Eddie Cantor
October 10, 1964 (aged 72)
- Actor
- comedian
- dancer
- singer
- songwriter
- film producer
- screenwriter
- author
1907–1962
5
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).
His charity and humanitarian work was extensive. 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[edit]
Reports and accounts of Cantor's early life often conflict with one another. What is known is that he was born in New York City, the son of Mechel Iskowitz (also Michael), an amateur violinist, and his wife Meta Kantrowitz Iskowitz (also Maite), a young Jewish couple from Russia.[4] 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.[5][6][7] 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.[8][5] 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.[5] No birth certificate existed for him, though this is not unusual for someone born in New York in the 19th century.
Stage[edit]
Saloon songs to vaudeville[edit]
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).[5]
Broadway[edit]
A year later, Cantor made his Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917. He continued in the Follies until 1927,[9] 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.[10] He moved on to stardom in book musicals, starting with Kid Boots (1923) and Whoopee! (1928).[9] 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[edit]
Cantor was a headliner at the Steel Pier Theater in Atlantic City.
Radio and recordings[edit]
Radio[edit]
Cantor appeared on radio as early as February 3, 1922, as indicated by this news item from Connecticut's Bridgeport Telegram:
Activism and philanthropy[edit]
Cantor was the second president of the Screen Actors Guild, serving from 1933 to 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 radio show in January 1938, asking listeners to mail a dime to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. At that time, Roosevelt was the most notable American victim of polio. Other entertainers joined in the appeal via their own shows, and the White House mail room was deluged with 2,680,000 dimes—a large sum at the time.
Cantor also recorded a spoken introduction on a 1938 Decca recording of Alexander's Ragtime Band by Bing Crosby and Connee Boswell in which he thanks the listener for buying the record, which supported the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis. That record hit No. 1 on the charts, though Cantor did not sing on it. A lifelong Democrat, Cantor supported Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential election.[20]
Tributes[edit]
Cantor was profiled on This Is Your Life, a program 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.
In 1951 he received an honorary doctorate from Temple University.[21]
On October 29, 1995, as part of a nationwide celebration of the 75th anniversary of radio, Cantor was posthumously inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame at Chicago's Museum of Broadcasting Communication.
There was an Eddie Cantor caricature featured in Comedy Store, and flashing lights on it marked the end of auditions for comedians. [22]
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 (1953). 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 did not lend realism. 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".[23]
Something closer to the real Eddie Cantor story is his self-produced feature Show Business (1944), a valentine to vaudeville and show folks, which was RKO's top-grossing film that year.
Probably the best summary of Cantor's career is on one of the Colgate Comedy Hour shows.[24] Re-issued on DVD as Eddie Cantor in Person, the hour-long episode is a virtual video autobiography, with Eddie recounting his career, singing his greatest hits, and recreating his singing-waiter days with another vaudeville legend, his old pal Jimmy Durante.
Cantor appears as a recurring character, played by Stephen DeRosa, on the series Boardwalk Empire.