Cantor, Eddie ( September 1892?–10 October 1964), entertainer, was born Israel Iskowitz in New York City, the son of Mechel Iskowitz, a violinist, and Meta Kantrowitz. Orphaned at the age of three, he was raised by Esther Kantrowitz, his maternal grandmother. He was educated in the public schools of New York’s Lower East Side. His grandmother registered him as “Israel Kantrowitz,” but the name was subsequently anglicized to “Isidore Kanter” by a school official. Kanter, who altered the spelling of his name to “Cantor” upon embarking on a show business career in 1911, grew up on the streets. His grandmother, an Orthodox Jew, earned a living selling candles and other household items and by securing employment for young immigrants as maids in East Side homes....
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Cantor, Eddie (September 1892?–10 October 1964), entertainer
Herbert G. Goldman
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Clark, Bobby (16 June 1888–12 February 1960), clown
Charles W. Stein
Clark, Bobby (16 June 1888–12 February 1960), clown, was born Robert Edwin Clark in a church rectory (his grandfather was the church sexton) in Springfield, Ohio, the son of Victor Brown Clark, a railroad conductor, and Alice Marilla Sneed. His father died when Bobby was six. As a young boy Clark sang in the church choir and played the bugle. His fascination with outlandish costumes, which became one of his theatrical trademarks, was apparent at an early age. When he was in the fourth grade Bobby met Paul McCullough, four years his senior, and a close friendship was formed that lasted over thirty-five years. The two boys soon put together a bugling and tumbling act that they performed at the local YMCA. Clark and McCullough’s act was received so favorably by the residents of the area that, at the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, respectively, they decided to embark upon a career in show business. They began to place advertisements in various theatrical publications. The response was favorable and Clark and McCullough, as they now called themselves, were hired by a minstrel troupe as tumblers, buglers, and handymen, with a combined weekly salary of twenty-five dollars. They were on their way....
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Cline, Maggie (1857-1934), entertainer
Herbert G. Goldman
Cline, Maggie (01 January 1857–11 June 1934), entertainer, was born Margaret Cline in Haverhill, Massachusetts, the daughter of Patrick B. Cline and Ann Degman. Educated in Haverhill’s public schools, Maggie worked in a show factory before running away from home with a traveling theatrical company at the age of fifteen....
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Fields, Lewis Maurice (1867-1941), theater performer and producer
Armond Fields
Fields, Lewis Maurice (01 January 1867–20 July 1941), theater performer and producer, was born Moses Schoenfeld in Poland, the son of Solomon Schoenfeld, a tailor, and Sarah Franks. The family immigrated to New York City during his childhood. He made his stage debut at the age of ten as half of a bumbling blackface act in a Lower East Side amateur show. From that time on the stage was his passion and his meal ticket. Growing up in the Bowery slums in the 1870s, Schoenfeld embraced acting as an alternative to working in a sweatshop, as did his father and brothers, or running with a gang. He found early encouragement among his classmates at Public School No. 42 on Allen Street; they responded with laughter to his acrobatic antics while the teacher’s back was turned. From the very beginning, Fields’s philosophy was simply, in his own words, “to give the public what it wants.”...
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Lee, Gypsy Rose (1914-1970), striptease artist, burlesque entertainer, and writer
Stephen M. Archer
Lee, Gypsy Rose (09 January 1914–26 April 1970), striptease artist, burlesque entertainer, and writer, was born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of John Olaf Hovick, a newspaper reporter, and Rose Thompson. Lee’s parents divorced when she was about four years old. She and her sister June (who later became screen actress June Havoc) lived with their mother’s father in Seattle, where Rose Hovick, a prototypical stage mother, drove the girls into a show business career. They began by performing at several lodges to which their grandfather belonged. Lee described herself as a child as being “big for my age and more than just chubby” with the nickname of “Plug.” Lee once described her childhood to a reporter: “At that time I wanted to die—just for the vacation.”...
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Lee, Gypsy Rose (1914-1970)
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St. Cyr, Lili (1918-1999), striptease dancer
Dennis Wepman
St. Cyr, Lili (03 June 1918–29 January 1999), striptease dancer, was born Marie Frances (sometimes reported by her as Willis Marie) Van Schaack in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the daughter of Edward Van Schaack, who was drafted into military service almost immediately after his daughter’s birth and remained absent from most of her life, and Idella Marian Peeso, whose mother, Alice, and stepfather, Ben Klarquist, a carpenter, raised Marie and her two sisters. The family moved to Pasadena, California, when she was seven years old, and she attended school there until dropping out after finishing the ninth grade. She worked as a waitress in Hollywood in her teens and became a chorus girl at the Florentine Gardens there at about the age of seventeen. That year she married Dick Hubert, the headwaiter at the restaurant, but the marriage ended within months. She was to marry five more times, in 1936, 1946, 1950, 1955, and 1959. All her marriages ended in divorce within a few years, and none produced children....
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Thompson, Lydia (1836-1908), entertainer and leader of a British burlesque troupe
Richard Butsch
Thompson, Lydia (19 February 1836–17 November 1908), entertainer and leader of a British burlesque troupe, was born in London, England, the daughter of a Quaker father, Philip Milburn Thompson, who died when she was three. Her mother, whose name is unknown, remarried a well-to-do businessman who financed Lydia’s dancing lessons when she was a young child....
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Weber, Joseph Morris (1867-1942), vaudeville comedian and producer
Paul Distler
Weber, Joseph Morris (11 August 1867–10 May 1942), vaudeville comedian and producer, was born Joseph Moishe Weber in New York City, the son of Abraham Weber, a schechter (kosher butcher and lay officer of the synagogue), and Gertrude Enoch. As the seventeenth child in this Jewish immigrant family from Poland (via a stopover in Birmingham, England, where the family learned English), Weber began at age seven working part-time in a cigarette factory while still attending Public School 42 on Allen Street in New York’s Lower East Side. His life changed dramatically the following year when he literally bumped into another immigrant child, ...
