A Wonderful Show and An Extraordinary Friendship

By Michelle E. Malik

My fascination with Bert Williams goes back nearly as far as my love affair with Eddie Cantor, and I mean that only in the most respectful sense.  I never knew Eddie Cantor personally.  I was born ten years after his death, but the first time I saw him on television, when I was in high school, he hooked me.  I was about seventeen and there was a trailer of his films on American Movie Classics.  I was mesmerized with this singing, dancing pop-eyed character that, as the montage narrator said "was sixty but looked forty and acted twenty."  Soon after, I made contact with Eddie's grandson, Brian Gari in New York, joined up with the fan club and now, as the second president of the Eddie Cantor Appreciation Society for the past seven and a half years, I have had the incredible joy of befriending the Cantor family, including Eddie's youngest, Janet Cantor Gari and the late Fayard Nicholas, actress Joan Leslie, and a host of luminaries of the Golden Days of entertainment.

However, the one who eluded me that I respected from the time I was first heard the early 1900's recording of the haunting tune, "Nobody," was Bert Williams.  What was it like being the biggest star on Broadway, an African American idol during the time when shamefully, a man of his magnitude had to use the service entrance as he still "heard the applause ringing in his ears?"  While Eddie Cantor was later credited with helping the careers of Dinah Shore, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Joey Grey in some capacity, Eddie attributed his great start in show business to Mr. Williams.  Bert showed Eddie the ropes, offered him the gifts of timing and mimic expressions.  It was from Bert, perhaps too, that Eddie learned humility, to be himself, to come out from under the blackface makeup and make a mark.

Eddie never forgot his friend, forging a career that would last more than fifty years on stage, in radio, films, books, and television, even one of the earliest presidents of SAG, arguably the first king of all media for his day, but now, sadly the most forgotten, as Bert Williams was, that is, until Dick De Benedictis revived them.  Dick is the conceiver, producer, and writer of the book and original music and lyrics for the new show, "Bert n' Eddie," a spectacular play now showing for its second and final weekend at Pierce College Performing Arts Center in Woodland Hills, that explores the magnetic working relationship and friendship of Bert Williams and Eddie Cantor from 1917-1922.

Boasting of "low tech" but stirring talent, direction and choreography by Stan Mazin and assistant Michelle Bernath, this show has the potential to go bigger, much bigger.  Twenty-three year old Graham Fenton is the lively, heartfelt Eddie Cantor, once a singing waiter, like the man he portrays, and Gerald James is the remarkable and inimitable Bert Williams.  Bert's rock, his wife Lottie is embodied by the graceful Tina Parcher.  John Bonaduce is Ring Lardner, the New York writer who sides with Eddie and Bert as they fight the injustices of working conditions and the beginning of Actors Equity.  Filling in for Dick Van Patten, Bix Barnaba captures a no-nonsense Florenz Ziegfeld, one of the biggest and most powerful producers in Broadway history.  Elton Laron as Bo and Keith Borden as Jo recreate the world of the Harlem speakeasy while Shedrack Anderson is the spirit of George Walker, Bert's late great vaudeville partner.  Tara Redepenning, Michelle Maves, Tiffany Michael, and Brielle Brown are the ambidextrous chorus girls.  Dylan Cronin is the excitable actor with the equity strike versus James Philip's nasty, hard-nosed stage manager.  George Lindsey, Jr. is the unforgettable W.C. Fields.  Brandon Wade is the ever-present newsboy who marks the sign of the times throughout the show.

"Bert n' Eddie" delights with enchanting song and dance numbers like Bert's signature, "Nobody," Eddie's classics "Yes Sir, That's my Baby," "If You Knew Susie," and "Ma! She's Making Eyes at Me," fantastic originals by Mr. De Benedictis like "Timing." "Greed" "Who I Am," and my personal favorite, the pessimistic buy hysterical, "Things Could Be Worse," and offers a window into the heretofore unknown life of Bert Williams, a well-read, highly intelligent man, born in the West Indies, who made a great living on playing and perfecting the Southern "slouch," a shiftless character, but in reality struggles with his inability to take a stand in the fight for racial equality.  Bert and Eddie perform a hopelessly dated sketch as Popsie and Sonny, but one that intimates the father figure admiration that Bert helt for Eddie, on orphan by three.  Eddie later goes on to carry the torch of humanity, as the provocateur of good will and the co-founder of the March of Dimes with FDR among many other causes.

"Bert n' Eddie" is not another sideshow to pass over, but rather a fitting and beautiful tribute to two men who were as big as their Broadway and who maintained a bit of sanity and humility in one another's friendship and support.