Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir by Joel Grey

seventeen stories that made it the tallest tower in Miami. Thanks to Dad’s friend and hotel manager Chuckie Goldberg, the Katz family was on top of the Delano for $35 a day.
    Despite the family reunion, I was still able to find some fun of my own making. On most nights the show was at 8:30 P.M. , which meant that I could still make it to the mambo contests after it ended. Most of the hotels held these events, where you could take lessons, compete, or simply soak in the sexy, dark atmosphere while getting drunk.
    There were also plenty of gay bars that flourished in Miami’s permissive environment. But I never went to them. I was Mickey Katz’s son, now in his successful show. I couldn’t even consider going to any place as dangerous as a gay bar. First of all, I was terrified of being arrested, which was happening to people all the time. It was 1950, and homosexuality was considered a criminal act. But if the media found me out, it would be almost as bad. I would bring shame upon my family, ruin my father’s run, and end any future for myself. If I hadn’t known it already, the experience of revealing my affair with the cantor to my parents proved that nobody, not even those most likely to love me regardless of my actions, could accept that part of me.
    I found my pleasure in a much more intimate place. Although I felt men’s eyes cruising me everywhere—an act that for many gay men leads quickly and directly to sex—I needed a partner who also risked losing everything if he told. That turned out to be the hotel’s masseur. He worked in the hotel’s solarium on the top floor. There the spa, encased in glass, led to terraces outside, where men on chaise lounges that had been covered in great white sheets because of the heat liked to sunbathe naked and drink Cuba libres. So when this muscled, bodybuilder-type masseur in his white uniform gave me a look, I knew it was safe. If he ever said a word about us to anyone, he would never work in Miami again.
    With my masseur and packed audiences every night, I already felt like the toast of the town. But then one day, news arrived at our hotel suite that made everything else seem bland: Eddie Cantor was coming to Borscht Capades that night, specifically to see me . Mr. Cantor had a big reputation for discovering new talent. If he named you one of his “stars of tomorrow,” it could really mean something.
    Like my Dad, Mr. Cantor had combined his talent with ambition to raise himself out of hardscrabble beginnings. Although he became one of the most successful comedians in vaudeville history, Mr. Cantor started out from the tenements of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where he was orphaned at the age of one. But just as Dad did, he performed in and usually won amateur contests for his impressions. His pay grew along with his talent. His salary as a featured player in the Ziegfeld Follies alongside one of his best friends, Will Rogers, prompted the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld to call Mr. Cantor the highest-paid comedian “in the history of the world.”
    By the time I had come to his attention, through the owners of Grossinger’s, the legendary Jewish resort in the Catskills, where I had performed a number of times, Mr. Cantor had already transitioned from the dying world of vaudeville. Radio was the beginning of the demise of vaudeville, which was the most popular entertainment in America during the turn of the century. Like many big vaudevillians such as Burns and Allen, Bob Hope, and Will Rogers, Mr. Cantor had gone where the work was—first to radio, then the movies, and now, the new medium of television. He was in Florida as part of a nationwide hunt for fresh talent to appear on his new TV show.
    Keenly aware that he was in the audience at the Roosevelt that night, I gave Rumania, Rumania my all. If I got on TV, I was told, people would know my name, and I would become a commodity. That would help pave the way for more jobs as an actor—ideally in the theater. That