The Eddie Cantor story: A Jewish life in performance and politics

摘要

In a span of over five decades, entertainment icon Eddie Cantor starred in vaudeville, Broadway musical comedies, motion pictures, radio, and television, as well as producing recordings of his most well-known songs and publishing best-selling autobiographies. Radio was one of the most culturally potent avenues through which Cantor and other entertainers and political figures of the 1930s and 1940s could communicate their views and values to the broad American public. Broadcasting historian David Weinstein (who has previously written a valuable history of the Dumont television network) persuasively argues that Cantor's commitment to and pride in his Jewish ethnic and religious identity, and his engagement with political and civic activism, were central to his career and performing personality. The book charts Cantor's life, from his birth in 1892 and impoverished childhood in the Eastern-European-Jewish-immigrant community of New York City's Lower East Side, and the development of his performing talents in amateur night shows and early experiences as a singer and comic in 1910s vaudeville acts. Subsequent chapters discuss Cantor's successful rise to the "big time" in Broadway musical comedies and Ziegfeld reviews in the 1920s, to fame in radio and film in the 1930s and 1940s, to work in television in the early 1950s. Weinstein digs deeply into archival materials, the entertainment trade press, Jewish culture, and American history. Cantor's career story is highlighted with rich historical nuggets, such as discussions of Cantor's formative experiences with the Arthur and Bedini vaudeville troupe, his insouciant performances in Ziegfeld shows, his public criticism of Henry Ford's racial prejudice in the 1920s and anti-Semitism's frightening international expansion in the 1930s, and his last grand "hurrah" on early television, in addition to examples of Cantor's fervid dedication to Jewish causes throughout his career.