New Torrington 432 Wonderful Oldtime Personalities Series
"Club Richman: Harry Richman and Eddie Cantor" From broadcasts, 1949-51 (Library of Congress)
Notes:
Both sides play in one continuous track.
"Strictly for use by J. Perry Salem's Club Richman Fan Clubs of Toledo, Ohio and Carter, Kansas."
Harry Richman
An actor, singer and nightclub entertainer with a debonair "man-about-town" image.
Though his fame didn't outlast the Depression era, Harry Richman was one of the top entertainers of the Jazz Age, a nightclub act with a flamboyant style often compared to Al Jolson. A period star of Broadway and the silver screen, he also earned notices for his hobby, aviation; he set a world record for altitude in 1935, and made the first transatlantic round trip in a single-engine plane. Born Harold Reichman, he started in vaudeville -- with a two-man act, as a comedian, and then with a song-and-dance number -- and played theaters from Chicago to San Francisco. Moving east by the early '20s, he and his piano backed Nora Bayes and Mae West, and his Broadway debut came in 1922's Queen o' Hearts.
Richman's real breakout came in 1926; George White's Scandals of 1926 became a big hit, thanks in large part to his popular performance, "Birth of the Blues," recorded for Vocalion. Despite a few (comparative) flops the following year, he introduced a pair of prize-winning standards: "Blue Skies" and "I'm on the Crest of a Wave." Back on top by 1930, Richman earned the biggest hit of his career, courtesy of the film Puttin' on the Ritz. The title song became one of the most popular songs of the year, while "There's Danger in Your Eyes, Cherie" also earned praise. Later that year, Richman returned to Broadway for International Revue, and introduced two more chestnuts, "Exactly Like You" and "On the Sunny Side of the Street."
Harry Richman's Broadway farewell occurred in 1934, and though his aviator prowess occasionally gained more headlines than his musical career, he kept busy recording during the '30s and '40s. He also became a respected songwriter, known for contributing to the careers of two great performers: Django Reinhardt ("Miss Annabelle Lee") and Bessie Smith ("Muddy Water"). He died in 1972.
An extremely popular American comedian, singer and dancer, popular from the 20s through to the 50s.
No other entertainer proved successful in as many fields as Eddie Cantor during the 1920s and '30s. Nicknamed "Banjo Eyes" and "the Apostle of Pep" for his endless reserves of energy and showmanship (he would literally jump around the stage while performing his favorite numbers), he began his career touring in vaudeville, was promoted to the more legitimate theater of Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies, recorded many hits for Columbia, translated the success to film during the late '20s, became the biggest radio star of the '30s with the Chase & Sanborn Hour, and later moved to television as well.
Similar to many stars of that period, Eddie Cantor was born into humble circumstances on New York's Lower East Side. The son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, he was orphaned at the age of three and sent to live with his nearby grandmother. While working odd jobs for local merchants, Cantor began singing and juggling in the streets for money, and soon moved to talent contests early in his teens. His first professional spot was on Gus Edwards' vaudeville youth act, Kid Kabaret, where he began doing an impression of Eddie Leonard singing "Ida, Sweet as Apple Cider" (he later revived the standard continually as a tribute to his wife, Ida Tobias). Cantor began working the vaudeville circuit, and while in Los Angeles, he caught the eye of songwriter Earl Carroll, who found a job for him with his theater show Canary Cottage.
Cantor's next step up was a big one; Florenz Ziegfeld, one of the most important stage producers in America, convinced him to come back to New York to take a part in his Midnight Frolic (the energetic Cantor even followed his nightly performance with a vaudeville show elsewhere). After graduating to the popular Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, Cantor soon became one of the most successful actors in the country, and his recording of "That's the Kind of Baby for Me" on Victor (from the Follies) became popular late in 1917. Cantor also appeared in the Follies of 1918 and 1919, and though Ziegfeld abruptly fired him in 1920 for his part in a strike by the Actor's Equity Association that forced the closure of Broadway theaters, Cantor proved that he didn't need the producer to stay successful. Recording for Emerson Records from 1920 to 1922, Cantor remained in the spotlight with several popular songs, including one of the most popular of 1921, "Margie," plus "Palesteena" and "Snoops, The Lawyer." He also starred in two productions by one of Ziegeld's main rivals, the Shuberts. All this was enough for the unusually stubborn Ziegfeld to hire him back by 1923. During the rest of the Roaring Twenties, Cantor cemented his popularity, recording several hits for Columbia Records ("No, No, Nora," "If You Knew Susie," "Makin' Whoopee"), and appearing in his own production, Kid Boots -- adapted into his first silent picture by 1927 -- and the Ziegfeld productions Follies of 1927 and Whoopee!
Cantor was made a millionaire from his performances (though mostly from Whoopee!), but he was nearly ruined in the stock market crash of 1929. (He recouped much of his income by writing about his experiences in the book Caught Short.) Early in the '30s, Cantor moved into radio, and soon became one of the most popular radio stars of the decade. His movie career took off as well: Cantor signed a contract with Samuel Goldwyn to remake Whoopee! in 1930 (it was the first in a line of early-'30s Cantor-Goldwyn teamings with show-stopping choreography by Busby Berkeley), and appeared in at least one film per year throughout the decade. Cantor also supported the war effort vigorously, entertaining troops in Europe and forming the March of Dimes with President Franklin Roosevelt. He also served as president of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Radio Artists.
Cantor's transition from radio to television was briefly successful; he guest-hosted NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour, but suffered a heart attack in 1952, the same year Hollywood produced The Eddie Cantor Story. Another heart attack forced him into retirement, though he occasionally surfaced for guest appearances. Cantor died in 1964 of a third heart attack.
Helen Kane is one of an elite group of performers, the essence of whose entire careers can be captured with a simple, silly, and catchy expression. "Boop-boop-a-doop!" does it for Kane, just like "I can't get no satisfaction" sums up Mick Jagger. It is a pity that these two careers have little else in common; how nice it would be, for example, if a cartoon character based on some aspect of Jagger's personality had become much more famous than Jagger himself. That's just what happened with Betty Boop and Kane, but it was not the singer who actually worked the voice of the flapper-cartoon heroine. The Boop-scoop, so to speak, was provided by a performer named Mae Questal, first-place winner in a contest to imitate the sound of Kane's voice.
Like many performers burdened with one overwhelming association, Kane's career was actually much more diverse. She was involved with show business for much of her life, not only as a singer but also as an actress in the early-'30s Hollywood films, and a costume designer as well. Kane was a Bronx gal whose real name was Helen Schroeder. Some mildly amusing siblings known as the Marx Brothers were the ones who got her started in show business; she was 17 at the time. She began appearing in Broadway musicals in 1927, and a 1928 show entitled Good Boy was the source of the "boop-boop-be-doop," a musical request entitled "I Wanna Be Loved by You," specifically. An aspect of her approach to the song, delivering it in a toddler's voice, in turn became a stylistic trademark of some of the so-called "flapper" tuneage created by singers such as Kane and Annette Hanshaw.
The character of Betty Boop evolved out of all this while Kane was a contract player at the Paramount studio, also the home of animation genius Max Fleischer. It wasn't he who first drew the character, however. The original animator, the pleasant-sounding Grim Natwick, supposedly created Betty Boop by combining attributes of Kane and a French poodle! In a 1950 film biography of "I Want to Be Loved by You" songwriters Kalmar and Ruby, the part of Kane was played by none other than Debbie Reynolds, but it is actually Kane's voice providing the "boop-boop-a-doop."
"I just put it in at one of the rehearsals, a sort of interlude. It's hard to explain -- I haven't explained it to myself yet. It's like vo-de-o-do, Crosby with boo-boo-boo, and Durante with cha-cha-cha." -- Helen Kane, explaining the creation of her "boop-boop-a-doop" signature phrase.
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