My Life Is In Your Hands & Take My Life [Paperback]

Eddie Cantor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2000

A giant in the history of American entertainment, Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) won over the American public time and time again, first on stage, bowling audiences over in the Ziegfeld Follies, then in films, on the radio, and on television. His career ran from Vaudeville to video making all stops in between. A tireless person even when not on the stage, Cantor helped found the March of Dimes, and was the first national president of the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Radio Artists (later AFTRA), and the Jewish Theatrical Guild. Yet another medium in which Cantor succeeded was print. He authored and co-authored several books that upheld his standing as one of America's leading comedians. My Life Is In Your Hands & Take My Life combines for the first time in a single volume two memoirs written in 1928 and 1957, in which Eddie remembers his beginnings as an orphan on the Lower East Side and his hard-won climb from poverty to the bright lights of Broadway. The book also contains a lost chapter in which Eddie recalls his reactions to the stock market crash of 1929, along with a new complete index, discography, and filmography. In My Life Is In Your Hands & Take My Life, Cantor's humor is as sharp as ever and his sentiment is 100% genuine. While not at all modest about his decades of public adoration, Cantor shows a willingness to laugh at his blunders (such as his second film, "Special Delivery"), and to praise the many talented people with whom he collaborated. Along with telling the story of show business in the first half of the 20th century, Cantor also lets readers in on fond stories of his friends, from Jimmy Durante (who worked as a pianist in the Coney Island restaurant where Cantor was a singing waiter), to Ziegfeld alumni Will Rogers and W. C. Fields, to fellow entertainers Clara Bow and Fanny Brice.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book reflects the warmth and vitality that have delighted [Cantor's] audiences for 50 years. (The Chicago Sunday Tribune )

Cantor's books... contain warm remembrances of famous friends a co-workers, including Jack Benny, Will Rogers, Deanna Durbin, W. C. Fields, Florenz Ziegfeld, George Jessel, Jolson, Irving Berlin, Jimmy Durante, Fanny Brice, and many others. Cantor is an engaging—if occasionally over-sentimental—host, his colorful stories presenting a show business that, sadly, we will never again see. (Show Music )

The twin books are the best record written of the roaring, glamorous twenties on Broadway... . Golden mementos of a golden era. (Louis Botto Playbill )

Cantor... was an amazing storyteller and he'll keep even today's readers hanging onto his tales of being a star when a star was a star. (Rapport )

Product Details

• Paperback: 650 pages
• Publisher: Cooper Square Press (June 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815410573
• ISBN-13: 978-0815410577
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,985,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jeepers creepers where'd you get those peepers?, June 29, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: My Life Is In Your Hands & Take My Life (Paperback)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Eddie Cantor has done it agian!, January 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: My Life Is In Your Hands & Take My Life (Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eddie Cantor in His Own Words!, February 26, 2001

By 

Michelle Malik (Sherman Oaks, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Life Is In Your Hands & Take My Life (Paperback)

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!