Eddie Cantor Movies
Entertainer Eddie Cantor, he of the "banjo eyes" and boundless hyperkinetic energy, was born on New York's Lower East Side to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents. Orphaned early on, Eddie was raised by his maternal grandmother Esther, who supported herself and her grandson as a door-to-door peddler. After winning $5 at a Bowery Theatre Amateur Night, the teenaged Cantor knew where his destiny lay. He lived a hand-to-mouth existence as a vaudeville performer, singing waiter, and blackface comedian in Gus Edwards' famous schoolroom ensemble act. Though moderately successful as a comic singer, Cantor didn't truly hit the big time until he was hired for Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolics in 1916. He stayed with the Ziegfeld Follies throughout the 1920s, and also starred in the producer's "book" shows Kid Boots and Whoopee. In addition to his expertly timed comic patter, Cantor achieved fame by introducing such songs as "If You Knew Susie," "Dinah," "Makin' Whoopee," and of course, "Ida," a paean to his wife of 49 years, Ida Tobias. After making his movie debut in a DeForest Phonofilm talking short subject in 1922, Cantor starred in a brace of enjoyable silent films, Kid Boots (1926) and Special Delivery (1927). His best Hollywood years were spent under contract to Samuel Goldwyn, where Eddie turned out one big-budget musical comedy per year between 1930 and 1936: Whoopee (1930), Palmy Days (1931), The Kid From Spain (1932), Roman Scandals (1933), Kid Millions (1934), and Strike Me Pink (1936). Unfortunately, most of his post-Goldwyn films seemed like hokey, outdated rehashes of his earlier films. Though his movie career faltered, Cantor remained popular throughout the 1940s on his long-running radio program, where he clowned with such stooges as announcer Harry Von Zell, violinist Rubinoff, and Bert "Mad Russian" Gordon. The offstage Cantor was not perfect, but most of the man's character flaws have been forgotten in the light of his inexhaustible work on behalf of dozens of charities, most prominently the March of Dimes. He also regularly put his career on the line through his union activities with Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Radio Artists, and flew in the face of bigotry and anti-Semitics through his work with the B'nai Brith and Jewish Relief. Though slowed down by a heart attack in 1953, Cantor kept his hand in whenever possible, even hosting a 38-week syndicated TV variety series, The Eddie Cantor Comedy Theatre. In 1953, Eddie Cantor was the subject of the Warner Bros. biopic The Eddie Cantor Story. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1937
Autograph hound Al Babson (Eddie Cantor) accidentally disrupts the filming of a movie about Ali Baba, and is injured in the process. The filmmakers try to buy him off, but nurse Dinah (Virginia Field) suggests he be hired as an extra. He takes an overdose of painkillers, and his Arabian Nights dreams combine with the plot of the movie. His name leads the populace to think he's the son of Ali Baba, and he's taken to the palace of Sultan Abdullah (Roland Young), who's so impressed by Al that he makes him prime minister. Princess Miriam (June Lang) is in love with Yusuf (Tony Martin), the leader of the peasants, while Al has fallen for Deenah (also Virginia Field), whose father Omar (Maurice Cass) is trying to make a carpet fly. Meanwhile, the evil Prince Musah (Douglas Dumbrille) is conspiring with Sultana (Louise Hovick), one of Abdullah's many wives, to capture the princess, take over Bagdad, and kill Abdullah and Al as well. Miriam and Yusuf are unhappy because royalty and commoners cannot marry, so Al comes up with a plan to help his friends, but the plan spectacularly backfires, and Abdullah orders him to be boiled in oil. ~ Bill Warren, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor, Tony Martin, (more)
- 1950
A comedy variety show with a rotating roster of hosts and celebrity guests. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- 1930
Sparring landladies provide the focus of this comedy. The two women are constantly competing to take in the most boarders at their respective homes. Though outwardly jealous rivals, the women are actually best friends. The competition gets more intense when one woman's daughter falls for the other's son. Now the women, who have secretly made a killing playing the stock market, try to see which one can put on the fanciest wedding. In the end, the couple weds and the women renew their friendship. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, (more)
- 1953
Eddie Cantor does a sketch alone, then teams up with Brian Donlevy in another before Eddie Fisher and Frank Sinatra make several musical contributions. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor
- 1954
An early television rarity of the wild off-the-cuff clowning by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1989
Entertainment history. Uses film clips and contemporary interviews to show what Hollywood did during World War II in raising money for the war and entertaining the troops. Shows entertainer Bob Hope and his performing troupe today. Other entertainers include Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, The Andrews Sisters, Jack Benny, Lena Horne, Dinah Shore, Lucille Ball, Jimmy Durante, Red Skelton and Eddie Cantor. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1940
In this drama, a former big-man-on-campus, finds himself almost destitute twenty years later because he cannot find a job. This does not prevent him from helping out a depressed single mother who is about to commit suicide. He saves her and helps her find a job as a waitress. She thanks him by leaving town and abandoning her son. The poor man is now stuck with raising the baby. He manages to find himself a job as a professor in a girls' school. There he is tormented by his fun-loving female students. When the mischievous girls learn that their professor has a young baby, they rally to his aide. They also help him conceal the babe from the school administration because they would be scandalized and fire him. Eventually the boy's mother is located. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor, Judith Anderson, (more)
Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld brought his legendary "Follies" to the silver screen in Glorifying the American Girl. The barely visible plotline concerns a virginal young miss (Mary Eaton) who aspires to greatness as a Follies girl. With stars in her eyes, she heads to New York, leaving her hometown boyfriend to fend for himself. Upon arriving in the Big Apple, our heroine links up with a two-bit dancer who offers to make her a star -- if only she'll let him make her, period. The greater part of the film is given over to a re-creation of a "typical" Follies production, replete with musical solos by Rudy Vallee and Helen Morgan and a sidesplitting comedy sketch with Eddie Cantor and Louis Sorin as a pair of kvetching Jewish tailors ("Vat's der idea uff calling me a damn fool in front uff der customers?" "So, it's a secret?"). From time to time, the camera cuts away to the many celebrities enjoying the show, including journalist Ring Lardner, nightclub doyenne Texas Guinan, New York mayor Jimmy Walker, Paramount Pictures head man Adolph Zukor, and Flo Ziegfeld himself, accompanied by his then-wife, Billie Burke. And yes, that's Johnny Weissmuller on-stage as a provocatively undraped "Nature Boy." As a bonus, the musical score was the handiwork of Irving Berlin. Originally filmed in Technicolor, Glorifying the American Girl is presently available only in black-and-white. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mary Eaton, Edward Crandall, (more)
Where the original Gremlins was a horror film spiked with comedy, Gremlins 2: The New Batch is essentially a black comedy, with a couple of horrifying touches. As the film starts, the fantastical trinket shop in Chinatown, which sold the Mogwai in the first film, is demolished by a crazed multi-media businessman called Daniel Clamp (John Glover). The heroes from the first movie, Billy (Zach Galligan) and Kate (Phoebe Cates), happen to work for Clamp in his huge high-rise. They find the Mogwai within Clamp's building, but not before he has accidentally spawned legions of mischievous, lizard-like Gremlins. Soon, the Gremlins are wreaking havoc throughout the building. In the original film, their misdeeds were violent, but here they're also goofy and satirical. Director Joe Dante has filled the film with quick verbal and visual jokes, which, for many, makes Gremlins 2: The New Batch a satire and inversion of the typical horror film. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, (more)
- 1944
The West Coast's answer to Broadway's Stage Door Canteen, the Hollywood Canteen was created as a GI morale-booster by film stars Bette Davis and John Garfield. The Canteen was established so that Our Boys on leave in Tinseltown could have a good time with good food and good dancing -- and, as a bonus, rub shoulders with their favorite movie personalities, who functioned as waiters, chefs, busboys and dancing partners. Since the 1944 all-star flick Hollywood Canteen was produced by Warner Bros., it was only to be expected that the celebrities seen herein would consist mostly of Warner Bros. contract players. The frail plot concerns a soldier on medical leave (played by Robert Hutton) who falls in love with lovely leading lady Joan Leslie (played by Joan Leslie) while visiting the Canteen. Bette Davis and John Garfield are on hand to emcee the Canteen's variety acts, and to act as cupids for the Hutton/Leslie romance. The "supporting cast" includes the likes of The Andrews Sisters, Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Eddie Cantor, Sidney Greenstreet, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Ida Lupino, Dennis Morgan, Roy Rogers, S.Z. Sakall, Barbara Stanwyck, and the Jimmy Dorsey and Carmen Cavallaro musical aggregations. Virtually everyone involved donated their salaries to the Canteen fund--even Jack Benny. As with most of these patriotic wartime star rallies, the results are a mixed bag: the best sequences include Benny's violin "duel" with Joseph Szigeti and Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers introducing Cole Porter's Don't Fence Me In. Hollywood Canteen won three Oscar nominations, more for its good intentions than its inherent excellence. Still, don't pass up the opportunity when this "movie star salad" shows up on cable TV. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Hutton, Jack Benny, (more)
- 1980
This nostalgic video uses five short films to look back at Hollywood's efforts to bolster both overseas G.I.s and the folks back home during WW II. Each of the five shorts features an all-star cast doing things to cheer people up during a difficult time. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1948
Hoping for a success commensurate with his previous Show Business (1945), comedian Eddie Cantor poured a lot of his own money into the RKO Radio musical If You Knew Susie. Cantor and his Show Business co-star Joan Davis are reteamed herein as ex-vaudevillians Sam and Susie Parker, who retire to a small and rather cloistered New England town. Faced with the snobbery of the local "aristocracy," Sam and Susie come to believe that they aren't worthy of their new neighbors, nor of their own children. All this changes when the Parkers find a document signed by George Washington bestowing $50,000 on one of Sam's forebears! According to the government, Sam and Susie are now owed several billion dollars interest. Sam patriotically refuses to accept the money, thereby becoming a national hero -- but not before a plenitude of comic plot twists involving gangsters Sheldon Leonard and Joe Sawyer. Cast as the Parkers' daughter Marjorie is "newcomer" Margaret Kerry, who'd actually been in films since 1936 as child actress Peggy Lynch. One of the musical highlights in If You Knew Susie is a clip from Show Business, featuring Cantor, Davis, George Murphy and Constance Moore. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor, Joan Davis, (more)
- 1930
Insurance is a short that showcases Eddie Cantor's vaudeville style origins. Cantor plays Sydney B. Zwieback, a somewhat neurotic type with bulging eyes that comes to visit a doctor and his comely nurse because he needs a physical to get insurance. (He's been turned down by three companies so far). The doctor has a difficult time with the patient, whose answers to his questions are frustrating. When the doctor is told that Cantor is Irish and Jewish, he asks on what side he's Jewish. "The East Side," comes the reply. When he inquires if anyone in his family has died an unnatural death, Cantor replies that his grandfather died of "throat trouble -- they hung him." And that's how it continues, as the doctor tests his eyes, thumps his chest, etc. When he takes his blood pressure, Cantor's eyes stay still long enough to take in the sight of the nurse's shapely legs, raising his blood pressure to new heights and prompting him to sing "Now That the Girls Are Wearing Long Dresses." The physical ends with the doctor testing Cantor's knee reflexes, which causes him so much pain he limps out of the office, using the coat rack as a cane. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
- 1926
Based on the musical comedy of the same name, Kid Boots was the first of two silent vehicles for irrepressible Ziegfeld Follies star Eddie "Banjo Eyes" Cantor. Old "Banjo Eyes" stars as a tailor's assistant named Kid Boots, who tries to save his pal Tom Sterling (Lawrence Gray) from the clutches of gold-digger Polly Pendleton (Billie Dove). Since Tom is a pro golfer, this requires Kid Boots to hire himself out as a caddy, leading to a series of slapstick complications. With the help of Tom's true-blue sweetheart Jane Martin (Clara Bow), our hero incapacitates Tom's golf-tournament rival George (Malcolm Waite) and exposes Polly for the predator that she is. Legend has it that Eddie Cantor had a brief affair with Clara Bow while working on Kid Boots, but this has been refuted by most of Bow's biographers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor, Clara Bow, (more)
Brooklyn tugboat worker Eddie (Eddie Cantor), bullied and cowed by his tough-guy stepfather and stepbrothers (a la Harold Lloyd's The Kid Brother), inherits $77 million from his uncle, an Egyptologist. Con artist Dot (Ethel Merman) wants to get her lunchhooks on the money, and to this end offers herself as Eddie's adopted mother (never mind that she's nearly 20 years younger), intending to have her thuggish brother Louie (Warren Hymer) bump off our hero at the first opportunity. The nonsensical plotline ends up with Eddie, Dot, Louie, pompous Southern colonel Larrabee (Berton Churchill), and nominal romantic leads Jerry (George Murphy in his film debut) and Jane (Ann Sothern) trapped in the palace of Arab potentate Mulhulla (Paul Harvey). The better-than-average comic banter includes some funny bits between Cantor and Eve Sully, of the comedy team of "Block and Sully" (her husband-partner Jesse Block is also in the picture, but just barely). Spotted among the featured players in Kid Millions are such "Our Gang" members as Stymie Beard, Scotty Beckett and Tommy Bond, and there's a specialty by the Nicholas Brothers during Cantor's obligatory "blackface" number; and yes, that's Lucille Ball as a blonde Goldwyn Girl in the harem sequence. PS: According to Ethel Merman, the film's elaborate Technicolor ice-cream factory finale, in which Eddie allows dozens of tenement kids to gorge themselves on his tasty confections, posed censorship problems: while producer Sam Goldwyn was allowed to show the little boys with comically extended stomachs, he was not permitted to do so with the little girls, for fear that the audience might think the female moppets were pregnant! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stanley Fields, Eddie Cantor, (more)
- 1990
Lucille Ball is honored in this program which features many of her television and film appearances. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1989
- PG13
Weighed down by her late husband's debts, widow Beth Macauley (Jessica Lange) is compelled to sell her home and move to a less costly locale. She relocates in Baltimore with her resentful sons Chris (Chris O'Donnell) and Matt (Charlie Korsmo) and takes a job at a ramshackle gourmet food store managed by Lisa Coleman (Kathy Bates). Men Don't Leave offers in Beth an extremely vulnerable, easily discouraged person who can't seem to get a grip on her reduced circumstances. Even so, she and her sons eventually pull themselves together, despite many side trips with Wrong Lovers and False Friends. Some of the film's best moments involve Joan Cusack, playing a mixed-up nurse with whom Chris falls in love. Representing the comeback of director Paul Brickman after a seven-year gap, Men Don't Leave is a slightly more upbeat American version of the French film La Vie Continue. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jessica Lange, Chris O'Donnell, (more)
- 1931
Mr. Lemon of Orange was advertised as comedian El Brendel's first starring feature, even though he'd previously dominated the proceedings in the lavish musical fantasy Just Imagine. This time, Brendel plays a dual role: in addition to his Dutch-dialect characterization as a dimwitted immigrant named Oscar, he also plays a tough, accent-less American gangster named Slippy McGee. On the lam from the law, Slippy decides to disguise himself as a simple-minded Swede, which results in poor Oscar, despite his German accent, being mistaken for the gangster. Most of the ethnic humor is quite offensive by today's standard (to be Swedish is to be stupid in this picture), but Brendel's essential likability saves the day. Some of the dialogue in Mr. Lemon of Orange was written by Eddie Cantor, who was decidedly not Scandinavian. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- El Brendel
- 1931
Eddie Cantor plays Eddie Simpson, a shy and jumpy young fellow who spontaneously bursts into song whenever he gets nervous. He works with the sly Yolando, a phony but successful psychic. The trouble in this lively musical farce begins when Yolando attempts to swindle the owner of the local bakery. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor, Charlotte Greenwood, (more)
- 1933
Easily the best of Eddie Cantor's gargantuan musical comedies for producer Sam Goldwyn, Roman Scandals begins in the middle-America community of West Rome, where our hero Eddie (Cantor) is employed as a delivery boy. A self-styled authority of Ancient Roman history, Cantor bemoans the fact that the local shanty community is about to be wiped out by scheming politicians, certain that such an outrage could never have happened during Rome's Golden Days. After a blow on the head, Cantor wakes up in Imperial Rome, where he is sold on the slave auction block to good-natured tribune Josephus (David Manners). Cantor soon discovers that the evil emperor Valerius (Edward Arnold) is every bit a crook and grafter as the politicians in West Rome, and he intends to do something about it. He gets a job as food taster for Valerius -- a none-too-secure position, inasmuch as the emperor's wife Agrippa (Veree Teasdale) is constantly trying to poison her husband -- and does his best to smooth the path of romance for Josephus and recently captured princess Sylvia (Gloria Stuart). Cantor's well-intentioned interference earns him a session in the torture chamber, but he escapes and commandeers a chariot, setting the stage for a spectacular slapstick climax. On the verge of recapture, Cantor wakes to find himself in West Rome U.S.A. again, where he quickly foils the modern-day despots and brings about a happy ending for all his friends.
Co-written by George S. Kaufman, Robert E. Sherwood, George Oppenheimer and Arthur Sheekman (the soon-to-be husband of leading lady Gloria Stuart), Roman Scandals manages to get off a few clever satirical licks, but essentially it's a "lappy" lowbrow vehicle for Eddie Cantor, and in this it succeeds immensely. The Busby Berkeley-staged musical numbers, written by Harry Warren, Al Dubin and L. Wolfe Gilbert, must be seen to be believed: In "No More Love", Ruth Etting, playing the Emperor's cast-off mistress Olga, sings a plaintive torch song as dozens of enslaved Goldwyn Girls (including Lucille Ball and Barbara Pepper), wearing nothing but long, blonde wigs, are chained to a rotating pedestal; and in "Keep Young and Beautiful", these same maidens gleefully cavort around a Roman bathhouse in the near-altogether while Cantor, in blackface, hops about, rolls his eyes and claps his hands -- just before a jet of steam "shrinks" him, at which point he metamorphoses into midget Billy Barty! The quintessence of Depression-era escapism, Roman Scandals is must-see entertainment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Co-written by George S. Kaufman, Robert E. Sherwood, George Oppenheimer and Arthur Sheekman (the soon-to-be husband of leading lady Gloria Stuart), Roman Scandals manages to get off a few clever satirical licks, but essentially it's a "lappy" lowbrow vehicle for Eddie Cantor, and in this it succeeds immensely. The Busby Berkeley-staged musical numbers, written by Harry Warren, Al Dubin and L. Wolfe Gilbert, must be seen to be believed: In "No More Love", Ruth Etting, playing the Emperor's cast-off mistress Olga, sings a plaintive torch song as dozens of enslaved Goldwyn Girls (including Lucille Ball and Barbara Pepper), wearing nothing but long, blonde wigs, are chained to a rotating pedestal; and in "Keep Young and Beautiful", these same maidens gleefully cavort around a Roman bathhouse in the near-altogether while Cantor, in blackface, hops about, rolls his eyes and claps his hands -- just before a jet of steam "shrinks" him, at which point he metamorphoses into midget Billy Barty! The quintessence of Depression-era escapism, Roman Scandals is must-see entertainment. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor, Ruth Etting, (more)
- 1944
After a year's absence, entertainer Eddie Cantor returned to the screen in the self-produced Show Business. The plot is loosely based on Cantor's own rise to fame, from vaudeville to Broadway. Covering the years 1914 to 1929, the film reflects the changing tastes in entertainment, though Cantor (as in real life) steadfastly remains the same. Co-stars George Murphy and Joan Davis likewise borrow from their own showbiz experience in playing their characters, while Constance Moore, who was still in her playpen when Cantor was at the height of his Ziegfeld Follies fame, provides the standard love interest. Highlights include such Cantor standards as "Curse of an Aching Heart," "Whoopee," and "Dinah," the latter performed in blackface. The best ensemble number is a devastating satire of Grand Opera, with Joan Davis particularly amusing as a Wagnerian soprano. A few excerpts from Show Business were reused as "flashbacks" in the subsequent Cantor-Davis starrer If You Knew Susie (1948). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eddie Cantor, George Murphy, (more)
