Eddie Cantor (born Isidore Itzkowitz;Eddie Cantor, with Jane Kesner Ardmore, Take My Life, Mr. Cantor's second autobiography, 1957.Kenrick, John.Who's Who in Musicals: Ca-Cl Musicals101.com, accessed September 5, 2011. January 31, 1892 – October 10, 1964) was an American comedian, actor, dancer, singer, songwriter, film producer, screenwriter and author.Obituary Variety, October 14, 1964. Cantor was one of the prominent entertainers of his era.
Some of his hits include "Makin' Whoopee", "Ida (Sweet as Apple Cider)", "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 (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, 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).
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 (a.k.a. Michael) Iskowitz, an amateur violinist; and his wife (a.k.a. Maite) 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 (a nickname given him by his future wife, Ida, in 1913) or Israel Itzkowitz. His grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz (died January 29, 1917), took custody of him, and referred to him as Izzy and Itchik (both diminutives for Isidor), 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
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 (1917).
Broadway A year later, Cantor made his Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917. He continued in the Follies until 1927,"Eddie Cantor Broadway Credits" Internet Broadway database listing, retrieved December 24, 2009. 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.Cullen, Frank; Hackman, Florence; McNeilly, Donald. "Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers" (2007). Routledge. , p. 193. He moved on to stardom in book musicals, starting with Kid Boots (1923) and Whoopee! (1928). 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 "(Oh! She's the) 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 (1922) – revue – performer, co-bookwriter Ziegfeld Follies of 1923 – revue – sketch writer Kid Boots (1923) – musical comedy – actor in the role of "Kid Boots" (the Caddie Master) Ziegfeld Follies of 1927 – revue – performer, co-bookwriter Whoopee! (1928) – musical comedy – actor in the role of "Henry Williams" Eddie Cantor at the Palace (1931) – solo performance Banjo Eyes (1941) – musical comedy – actor in the role of "Erwin Trowbridge" Nellie Bly (1946) – 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, (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 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"'Caught short! A saga of wailing Wall street', OCLC Number: 381325" worldcat.org, accessed September 5, 2011. 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 (Ida's brother) 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, (see Film and television: Animation).
He would have big success with his album The Eddie Cantor Story, which would reach No. 7 in the US.
Motion pictures
Cantor also made numerous film appearances. In 1923 he performed songs and jokes in a then-experimental talking picture, A Few Moments with Eddie Cantor, produced by inventor Lee de Forest. Paramount Pictures starred him in two silent features, Kid Boots (1926) and Special Delivery (1927).
Warner Bros. was preparing The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film with talking scenes. The studio offered the leading role to George Jessel and then to Eddie Cantor, both of whom declined.
Beginning in 1929 Paramount's New York studio enlisted radio and stage stars (Cantor, Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, Rudy Vallee, Fred Allen, and Ethel Merman, among others) to star in short-subject comedies and musicals. Cantor made three for Paramount: A Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic (1929), a re-creation of Cantor's nightclub act, with the comedian delivering a monologue to a live audience; Getting a Ticket (1929), a comedy sketch with Eddie running afoul of a traffic cop; and Insurance (1930), with Eddie visiting a doctor for an insurance examination. Cantor also made a guest appearance in the New York-filmed Paramount feature Glorifying the American Girl (1929).