The Outrageous Sophie Tucker

For Susan and Lloyd Eckers, Sophie Tucker is a cottage industry. 'The Outrageous Sophie Tucker' is a brain child of theirs, and years of patient research are paying off: a three-volume not a biography, a compact disk with Tucker's hits, and a possible movie contract with the Weinstein organization. Inspired by the Divine Bette Middler's worship of her idol Tucker, set the Eckers on a long journey leading to this thoroughly satisfying documentary. Tucker was bigger than life: a jazz singer of the first water, a brilliant self promoter, a skillful business woman. She ate men and spit them out; she loved women; and as a woman ahead of her time, she was, sassy, out sized in all bodily ways, and bawdy. She hobnobbed with royalty but never lost the common touch with the little people. During WW2 she got thousands of letters from GIs, and to each, she replied in her large bold, handwriting. She palled around with Al Capone, understandably since the Mafia controlled the night clubs.J. Edgar Hoover courted her, and her spangled gowns. (As a denizen of musical halls, Broadway, saloons and the margins of life, she had an indifference to queerness.) For 60 years, she was the 'last of the Red Hot Mammas', and the documentary lets you know why. Although she came from an Orthodox Jewish home, her family never stopped her from pursuing a career. Once out of the house, she left her only child in the care of her sister and remained troubled by him for the rest of her life. She gave everything but tenderness and love, the giant Narcissist that she was. Known for her brassy voice, size 48, cup D or E breasts, she had an appetite for life that only death could diminish. The only Yiddish song the Eckers include, and this for the demands of the narrative is "My Yiddishe Mama', which has more English that Yiddish. The English Yiddish novelty songs she sang, the Eckers left out, and more's the pity. A song like 'Mr. Siegal make it legal', is fun and accessible to all including Jews whose grasp of Yiddish is tenuous if non existent. Overall,'The Outrageous Sophie Tucker' is a must to see. For some, it might revive the embers of nostalgia, of times gone by but welcomed today, or a tale of a gal with an outrageous hair do, who made a life for herself at a time when women stayed at home, bore children and spent hours in the kitchen. Like Mae West, she broke taboos and lived to tell about without going to jail.

Wow. How do you conflate the life of this remarkable woman down to a 90-minute presentation? All you can do is broad-brush that life with highlights and a few telling details spanning some 60 years, from her vaudeville days of the early 20th century through the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Hard to do, but this film documentary by authors Lloyd and Susan Ecker does a pretty good job.

Source material includes Tucker's autobiography, her enormous scrapbook, B&W home movies, and interviews with a variety of celebrities, close friends, and extended family. Throughout it all, Sophie Tucker comes across as determined, confident, innovative, unique, perfectionistic, and highly ethical. To her, a handshake was her word of honor not to be broken; no written contract was ever needed. How do you think that would work now in the 21st century?

With that booming voice, her business savvy, and her dominating personality, she overwhelmed everyone and everything; nothing and nobody could get in her way. She was personal friends with a veritable whose-who of the twentieth century, a checklist of the rich, famous, and powerful ... Rudolph Valentino, Irving Berlin, Helen Keller, Mickey Rooney, Charlie Chaplin, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Joey Bishop, Al Jolson, Ronald Reagan. She mentored Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Jerry Lewis. She personally new 7 U.S. Presidents, plus the Queen of England, Isreal's Golda Meir, gangster Al Capone, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, among many others.

I watched this documentary from start to finish, three times. I had a couple of minor complaints. I didn't care for the mechanical movements of her art pictures, which seemed a tad cartoonish. And some of the old audio sounded muffled and thus hard to understand. Minor stuff like that. Overall, this is a good documentary: interesting, insightful, and as comprehensive as ninety minutes will allow.

Although Sophie Tucker was before my time, those of us in a more modern era can still appreciate her talent, and her influence on jazz in particular and entertainment in general. She even had an impact on WWII. For those of us in the 21st century, the old cliché "they don't make them like they used to", really does apply.

A couple of the remarks by interviewees were funny. Carol Channing commented that Sophie Tucker was so old her social security number was 2. Someone else, also commenting on Sophie's age, remarked: "She goes back to the days when the Dead Sea was only sick". Marvelous.

The fact that she had so many scrapbooks of her career meant that this had access to so much historical ephemera and photographs which made it shine. It may not have quite examined why she became forgotten or what she thought of her imitators etc, but for a chance to see someone who was hugely famous and isn't now's life, this did a great job.

I really like 1920s jazz culture and am a fan of Judy Garland (even - and perhaps especially - as an aging addict belting out Never Will I Marry in the 1960s) and so I felt at once robbed by society and embarrassed that I didn't discover The Last of the Red Hot Mommas sooner.

I cried at least three times during this documentary, most notably at the death of the plucky Jewish American soldier whose fellow troop members, in his honor, played the Nazi German-banned song, My Yiddishe Momme by Sophie Tucker, on loud speaker through the streets of Berlin FOR EIGHT HOURS, following the defeat of the Nazis by the Allies a the end of WW2.

Sophie Tucker was a magical woman, an early loud supporter of women's rights to be independent, as well as normalizing the social acceptance and sexual eroticism of fat women in a time when no one else did. Judy Garland credited Sophie for teaching her how to really present a song, and that's one of the vital things I love about Judy Garland was her feeling, her panache, her giant personality on the stage - and this is partly due to Judy working with Sophie in a film when Judy Garland was still in her teens.

Those were the elements of the documentary that were highlights for me, but there's so much more to this woman's long and meaningful life, including the way she would write letters personally to her fans and meet with them and make friends with some of them in a time when again, apparently no one else was doing that. The only reason I didn't give this documentary 10 stars is that I felt some details were left out for some strange reason I felt compelled to "fill in the blanks" by reading websites on-line afterward.

Sophie Tucker was a major star of the Jazz Age and beyond. She starred in Vaudeville, on Broadway, in night clubs, recordings, 1 silent film, a handful of talkies, radio, television, and anything else you can name.

Her bawdy jazz-styled singing may have borrowed from (or even influenced) Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, Mildred Bailey, Ethel Waters, and Alberta Hunter. The famous "red hot mama" shocked and delighted the Jazz Age with her bigger than life stage presence and strong singing voice. Oddly, her 1929 talkie debut in HONKY TONK (now lost) was apparently a flop.

She made a handful of film appearances for MGM but (like Fanny Brice) didn't make much impact in mild supporting roles that gave her little to do. Anyway....

This documentary is quite well done and boasts tons of photos and clips and talking heads to tell the show-biz story of Tucker from the beginning to her death in 1966 at age 82. She had a remarkable life and career, and the Eckers have done a thorough job in presenting a balanced biography of this legendary woman.

Talking heads include Tony Bennett, Carol Channing, Barbara Walters, Shecky Greene, and old clips of Bette Midler, who named her daughter after Sophie Tucker.

Seems like I always knew who Sophie Tucker was. She appeared on a lot of TV shows in the 50s and 60s. One I have always remembered was her guest shot on "The Mike Douglas Show" in July of 1965. At age 80 or so, Tucker couldn't sing and so whispered the words to "My Yiddishe Momme" and Douglas sang it. This was a very moving moment because it was clear the end was near.

This is a must-see documentary for anyone still interested in the Jazz Age, that era when Tucker ranked with Fanny Brice, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Bert Williams, Ted Lewis, and Blossom Seeley as the most electrifying stage performers.

Loved the colorization of the old photos in the documentary but could have done without the puppetry app. Oh yes, and it's FELD, ZiegFELD, not FIELD.