

Broadway

A year later, Cantor made his Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917. He continued in the Follies until 1927, a period considered the best years of the long-running revue. For several years, Cantor co-starred in an act with pioneer 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. He moved on to stardom in book musicals, starting with Kid Boots and Whoopee!. The successful Broadway run of Banjo Eyes was cut short when Cantor suffered a major heart attack, the first of several that would plague his later years.

Steel Pier, Atlantic City

Cantor was a headliner at the Steel Pier Theater in Atlantic City.
  • Ziegfeld Follies of 1917 – revue – performer
  • Ziegfeld Follies of 1918 – revue – performer, co-composer and co-lyricist for "Broadway's Not a Bad Place After All" with Harry Ruby
  • Ziegfeld Follies of 1919 – revue – performer, lyricist for " Last Rose of Summer"
  • Ziegfeld Follies of 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 – revue – performer
  • Broadway Brevities of 1920 – revue – performer
  • Make It Snappy – revue – performer, co-bookwriter
  • Ziegfeld Follies of 1923 – revue – sketch writer
  • Kid Boots – musical comedy – actor in the role of "Kid Boots"
  • Ziegfeld Follies of 1927 – revue – performer, co-bookwriter
  • Whoopee! – musical comedy – actor in the role of "Henry Williams"
  • Eddie Cantor at the Palace – solo performance
  • Banjo Eyes – musical comedy – actor in the role of "Erwin Trowbridge"
  • Nellie Bly – musical comedy – 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:
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 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". Freedman's team included, among others, Samuel "Doc" Kurtzman, who also wrote for song-and-dance man, Al Jolson, and the comedian Jack Benny. 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 in vaudeville, when the audience chanted to chase off an 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, and Harry Parke. 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 in 1936, and Eddie Fisher in 1949.
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 Comin' 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. The Pabst program ended when the sponsor wanted Cantor to add a weekly television program. Cantor refused to take on the additional broadcast. The trade publication Billboard reported that Cantor and Pabst "parted friends" after "several months of negotiation." He also served as emcee of Take It or Leave It during 1949–1950, and hosted a weekly disc jockey program for Philip Morris during the 1952–1953 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.
In the early 1960s, he syndicated the short radio segment "Ask Eddie Cantor".
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 antisemitic radio personality Father Charles Coughlin and then was dropped by his radio sponsor Camel cigarettes. A year and a half later, Cantor was able to return to the air because of help from his friend Jack Benny.

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 multimillionaire status and left him deeply in debt. However, Cantor's relentless attention to his own earnings 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 in 1929 "A.C.", 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". It was adapted as the theme song for the Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons, distributed by Warner Brothers Pictures between 1936 and 1964. Cantor himself was frequently caricatured in Warner cartoons of the period,.
He would have big success with his album The Eddie Cantor Story, which would reach No. 7 in the US.

Film and television

Cantor also made numerous film appearances. He had previously appeared in a number of short films, performing his Follies songs and comedy routines, and two silent features in the 1920s. He was offered the lead in The Jazz Singer after it was turned down by George Jessel. Cantor also turned the role down, but he became a leading Hollywood star in 1930 with the film version of Whoopee!, shot in two-color Technicolor. He continued making films over the next two decades until his last starring role in If You Knew Susie.
On May 25, 1944, pioneer television station WPTZ in Philadelphia presented a special, all-star telecast which was also seen in New York over WNBT and featured cut-ins from their Rockefeller Center studios. 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 New York 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.
From 1950 to 1954, Cantor was a regular guest host on the television variety series The Colgate Comedy Hour. In 1950, he became the first of several hosts alternating on the NBC television variety show The Colgate Comedy Hour, in which he would introduce musical acts, stage and film stars and play comic characters such as "Maxie the Taxi". In the spring of 1952, Cantor landed 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. When worried sponsors led NBC to threaten cancellation of the show, Cantor's response was to book Davis for two more weeks. Cantor suffered a heart attack following a September 1952 Colgate broadcast, and thereafter, curtailed his appearances until his final program in 1954. In 1955, he appeared in a filmed series for syndication and a year later, appeared in two dramatic roles. He continued to appear as a guest on several shows, and was last seen on the NBC color broadcast of The Future Lies Ahead on January 22, 1960, which also featured Mort Sahl.