Sophie Tucker

Sophie Tucker
Sophie Tucker, 1917
Background information
Birth name	Sonia Kalish
Born	January 13, 1884
Origin	Czarist Russia
Died	February 9, 1966 (aged 82)
Genres	Jazz vaudeville
Occupations	Singer Comedian
Instruments	vocalist

Sophie Tucker (January 13, 1884—February 9, 1966) was a Russian-born American singer and actress. Known for her stentorian delivery of comical and risque songs, she was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first two-thirds of the 20th century. She was widely known by the nickname "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas."

Personal

Tucker was born Sonia Kalish to a Jewish family in Tsarist Russia. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was an infant, and settled in Hartford, Connecticut. The family changed its name to Abuza, and her parents opened a restaurant.

She started singing for tips in her family's restaurant. In 1903, at the age of 19, she was briefly married to Louis Tuck, from which she decided to change her name to Tucker. (She would marry twice more in her life, but neither marriage lasted more than five years.)

Career

Tucker played piano and sang burlesque and vaudeville tunes, at first in blackface. She later said that this was at the insistence of theatre managers, who said she was "too fat and ugly" to be accepted by an audience in any other context. She even sang songs that acknowledged her heft, such as "Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love".

She made a name for herself in a style that was known at the time as a "Coon Shouter," performing African American influenced songs. Not content with performing in the simple minstrel traditions, Tucker hired some of the best African American singers of the time to give her lessons, and hired African American composers to write songs for her act.

Tucker made her first appearance in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1909, but did not last long there because Florenz Ziegfeld's other female stars soon refused to share the spotlight with the popular Tucker.

William Morris, the founder of the William Morris Agency booked Tucker fresh off her Follies debut at his new American Music Hall. At a 1909 appearance, the luggage containing Tucker's makeup kit was stolen shortly before the show, and she hastily went on stage without her customary blackface. Tucker was a bigger hit without her makeup than with it, and, at the advice of Morris, she never wore blackface again. She did, however, continue to draw much of her material from African American writers as well as African American culture, singing in a ragtime- and blues-influenced style, becoming known for a time as "The Mary Garden of Ragtime", a reference to a famous operatic soprano of the era.

Recordings

Tucker made several popular recordings. They included "Some of These Days," which came out in 1911 on Edison Records. The tune, written by Shelton Brooks, was a hit, and became Tucker's theme song. Later, it was the title of her 1945 autobiography.

In 1921, Tucker hired pianist and songwriter Ted Shapiro as her accompanist and musical director, a position he would keep throughout her career. Besides writing a number of songs for Tucker, Shapiro became part of her stage act, playing piano on stage while she sang, and exchanging banter and wisecracks with her in between numbers. Tucker remained a popular singer through the 1920s, and hired stars such as Mamie Smith and Ethel Waters to give her lessons.

In 1925, Jack Yellen wrote one of her most famous songs, "My Yiddishe Momme." The song was performed in large American cities where there were sizable Jewish audiences. Tucker explained, "Even though I loved the song and it was a sensational hit every time I sang it, I was always careful to use it only when I knew the majority of the house would understand Yiddish. However, you didn't have to be a Jew to be moved by 'My Yiddish Momme.' 'Mother' in any language means the same thing." She also made the first of her many movie appearances in the 1929 sound picture Honky Tonk. During the 1930s, Tucker brought elements of nostalgia for the early years of 20th century into her show. She was billed as "The Last of the Red Hot Mamas," as her hearty sexual appetite was a frequent subject of her songs, unusual for female performers of the era.

Films

She made numerous popular film appearances, including Broadway Melody of 1938 as the mother of Judy Garland's character. In that film, Tucker sings a song during the big finale; even though she is playing a character and not herself, several neon lights displaying her real name light up in the background of the stage in tribute.

Radio

She had her own radio program, Sophie Tucker and Her Show, in 1938-39, broadcasting for 15 minutes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She also made numerous guest appearances on such programs as The Andrews Sisters, The Radio Hall of Fame and Ben Bernie, The Old Maestro.

She helped organize the American Federation of Actors, and in 1939 was serving as its president when it was dissolved by the American Federation of Labor due to financial irregularities.^[1]

Television

Tucker in 1952.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, she made television appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, What's My Line, Person to Person, and The Tonight Show.

She continued performing in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, until shortly before dying of lung cancer in 1966 at the age of 82. She was interred at Emanuel Cemetery in Wethersfield, Connecticut.

Influence

Tucker's comic and singing styles are credited with influencing later female entertainers, including Mae West, Joan Rivers, Roseanne Barr, Ethel Merman, "Mama" Cass Elliot of The Mamas & the Papas, and most notably Bette Midler who has included "Soph" as one of her many stage characters (and whose daughter Sophie is reputedly named after Tucker). In addition to her performing, Tucker was active in efforts to unionize professional actors, and was elected president of the American Federation of Actors in 1938.

Quotations

• "I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, honey, rich is better." (One of the earliest publications of this in book form, in 1955, attributes this quotation, without the "honey," to Joe E. Lewis. Earlier, the quotation appeared in the 1954 memoir "Men In Sandals" by Richard C. Madden. The quotation has also been ascribed to Gertrude Stein, Mae West W.C. Fields, and others.)
• "From birth to age eighteen, a girl needs good parents. From eighteen to thirty-five she needs good looks. From thirty-five to fifty-five, she needs a good personality. From fifty-five on, she needs good cash."

Theatre

• Louisiana Lou (1911) (Broadway)
• Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1924 (1924) (Broadway)
• Leave It to Me! (1938) (Broadway)
• High Kickers (1941) (Broadway)

Filmography

• Honky Tonk (1929)
• Gay Love (1934)
• Paramount Headliner: Broadway Highlights No. 1 (1935) (short subject)
• Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937)
• Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937)
• Follow the Boys (1944)
• Sensations of 1945 (1944)
• Screen Snapshots: The Great Showman (1950) (short subject)
• Screen Snapshots: Hollywood's Great Entertainers (1953) (short subjects)
• The Heart of Show Business (1957) (short subject)
• The Joker Is Wild (1957) (Cameo)

Tributes

• The Beatles included the song "Till There Was You" from The Music Man in their early repertoire. When they performed the song on the televised 1963 Royal Variety Performance in London, Paul McCartney—who sang their version—got laughs from the studio audience when he introduced it by saying "it's also been recorded by our favourite American group—Sophie Tucker."
• Reference to Tucker is made in the musical Chicago in the song "Roxie".
• The stage musical Meshuggah-Nuns, a sequel to the hit Nunsense, features a nun posing as Tucker, singing a song called "My Fat is My Fortune".
• She is referred to in Saul Bellow's book The Adventures of Augie March (1953).
• She is referred to in the television series Frasier, season 4 episode 9, "Dad Loves Sherry, The Boys Just Whine".
• Her song, "Some of These Days" is referred to in Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea.
• Frank Tashlin's Merrie Melodies cartoon The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos caricatures Tucker as "Sophie Turkey".
• Jim Croce covers the song "Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love" on an early album.
• Maurice Chevalier pays tribute to Sophie in a 1957 episode of I Love Lucy while singing I'm A Yankee Doodle Dandy, after singing the verse, "I've a yankee doodle sweetheart.." , he adlibs, "And her name is Sophie Tucker!"

References

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Links

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• Works by Sophie Tucker at Project Gutenberg
• Sophie Tucker on ibiblio.org
• Sophie Tucker on WomensHistory.miningco.com
• An informative biography on About.com
• Jewish Women's Archive. "Jewish Women in Comedy - Sophie Tucker". Tucker is also featuring in the JWA film, "Making Trouble".
• Sophie Tucker's entry in the JWA Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (Jewish Women's Archive)
• A Tucker biography from the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame
• Sophie Tucker sings "Reuben Rag", 1910, on Tinfoil.com listen to one of her earliest recordings
• Several original recordings of Sophie Tucker singing, including "Some of These Days." Audio links are at bottom of page. (Courtesy of the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco.)
• Sophie Tucker cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• Sophie Tucker collection, the singer's personal collection of musical scores in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
• Sophie Tucker private recordings collection, at the New york Public Library for the Performing Arts.
• Sophie Tucker profile on IMDb
• British Pathe newsreel item about Sophie Tucker in Brentford, London.

• portrait of Sophie's son Bert Tucker by Benjamin Strauss and Homer Peyton