Eddie Cantor — comedian with roots in the Russian Empire
Eddie Cantor was born in New York City on 31 January 1892. His birth name is given variously: Isidore Iskowitch in his 1957 autobiography and in his New York Times obituary, Isidore Itzkowitz or Israel Iskowitz in later accounts. His parents, Mechel (Michael) Iskowitz, an amateur violinist, and Meta Kantrowitz, are described as a young Jewish couple from Russia; the town they came from is not recorded.
He was orphaned very young, before his first birthday by some accounts and at two or three by others, and was raised by his maternal grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz, in a basement flat on the Lower East Side. When she enrolled him at school, a registrar wrote down her surname instead of his, as Kanter, and the boy kept it as Cantor. The name Eddie came from Ida Tobias, whom he later married. His grandmother died on 29 January 1917, two days before he signed a long-term contract with Florenz Ziegfeld.
By 1907 he was a billed name in vaudeville, later nicknamed Banjo Eyes. Ziegfeld put him into the Midnight Frolic in 1916 and then into the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, alongside Fanny Brice and Will Rogers; he returned for the Follies of 1918, 1919 and 1927, and starred on Broadway in Kid Boots and Whoopee!, which he also made as a film in 1930. By one account he was for three years running the most popular star on screen.
On radio his weekly show made him one of the best-known voices in the country, and he used it to launch other performers, among them Dinah Shore. In January 1938, at President Franklin Roosevelt's request, he began on air the appeal against infantile paralysis that he named the March of Dimes, after the newsreel The March of Time, asking listeners to send dimes to the White House. He was president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1933 to 1935 and in 1937 the first president of the American Federation of Radio Artists. In the 1950s he hosted The Colgate Comedy Hour on television.
In 1956 he received an honorary Academy Award for distinguished service to the film industry. He died on 10 October 1964, aged seventy-two.
Tracing the roots — Russian Empire — both parents (town not documented)
Born in New York in 1892 to Mechel Iskowitz, an amateur violinist, and Meta Kantrowitz, described as a young Jewish couple from Russia; their town is not recorded. Orphaned in infancy, he was raised on the Lower East Side by his grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz, whose surname became his.
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Russian Empire — both parents (town not documented). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"It takes 20 years to become an overnight success."