EDDIE CANTOR

Eddie Cantor, born Edward Israel Iskowitz on January 31, 1892, and raised by his maternal grandmother, Esther Lazarowitz Kantrowitz, was a singer, songwriter, comedian, author and actor. He made his first public appearance in Vaudeville in 1907 and later performed in many plays on the Broadway stage, including the Ziegfeld Follies. He had a radio program in the 1930s, frequently appeared on television in the ’50s and made many records. He invented the name March of Dimes for the donation campaign to the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and began the first appeal on his radio show in January 1938, asking people to mail a dime to the nation’s most famous polio victim, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Other entertainers promoted it on their shows, and The White House wound up receiving 2,680,000 dimes. The performer resigned from TBE when he moved to California to become the president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933.