Editing Eddie Cantor (section)

===Saloon songs to vaudeville===
By his early teens, Cantor began winning talent contests at local theaters and started appearing on stage. One of his earliest paying jobs was doubling as a waiter and performer, singing for tips at Carey Walsh's [[Coney Island]] saloon, where a young [[Jimmy Durante]] accompanied him on piano. He made his first public appearance in [[Vaudeville]] in 1907 at New York's Clinton Music Hall. In 1912, he was the only performer over the age of 20 to appear in [[Gus Edwards (vaudeville)|Gus Edwards]]'s ''Kid Kabaret'', where he created his first [[blackface]] character "Jefferson". He later toured with [[Al Lee]] as the team Cantor and Lee. Critical praise from that show got the attention of Broadway's top producer [[Florenz Ziegfeld]], who gave Cantor a spot in the Ziegfeld rooftop post-show, ''Midnight Frolic'' (1917).<ref name="International" />