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The Eddie Cantor Story
The Eddie Cantor Story is a 1953 American musical drama film directed by Alfred E. Green and starring Keefe Brasselle, Marilyn Erskine and Aline MacMahon. It is a biopic based on the life of Eddie Cantor featuring Brasselle as Cantor. It was produced and distributed by Warner Brothers.[2] Cantor himself appeared briefly in the film in a cameo role. PlotRaised by his grandmother on New York's East Side, 13-year-old Eddie sings while another neighborhood kid, Rocky Kramer, and his gang pick pockets. Eddie is sent by Grandma Esther to a boys' camp, where he entertains the others with his songs and routines. Ida Tobias, daughter of a local merchant, elopes with Eddie a few years later. Rocky is now a local politician and gets Eddie a job in a nightclub. Eddie tells the family he's the star performer there, but he's actually a singing waiter. But piano player Jimmy Durante helps land him a job in a California show. A headline performer envious of Eddie's popularity pulls a prank, telling him Flo Ziegfeld wants him for the Follies show in New York. It turns out Ziegfeld has never heard of Eddie when he arrives at the theater, but an audition by Eddie is so good, Ziegfeld does indeed hire him. Ida gives birth to several children while Eddie becomes a big success. She's upset that his family doesn't seem to come first, and matters are complicated when Eddie's fortune is lost in the 1929 stock-market crash. A heart attack slows Eddie, as well, but he prospers on the radio as his health improves, and soon he is happy at work and at home. Production and receptionWarner Bros. attempted to duplicate the box-office success of The Jolson Story, even hiring the Jolson film's producer Sidney Skolsky and director Alfred E. Green. The Eddie Cantor Story found an audience but might have fared better with a different leading man. Actor Keefe Brasselle played Cantor as a caricature with high-pressure dialogue and bulging eyes wide open; Brasselle was considerably taller than Cantor, which did not help the illusion. Cantor recorded 20 songs for the soundtrack, which Brasselle lip-synched. Eddie and Ida Cantor themselves are 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".[3] Motion Picture Daily drew a parallel with The Jolson Story: "[The producers] have brought forth a directly comparable picture, with Eddie Cantor singing 20 of his great songs. All in all, it is an expertly wrought film record of a great entertainer's finely lived and happily continuing career." The reviewer spoke fondly of Cantor but had little to say about Brasselle: "Eddie had full approval right over the casting, and if he okayed Brasselle for the role, it would seem the rest of us haven't much qualification for quibbling about it."[4] Cast
ProductionThe film was announced in 1948 with a budget of $3 million.[5] References
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