Word: cantors
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Colgate Comedy Hour (Sun. 8 p.m., NBC). Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, Eddie Fisher, Connie Russell...
...Eddie Cantor Story (Warner). One day in 1951, oldtime Comedian Eddie Cantor asked Hollywood Columnist Sidney Skolsky, whose 1946 production of The Jolson Story grossed $12 million and put oldtime Mammy Singer Jolson back on top of the entertainment world, if he could not do the same for Cantor...
Skolsky said he would try. He has tried hard, but in the title role, a gifted boy has been asked to do a man's work. Keefe Brasselle, 30, a Hollywood newcomer, has a slight resemblance to the young Cantor. After two months of concentrated coaching in Cantor's mannerisms, he was as ready for the part as he was likely...
Although he handily mastered the mannerisms of the famous comedian-the giddy, stiff-legged Cantor canter, the twittering hands, the O-mouth and popeyed stare-Brasselle could not find in himself the essential thing that makes Eddie run: the dynamo that sends through his audiences a crackle of sympathetic electricity. As a result, the spectator is always conscious that Brasselle is trying to be like Cantor, and cannot decide which performer to be embarrassed for. Besides which, 116 minutes is too long for any take-off to take...
...other respects, the picture is pleasant enough. Cantor's voice, cued into the song sequences, still keeps much of its first freshness. Also, the script manages to get a few words in between the big production numbers, and even provides a couple of probable parts for Marilyn Erskine, as Ida Cantor, and for Aline MacMahon, who carries the first half of the picture as Eddie's grandmother...