Canton was born to a Jewish family[3] in Queens, New York City, the son of Shirley and Arthur Canton, who worked in the film industry on marketing and publicity - including such films as Lawrence of Arabia. As a young adult, he met well-known movie personalities like Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean, and Doris Day when they visited the family's apartment.[4]

After working in the mail room of Warner Bros. while studying at the University of California, Los Angeles,[5] Canton started working for 20th Century Fox and later had jobs with film director Franklin Schaffner, with producer Jon Peters, and in the 1970s as executive assistant to Mike Medavoy at United Artists.[4]

PICTURE: By Sue Lukenbaugh, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30653907