I had the rare pleasure of seeing The Outrageous Sophie Tucker, a new documentary feature currently playing in select theaters. It opened the recent 2015 Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival, and is a genuine “rags to riches” show business story that will inspire today’s performers and certainly empower women of all ages, shapes and sizes. The film is directed by Academy Award nominated filmmaker William Gazecki, and written and produced by Susan and Lloyd Ecker. “The Last Of The Red-Hot Mamas” Sophie Tucker was known as the “female Al Jolson” and she paved the way for such icons as Mae West, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Midler, Cher, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, even Amy Schumer.

The Eckers have been working on this in-depth documentary for eight years including immersing themselves in Tucker’s personal scrapbooks, interviewing numerous family, friends and show business personalities. Some of the on-camera interviews include Tony Bennett, Barbara Walters, Bruce Vilanch, Michael Feinstein, Carol Channing, narrated by David Hyde Pierce. Sophie Tucker was a pioneer, a woman ahead of her time as an entertainer, and a leader in Social Media. From 1906 through the beginning of television, her brash, bawdy style prevailed as a “star” attraction.

I spoke to the Eckers about their passion for getting Sophie’s story on screen, and they plan both a Broadway musical and feature film about The Outrageous Sophie Tucker. Is Sophie still relevant today? “Sophie represented that strong personable female voice that you see reincarnated today in performers such as Lady Gaga and Amy Schumer,” Lloyd Ecker explained. “Bette Midler started doing Sophie routines in her one-woman-shows which she still performs to this day, and Bette named her daughter Sophie. And Mae West was an early mentee of Mae West. Without Sophie there would not have been Mae West saying “Come up and see me sometime.” She was also a mentor to the young Judy Garland. According to Susan Ecker, “Sophie was the Forrest Gump of the first half of the 1900’s. She was close with U.S. Presidents, King George VI,young Queen Elizabeth, Charlie Chaplin, J.Edgar Hoover, Al Jolson, Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, and every other notable of her era.”

Was she a feminist? “Sophie definitely believed a woman should receive equal pay to a man,” Lloyd Ecker stated. “When the suffragette movement came about, first she was against it, when it was in vogue, she was for it. Sophie Tucker fought for herself, created an environment and image, and rode the trends. But all she ever wanted was equal pay to a man.”

She sang “Some of These Days” and “After You’ve Gone” and she interpreted sex and innuendo in a way no woman had before her. Even though she was overweight, she stated boldly, “This is me. I’m comfortable in my own skin.” And if she were alive today, you can bet she’d be the Queen of Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Vines, Periscope and all forms of social media.

The Outrageous Sophie Tucker is an intriguing documentary feature that celebrated an original and lets us in on the creation of a Show Business Pioneer’s life and struggles.

The post ‘Sophie Mania’ Returns first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Sharon McNight’s favorite Sophie Tucker line reveals why she’s doing a benefit Sunday for foster and adoptive children.

“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor,” she says in a clipped Tucker dialect. “Rich is better.”

McNight, who earned a 1989 Tony nomination for her role in “Starmites,” also is presenting “Red Hot Mama” at Hotel Zoso in Palm Springs to reveal the lasting influence of a comic singer who really was the last of the red hot lovers by the end of her career in the mid-1960s.

“For a single woman to last 60 years in the business” said McNight. “She was just a tough broad and I think her independence and longevity in the business speaks to her ability to communicate with people on a level that was entertaining and could be moving as well.”

Most people know Tucker, who died in 1966 at age 82, from Bette Midler‘s Sophie Tucker routines. You can find her joking about her boyfriend Ernie or her girlfriend Clementine on youtube, but McNight said she only gets Tucker’s tough cadence right.

“She’s not doing Sophie Tucker material,” she said. “There was no boyfriend Ernie. And (her act) was not written by Bette Midler. It was written by my friend, Bruce Vilanch.”

Tucker started singing in her Orthodox Jewish parents’ restaurant in Hartford, Conn., in the late 1890s. She eloped at 16 and soon had a son, but the marriage failed and Tucker left her boy with her parents to scandalously pursue a show biz career.

She changed her name from Sophie Abuza in 1906, but the manager of a New York music hall thought she was so “big and ugly” he made her perform in blackface.

Her songs included “Nobody Loves A Fat Girl, But Oh How A Fat Girl Can Love,” “You’ve Got To See Your Mama Every Night” and “I Ain’t Takin‘ Orders From No One.”

“Sophie got arrested two or three times (for obscenity),” McNight said. “She had a song called ‘The Angle Worm Wiggle’ that she was arrested for in Portland, Ore. She was arrested in Chicago, too (probably for “There’s Company in the Parlor, Girls, Come On Down”). There was a Society for the Protection of Young Ladies and if your act had something they found objectionable, they would put a blue slip of paper in with your paycheck. Hence the term ‘blue law.’”

For McNight, a bawdy, “big-figured girl” with somewhat of a cult following in the desert, the character is a perfect fit.

When asked what took her so long to assemble the show, she quotes San Francisco critic Gerald Nachman.

“(He) had a good joke,” McNight said. “He said I had to be the right weight to do it.”

The post Sharon McNight As Sophie Tucker first appeared on We Got Bruce!.

Denver Post
Posted May 17, 2010, 1:06 pm MT
Live review: Bruce Vilanch @ Lannieâ€s Clocktower Cabaret
By RAY MARK RINALDI

When Bruce Vilanch walks on stage itâ€s as if Edna Turnblad never left.

Vilanch shares a certain something with the louder-than-life “Hairspray” character he played on Broadway and in the touring production that was wildly popular in Denver a few years back. Both carry around a sort of lumpy androgyny and a natural charm that depends on anything but looks.

Certainly Vilanch, in the comedy persona he brought to Lannieâ€s Clocktower Cabaret Saturday, is more self-aware than Edna, more purposefully odd to look at in his floppy, pleated trousers and school bus yellow “Jewbacca” T-shirt. Edna just wanted to fit in, but Bruce likes to stand out, with his the bowl of blonde bangs and trademark red-frame glasses.

Still, both are sincere to a fault and match their exterior brashness with an interior generosity. Theyâ€d each be trailer trash if they werenâ€t so nice, and fundamentally sure of themselves underneath it all.

Vilanchâ€s act — itâ€s really a chat rather than stand-up — is more polite than any comedianâ€s out there. He gossips a little as he tells long stories about the years he spent as a writer for comedians and television specials, (including two decades with the Academy Awards broadcast). He pokes a bit of fun at the famous, jabs at pop culture in general.

But nothing stings or feels mean. His humor is all about being an insider and sharing anecdotes about the foibles of working in show business. Edna Turnblad, who appreciated a good variety show, would have found him amusing.

As a woman of the early 60â€s though, she probably would not have appreciated his cultural references. Vilanch mines a very particular, somewhat limited era of American history for his material, roughly post-Lyndon Johnson, pre-Janet Jackson.

The man tells Cher jokes and shares tales starring Bette Midler and Dolly Parton, but thatâ€s about as current as it gets. He name drops George Burns and does a long, long riff on Pia Zadora. He ends his act with 10 minutes of Sophie Tucker jokes.

To say itâ€s a specialized humor would be generous; To say itâ€s dated, or at least terribly middle-aged, would be more honest. That doesnâ€t mean it isnâ€t funny, because it is, but itâ€s a lot funnier if the person next to you doesnâ€t have to whisper an explanation of who Pia or Sophie are, or were.

Mostly Vilanch gets through the evening by simply being himself. Heâ€s got the resume to talk Hollywood and the good sense not to update his act insincerely; nothing worse that Jay or Dave or Regis telling Jon & Kate jokes when itâ€s clear they donâ€t even know who those people are.

Thereâ€s room for this niche, especially in a small, underground room like Lannieâ€s, which is finally coming into its own as one of the most interesting presenters in Denver.

If Vilanch is your cup of tea, the schedule there bears watching.

The post Review: Bruce Vilanch At Lanny’s – Denver, Colorado first appeared on We Got Bruce!.