Quotes

[after attending the premiere of the film The Eddie Cantor Story (1953)] If that was my life, I didn't live.

[commenting about losing most of his money in the 1929 stock market crash] Well, folks, they got me in the market just like they got everybody else. In fact, they're not calling it the stock market any more. They're calling it the stuck market.

[on Al Jolson] He was more than just a singer or an actor. He was an experience.

It takes twenty years to make an overnight success.

We call our relatives the kin we love to touch.

When I see the "Ten Most Wanted" lists I always have this thought: If we made them feel wanted earlier, they wouldn't be wanted now.

Marriage is an attempt to solve problems together which you didn't have when you were on your own.

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast--you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.

A wedding is a funeral where you smell your own flowers.

[on his vaudeville days] When [George Jessel] and I were not acting, we were playing. We had no outside games or diversions, so all our fun had to be born of the theatre. On one occasion we ruined a perfectly boring mystery thriller. Just as the distracted father cried, "Where is my daughter?" we walked across the stage behind him, both of us in black-face, with brooms slung across our shoulders. The audience broke into laughter and the actors of the piece were mystified, instead of the audience. On another occasion we found that a newcomer to our act, a little girl violinist, was getting more applause than was healthy for her. The next night when she took her bow we were right beside her, each of us with a violin of his own, and shared the hand. Another time, as she finished her number, I suddenly appeared in one of the boxes of the theatre and began a campaign speech: "Ladies and gentlemen- If I am elected the public monies will be safe. I will guard them and keep them. You'll have nothing to worry about". A distraction like this always brought a laugh and diverted some applause.

It doesn't matter how much the boss likes you, you can't work in a bank and take home samples.

Lovely girl. Lovely family. Her poor father died of throat trouble. They hung him.

All women are natural born espionage agents.

[on blackface] I don't myself quite understand why people will laugh more at a joke delivered in blackface than the same wheeze without the burnt cork. But they do.

[on blackface] I do the same stuff with it or without it, but folks have me pegged as a blackface man and a blackface man I've got to be.