Cantor, Eddie; Ardmore, Jane Kesner

Take My Life

Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1957. First Edition. Hardcover. "Take My Life is Eddie Cantor's autobiography. In it he retraces the steps that have carried him from a dingy one-room apartment on New York's lower East Side through a thousand stage doors and out into the glow of the footlights and the applause and laughter that have so long been his due...Take My Life is filled with anecdotes and stories about Eddie, his wonderful...family, as well as Eddie's friends, the now fabled names of show business: George Jessel, Al Jolson, Irving Berlin, Sophie Tucker, George M. Cohan, Ruth Etting, Will Rogers, Ethel Merman, Jack Benny, and many others...Eddie Cantor's life has been full- rich, exciting, funny...sometimes sad. His autobiography has all the warmth and vitality that have delighted his audiences for over forty years." (from front & rear flaps) The autobiography of Eddie Cantor (born Isidore Itzkowitz, 1892-1964) the great Jewish-American entertainer who was wildly popular in every early-to-mid-20th-century media from Vaudville to early television. Versatile & nicknamed "The Apostle of Pep" for his energy, Cantor was especially successful with his radio show in which he shared intimate anecdotes about his beloved wife & five daughters, & was also a noted philanthropist who coined the term "The March of Dimes" for that now-iconic organization. Written with the assistance of Jane Kesner Ardmore; & with a section of photographs spanning Cantor's varied career & collaborators including the above-listed stars, Jimmy Durante, his family et al.- & one image of Cantor wincingly performing in "blackface," all-too-common to most entertainers of his era. Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket (with exemplary caricature of wide-eyed Cantor by Tom Funk on front cover, $3.95 price on front flap), first edition as stated on copyright page. A prime relic of old-time American showbiz, reminding this writer of the sort of character that the comedian Martin Short might satirically portray. Book in fine condition with only very mild rubbing to off-white cloth front, back covers & spine; a bit of wear & rubbing to edges & corners of same; slight loss of red ink at first word of title at spine; mild rubbing, browning & occasional spotting to edges of text block (side edge of same untrimmed as issued). Interior very fine with only mild browning to blank paste-downs & endpapers; a touch of browning mostly to blank margins of page leaves; very small creases, tiny bumps at corners of a few of same. Unrestored dust jacket relatively good-to-near-fine with mild-to-moderate rubbing, browning, scratching, faint creasing & sparse spotting to front, back covers, spine & flaps; mild wear with some tiny bumps, creases at thin edges & corners of same; small chips with slight loss of paper esp. at spine-edges, corners; small area at blank background to left of caricature with loss of grey surface; several very short, faint purple (crayon?) marks at blank grey area to right of caricature. Fine / Good- Near Fine. [Item #4623]

Price: $60.00