Eddie Foy, Jr.

Edwin Fitzgerald Jr. was born on February 4, 1905, in New Rochelle, New York, and built a career as a stage, film, and television actor that extended across six decades. He performed professionally under the name Eddie Foy Jr., a name he inherited from his father, the vaudeville comedian Eddie Foy, with whom he appeared as a child in the family act Eddie Foy and the Seven Little Foys, alongside his siblings.

Foy made his Broadway debut in 1929 in Show Girl, a Florenz Ziegfeld production that also featured Ruby Keeler and Jimmy Durante. His Broadway career continued through 1961 and included appearances in The Cat and the Fiddle, At Home Abroad, and The Red Mill. He took the lead in The Pajama Game and Donnybrook!, and appeared in Rumple in 1957, a role that earned him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Musical in 1958.

His physical resemblance to his father made Foy a natural choice to portray him on screen. He played the elder Foy in four feature films: Frontier Marshal in 1939, Lillian Russell in 1940, Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1942, and Wilson in 1944. He reprised the role in a 1964 television film about the family's vaudeville years. His other film credits include The Farmer Takes a Wife, the screen adaptation of The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing, and Gidget Goes Hawaiian. During the 1930s and 1940s he also appeared in numerous B movies.

Television provided Foy with consistent work throughout the later decades of his career. He starred in Fair Exchange, the first hour-long sitcom, and made guest appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Gisele MacKenzie Show, Glynis, My Living Doll, Burke's Law, ABC Stage 67, My Three Sons, and Nanny and the Professor.

Foy married Anna Marie McKenney in 1933. She died in 1952, and the couple had one son, Eddie Foy III. Foy died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles on July 15, 1983, at the age of 78.