Broadway’s Not a Bad Place after All

Born Edward Israel Izkowitz in New York’s Lower East Side, Eddie Cantor was raised by his grandmother Esther Kantrowitz in a tenement. Izzy Kanter, as he was known in his childhood, struggled with hunger while trying to entertain, making his vaudeville debut in 1907. He first appeared on Broadway with Ziegfield’s 1917 Follies, initially as a performer and then as a writer. In 1914 Kanter married Ida Tobias, Anglicizing his name to Eddie Cantor. He had a prolific career in entertainment across vaudeville, Broadway, radio, film, and television. His cowritten “Merrily We Roll Along” (1935) has been featured in hundreds of television episodes and films, making it one of the most memorable melodies in television history. Cantor wrote or cowrote more than twenty books.

Harry Ruby, born Harry Rubinstein in New York’s Lower East Side, dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. He learned to play the piano in his adolescence and worked as a song plugger (demonstrator) for several New York music publishers in between stints as a pianist on the vaudeville circuit. Ruby, his Americanized stage name, collaborated with a number of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway songwriters, including Edgar Leslie, George Jessel, and Bert Kalmar, his longtime musical partner with whom wrote a number of popular scores, screenplays, and songs.