Post by Dex on Feb 8, 2016 11:56:30 GMT -5
The American singer Sophie Tucker, who died 50 years ago on Tuesday, was one of the most successful recording artists of her day. She was on intimate terms with presidents and gangsters, and she showed that it was possible for a female artist to get to the top of show business on her own terms.
In 1962, when Americans were asked what they thought when they heard the name "Sophie" 95% answered "Tucker".
By this stage, the singer had gambled a fortune away and also given millions to charity. She had known seven US presidents and counted both Chicago mobster Al Capone and FBI boss J Edgar Hoover as close friends. She smoked so much that a parrot, belonging to one of her friends, would cough every time her name was mentioned.
Tucker was known as "the last of the red hot mamas", a nickname from one of her most popular songs. She would appear on stage and TV shows wreathed in yards of silk and sequins, to deliver songs and skits with her pianist, Ted Shapiro. The material was saucy but always delivered straight, in Tucker's prim-and-proper New England accent, and accompanied by little waves of a chiffon handkerchief.
Lois Young-Tulin, Tucker's first cousin once removed, recalls a joke from the elderly singer's act. "She always had a pretend boyfriend, Abe, in her jokes. So Abe came to her and said, 'Sophie, I'm tired of waiting for you - I'm going to get myself a 30-year-old girlfriend.'
"And Sophie said, 'Go ahead. I'm going to get myself a 30-year-old boyfriend. But just remember, 30 goes into 70 a lot more times than 70 goes into 30.'"
Besides sex and ageing, Tucker's material focused on her size. She called herself a "perfect 48" and sang numbers with titles like "Nobody loves a fat girl", "I don't want to get thin" and "I'm bigger and better than ever". ("I can offer post-war romance just the way men love it," she sings in the last of these numbers, "The quality's improved - and there's a hell of a lot more of it.")
"She was an incredible woman - so strong," says Sue Kelvin, who played Sophie Tucker in a one-woman show in the UK. "She just was this kind of larger-than-life character who just didn't give a damn about traditional ideals of being beautiful, or being thin or any of that."
This was the woman who greeted George V, in her 1934 Royal Command performance, with the salutation "Hiya King!"
all of the rest with more photos, at the link
www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35505532
