Measure of a Man (18 page)

Arlene and I wasted no time starting a family. In the spring of 1957, she got pregnant with our son Jay. She quit her job four months into her pregnancy and stayed home to prepare for the baby. Preparing for a newborn brought back a flood of memories of the siblings and family I had lost. I reflected on how my parents must have felt knowing that their own children might not survive. I didn’t know how to handle all the feelings that fatherhood provoked in me. I seldom talked to Arlene—or anyone else for that matter—about what happened to me in Auschwitz and Buchenwald. A part of me died in those camps. I wanted to keep the demons buried. Still, waves of emotion kept crashing over me.

That year during the High Holy Days, I sat Arlene down. “It’s important to me that you know how happy you’ve made me,” I told her, putting my hand on her pregnant stomach. “It’s the first time in all the years since I was separated from my parents and siblings that I’m with my own family on the holidays. I cannot express how happy that makes me and how much I love you.” We held each other and cried.

Even in the midst of my newfound happiness, however, I hadn’t completely escaped the Holocaust. “Honey, I need to ask you
something,” Arlene said before the baby arrived. “It’s about your sleep.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“Are you having nightmares?”

“I’m fine.”

“Honey, you’re not fine. Sometimes you wake me up speaking Hungarian or Yiddish. I don’t know what you’re saying. Your face contorts, your fists clench.”

“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

“I asked the doctor about it.”

“You did what? Why would you do something like that?”

“I’m worried. He said to leave you alone and not to wake you, because then you’d just resume whatever nightmare you were having.”

“See. I told you. I’m fine.”

“Talk to me, please. I love you. I’m your wife. I want to help you.”

I sat in silence and tried to muster the courage to purge the truth. “I love you,” I said. “That’s why I don’t tell you about my dreams. It’s too dark, too ugly.”

“But I want to know. Please. Tell me so I can understand.”

“You can’t understand. No one who wasn’t there can understand. I hope no one ever has to understand.”

“But I see and hear you struggling at night. It’s awful. I want to reach inside your dreams and make it stop, but I don’t know how. What do you see at night?”

It was time she knew. I took a deep breath. “I’m in the woods. Running through the woods. You and the baby are with me. The Nazis are hunting us. They’ve got their guns and they’re running
through the trees, over the rocks, everything. You and the baby are crying. I’m trying to keep you both quiet so they don’t kill us. I then do what my father did to me: I split us up. That way the Nazis will chase and kill me but not you and the baby.”

I looked up at Arlene. Her face was soaked in tears. She stroked my hair gently with her hand. “Darling, I love you more than you will ever know. I’m so sorry. So sorry. You make me so proud. You are the most wonderful man and husband. You’re going to be an incredible father.”

“I will always protect you and our family. Always,” I said, crying into her chest.

“I know you will, honey. I know.”

Jay arrived February 5, 1958. Our second son, Tod, was born on April 23, 1960. I cried the first time I held each of them in my arms. To have my very own sons, to hold them close against my heart, to watch them sleep—it was the fulfillment of my greatest dream for a family all my own, one to cherish and protect.

Building a family was one thing, building a career in men’s fashion another. The longer I worked at GGG, the more I realized the importance of cultivating a celebrity clientele. In those days, the entertainment industry’s biggest stars wore GGG. Agents and industry executives typically sent celebrities to the main GGG office, not the factory, to be measured, so I had little interaction with them. I wasn’t a front man or star salesman like Morris. My hidden role as a tailor afforded me few if any opportunities to build relationships with our A-list clients. One star, however, came
directly to the factory for fittings, and it was he who opened the door for me to the Hollywood elite.

Edward Israel Iskowitz, better known by his stage name, Eddie Cantor, was one of America’s most beloved entertainers. After scoring early success in Vaudeville, Eddie parlayed his singing and comedic talents into a major career in radio, television, and movies. Eddie knew everyone. He had appeared on Broadway in the fabled
Ziegfeld Follies
, performed with the legends Will Rogers, Jimmy Durante, and W. C. Fields, coined the name for “The March of Dimes,” and served as the second president of the Screen Actors Guild. By his mid-thirties, Eddie Cantor was already a millionaire.

Despite his meteoric rise to stardom, Eddie’s childhood was tragic. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Eddie’s mother died during childbirth when he was one year old. The very next year, his father died of pneumonia. As he put it in one of his bestselling books,
My Life Is in Your Hands
, “I have always felt like a part of other people and that other people were a part of me. The dim, brief images of my father and mother have formed an unforgettable picture in my mind, although I never really had the opportunity to know them or even to speak to them, for as my lips were forming into words they were gone.”

Eddie’s grandmother Esther Kantrowitz raised him in New York City. A school form accidently listed Eddie’s last name as his grandmother’s, which an administrator altered to Kanter. Hence, the Hollywood creation of Eddie Cantor.

In their youth, Eddie and Mannie Goldman were among the first to attend Surprise Lake Camp, a nonprofit camp for Jewish boys. Poor boys like Eddie were admitted for free. Rich boys like
Mannie paid full freight. Both men said the camp made a tremendous influence on their lives and taught them enduring life lessons. In the 1920s, Eddie asked Mannie to serve as treasurer of the Eddie Cantor Camp Committee to help support Surprise Lake Camp and other youth programs. As Eddie explained in his book, “Mannie, who, with his brothers, runs the GGG Clothing Company, is the best possible choice for treasurer because any time we’re stuck for funds he digs into his own pocket to refill the treasury.” He added, “He’s been so busy doing, he’s never gotten around to marrying and having a family of his own. He’s part of my family.”

Eddie wasn’t joking. In 1938, Mannie and Eddie traveled together to Europe on a fund-raising trip to raise money to help extract refugee children out of Germany. Mannie called in a few fashion-industry chits and set up a meeting between Eddie and Sir Montague Burton, who ran the largest clothing manufacturing business in the world. The connection proved lucrative and made the charity a mint in donations.

On another occasion, Eddie and Mannie met a seventeen-year-old pianist named Hilda Somers, whose fingertips had been severely scorched when the Nazis marched into Austria and forced her to wash the streets with lye. Hilda was brought to live with family in the Bronx. Mannie and Eddie devised a way to get the girl a Steinway piano and a world-class teacher. After one week of lessons, the teacher called Eddie and said she was good enough to play Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic. “I called Mannie and I told him what Carnegie Hall would cost,” wrote Cantor. “‘So what?’ he said. So eventually we presented Hilda at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic and from there she went on to a series of concerts across the country, ending in a blaze of glory at
the Hollywood Bowl. And she’s still playing and she’s happily married. A cheerful ending to the story that started so sadly in Austria. This is the sort of thing you do when you’re palling around with Mannie Goldman.”

The parallels between Eddie’s and my orphaned childhoods were unmistakable. He had a huge heart and genuinely loved to help people and brighten lives. At the GGG factory, an Eddie Cantor visit was an event. The Goldman brothers would let all 565 employees take a break from work and gather around the big cutting table. Eddie would then hop up on top of the table and do a few minutes of his song and dance routine, which never failed to receive a rousing response.

Despite his fame and fortune, Eddie lacked pretense. He was comfortable in his skin. When his bug eyes earned him the nickname “Banjo Eyes,” Eddie owned it and made it one of his comedic trademarks.

I felt a deep and instant connection the first time Mr. Goldman and Mr. Rosenberg introduced me to Eddie. He was firmly committed to the cause of Israel—it was literally his middle name. He took a special interest in survivors, asking questions and listening with a sympathetic and focused ear.

Eddie also loved to test limits. Songs like “Makin’ Whoopee” and “The Dumber They Come, the Better I Like ’Em,” caused a stir. So, too, did Eddie’s embrace of black entertainers of the era. While hosting
The Colgate Comedy Hour
on television in the 1950s, Eddie hugged a young Sammy Davis Jr. and wiped the singer’s sweaty brow with his pocket square. The friendly gestures sparked talk of NBC’s canceling the show. Cantor didn’t care. In fact, he booked Sammy for two more weeks after the incident.

Years later, I measured and dressed Sammy myself when GGG handled the private label for Cy Martin’s, a high-end New York haberdashery on Broadway between Fifty-First and Fifty-Second Streets. Perpetually in motion, Sammy filled the room with his charisma. The only problem was that the man wouldn’t stand still long enough for me to run a measuring tape around his slender frame. “If you don’t stop dancing around, I’m going to have to hold you down to measure you,” I warned him.

Sammy said he and I shared the same faith. He explained that our mutual friend, Eddie Cantor, had introduced him to Judaism and had given him a mezuzah, a small scroll bearing a Hebrew verse in a case that is ordinarily attached to a doorpost. Sammy, however, wore his mezuzah on a necklace as a good-luck charm. The one time he failed to wear it, he was in a serious car crash that cracked his cranium and destroyed his left eye. He quickly converted to Judaism. Sammy liked to joke that he was the world’s first “black, Puerto Rican, one-eyed Jewish entertainer.”

Eddie helped Sammy find God, and he helped Hollywood find me. In early 1960, Sam Rosenberg informed me that he and I would be flying to Los Angeles for a week to attend a men’s fashion industry convention. I was honored to be tapped to go on the trip and excited to see a city I had heard so much about.

Several weeks before my West Coast trip, Eddie Cantor dropped by the GGG factory for a fitting and to visit with Mannie Goldman. Eddie and the Goldmans made a quick walk around the factory. “Eddie, I believe you’ve met Martin Greenfield, GGG’s head quality man,” said Mannie.

“Great to see you, Martin,” said Eddie, shaking my hand.

“Next month Martin here is going to Hollywood to visit all your star pals!” Mannie teased.

“Is that right?” said Eddie. “Who are you meeting?”

“Oh, he’s teasing, sir. A few of us are just going to an industry conference in Los Angeles,” I explained.

“I see. Well, you know, I’d be happy to set up some dinner meetings for you with Hollywood industry folks if you like,” said Eddie. I looked at a grinning Mannie. He always loved to see underdogs get a bigger slice of the pie than they deserved.

“Really? Wow, that would be wonderful,” I said.

“Tell you what, I’ll have my manager set the whole thing up,” said Eddie. “You just tell him the dozen or so actors or entertainers you want to meet and the times you’re not tied up with your conference and we’ll handle the rest. I’m a member at the Hillcrest Country Club. You can meet them there. We’ll take care of it. Okay?”

“Uh . . . okay,” I muttered in dazed disbelief. Eddie flashed his famous smile. “Mr. Cantor, I can’t thank you enough, sir. I really appreciate you offering. . . .”

“Don’t mention it. My pleasure. Any friend of the Goldmans is a friend of mine,” said Eddie.

That night I went home and told Arlene what happened. She couldn’t believe it. “Eddie Cantor?” she asked.

“Yes! Eddie Cantor!” I said.

“The same Eddie Cantor that’s on the television Eddie Cantor?”

“Yes, that one! The famous Eddie Cantor! He said I could invite whoever I wanted and his manager will arrange the whole
thing in Hollywood.” We sat in stunned silence in our tiny little Brooklyn apartment.

Eddie’s manager called and immediately went to work building a detailed itinerary. “Eddie has several other meetings he would like to set up for you as well, so I’m handling those,” said the manager. “You and I will speak every morning to go over the daily schedule. Eddie would also like to speak to you briefly each day to make sure everything is handled to your liking,” the manager said. Eddie Cantor knew how to make a nobody feel like a somebody.