Broadway’s Not a Bad Place after All

Eddie Cantor

Harry Ruby

1918

Poster with English text and photograph of two men, surrounded by drawing of a clown and a woman in a mask dancing.
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Sheet music for “Broadway’s Not a Bad Place after All” from the theatrical revue Ziegfield Follies.

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People come from ev’ry town to see Broadway;
After being all around here’s what they say;
“I think the Jazz-bands are awful, They should be stopped;
I think the Shimmy’s unlawful, It ought to be dropped.”
They always pick on Broadway, That you can’t deny,
It’s unfair to Broadway, and here’s the reason why:

Chorus

Oh! The Jazz band came from New Orleans
A way down South,
they brought it forth; up to the North.
And the cabarets if put to test, could not compare
with Honky Tonkies ’way out West, They came from there.
And the Shimmy dance that they all roast
Came from Fisco’s Barb’ry coast.
A year ago if you recall;
So don’t blame it all on Broadway,
Broadway’s not a bad place after all.
Oh! The all.
Ev’ry city large or small has its Broadway;
’Tho it isn’t often called a Gay White Way.
Sometimes it’s only a main street, Where cattle graze;
Sometimes it’s only a plain street, Without cabarets;
No matter what they call it, It’s there just the same;
Broadway would be Broadway, by any other name:

Chorus

Credits

Eddie Cantor and Harry Ruby, “Broadway’s Not a Bad Place after All,” lyrics from Ziegfeld Follies (New York: Waterson, Berlin, & Snyder Co., 1920). Used with permission of the Estate of Eddie Cantor.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7.

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Creator Bio

Eddie Cantor

1892–1964

Born Edward Israel Izkowitz in New York’s Lower East Side, Eddie Cantor was raised by his grandmother Esther Kantrowitz in a tenement. Izzy Kanter, as he was known in his childhood, struggled with hunger while trying to entertain, making his vaudeville debut in 1907. He first appeared on Broadway with Ziegfield’s 1917 Follies, initially as a performer and then as a writer. In 1914 Kanter married Ida Tobias, Anglicizing his name to Eddie Cantor. He had a prolific career in entertainment across vaudeville, Broadway, radio, film, and television. His cowritten “Merrily We Roll Along” (1935) has been featured in hundreds of television episodes and films, making it one of the most memorable melodies in television history. Cantor wrote or cowrote more than twenty books.

Creator Bio

Harry Ruby

1895–1974

Harry Ruby, born Harry Rubinstein in New York’s Lower East Side, dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player. He learned to play the piano in his adolescence and worked as a song plugger (demonstrator) for several New York music publishers in between stints as a pianist on the vaudeville circuit. Ruby, his Americanized stage name, collaborated with a number of Tin Pan Alley and Broadway songwriters, including Edgar Leslie, George Jessel, and Bert Kalmar, his longtime musical partner with whom wrote a number of popular scores, screenplays, and songs.

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