
Original six sheet poster for the Alfred E. Green film THE EDDIE CANTOR STORY, starring Keefe Brasselle as the legendary vaudeville star. Eddie Cantor emigrated to Hollywood from the New York Stage to make elaborate musical funnies for Samuel Goldwyn – films like PALMY DAYS and WHOOPEE. By the 1940s his star had diminished if not faded. But by the 1950s, Cantor was, like many of his peers, starring again on network TV. The King of Comic TV, Milton Berle, in his book of sketches about comedians, B.S. I LOVE YOU (1988, McGraw Hill) wrote that Cantor was not a natural comedian, but that he wanted very much to be funny. To serve that end he hired legions of writers to keep him that way. Berle wrote also “He [Cantor] had respect for the poor guy who reached deep in his pocket to come up with the money for a ticket. A dollar was a lot of sweat in Cantor’s day. Knowing this, he was among the first Broadway stars to play past the critics to the audience. The critics may have grimaced when Cantor rolled his banjo eyes. The audiences roared with laughter. Cantor defied the dictum of the first three decades of this [the last] century that a show could be a hit only if it pleased the critics.” By 1953, Cantor was such a well known personality that Warner’s fashioned this film in the mode of THE JOLSON STORY and other successful show business biopics. The real Cantor even appears in a short prologue to the movie, shown appearing as if coming to work to the studio in his car. This poster is a very nice example of Jacques Kapralik artwork on a large format poster. Six sheet posters are printed (usually) on four separate panels. We have photographed each panel and assembled the poster photographically using photo software. Very fine condition, never assembled.