Dubbed "Banjo Eyes" for his expressive saucer-like orbs, and "The Apostle of Pep" for his frantically energized physical style, comic song-and-dance man Eddie Cantor came from the vaudeville tradition of the 1920s, and is remembered as a prime exponent of the now discredited blackface minstrel tradition, his brief but historic movie association with the uniquely gifted choreographic innovator Busby Berkeley, and for turning the Walter MacDonald-Gus Kahn song "Making Whoopee" into a massive hit and an enduring standard. In a career that spanned almost 40 years, Cantor achieved stardom on stage, screen, and, above all, radio, while on television he was one of the rotating stars who helped launch the Colgate Comedy Hour.

Cantor's is a prototypical show business rags-to-riches story. As Isadore Itzkowitz, born into poverty in a Manhattan ghetto district and orphaned young, he was already supporting himself in his early teens as...