My Life Is in Your Hands & Take My Life - The Autobiographies of Eddie Cantor

Show- business biographies tend to feed upon some of the lowest levels of human curiosity, our instinctive desire to know the dirt and the smut of the celebs. Eddie Cantor was however as show- business people go , and they will all forgive me for this, a very decent, honest, hard- working and good person. In this autobiography of two parts he tells of the long road from a little East Side tenement on Eldridge Street all the way to the Colgate Comedy Hour . He did it all on the way including vaudeville and all the road - shows imaginable. He was the most peppy of all of entertainers filled with life and fun. A little guy with big eyes , whose trademark was rolling them he would talk on Sunday night about his wife Ida and his five- daughters just before or after rendering an always upbeat ' Jeepers Peepers where'd you get those peepers, Jeepers Peepers , where'd you get those eyes?' He was essentially an entertainer as cheerer- upper. He didn't leer or threaten he smiled and danced on. Along with Jolson and Jessel and a bit later Uncle Milty he was an American household word. I can remember his bringing that young great hope his protege ( The son he did not have) Eddie Fisher on the stage for his great debut. Cantor was in Joe Franklin's words ' the greatest', if by the greatest is meant a very good, helping person in a very hard cut- throat world. This volume also has C.D.s with so those who never heard him, which I suspect is most of the world now alive, can get a feeling of it. It wasn't great music, but it was great life. This guy wanted to make you happy, and he often did.

Eddie Cantor was a larger-than-life musical comedian in the first half of the twentieth century who made a splash on Broadway and in the Goldwyn Musicals of the 1930's. If you want to hear about old-time showbiz straight from the mouth of someone who lived it, seasoned with intimate memoirs, you've got to check these books out. What's more, you get two for the price of one!

Eddie Cantor is truly a great comedian! The two new autobiographies that were just released; you hear Eddie's story about how he got in to show business, his sucess's and also failures. This is a wonderful book and I would advise it to any Cantor fan.