His father owned their circus and his mother, Hortense Buislay, came from a great family of trapeze performers.
He began appearing in the circus at 7½ months when his father, a flyer, balanced him on his hand for the opening act.
By 1913 Eduardo had formed a family act that included Alfredo, his brother Abelardo (known as Lalo), and his sister Victoria.
In 1928 Codona married aerialist Lillian Leitzel, who died in 1931, aged 39, in Copenhagen, Denmark when one of her hand rings snapped and she fell to a concrete floor.
On July 30, 1937, he committed suicide by gunshot in Long Beach, California, after shooting his third wife, Vera Bruce, during a division of their property in front of her horrified mother (newspaper accounts of the day incorrectly stated that Vera was his second wife).