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Pi*e II THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE December 23, 1977
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J
Mama’
by Michael FreerHand
Sophie Tucker remains the
archetype Jewish entertainer, the
one who in her sequin-encrusted
gown and chiffon handkerchief
took an adoring public to her
capacious bosom. Tears came to
Sophie as easily as to a child in
kindergarten. They flowed like
great drops of rain and were
eagerly soaked up by an adoring
public as though they were
spoonfuls of chicken soup. For
there was more to her than mere
schmaltz, you took what you were
handed out and felt better for it.
She called herself “The Last of
the Red-Hot Mamas" and sang
about her yiddishe mama to
audiences who had never seen a
Jewish matriarch in their lives, yet
who worshipped at her feet as
though they had themselves been
born on the Lower East Side or on
Flower and Dean Street.
She seemed to be everyone’s
mother—except that there was
very little that was particularly
maternal about the real Sophie.
How could there be when she
constantly sang risque songs about
men whose bedroom perform
ances rarely matched the billing
they had given themselves? Or
indeed when you realized that this
complicated, seemingly lovable
old lady had desertod her only
child when he was a year old to run
away from Hartford, Conn., in
search of the bright lights of
Broadway.
She spent her first weeks in New
York contemplating the possibility
of going on the streets and it was
only a friendly nod from a kindly
policeman that talked her out of
joining the ladies of easy virtue
swinging their handbags on a street
comer.
Yjefore
v/ith
For more than SO years she was
an exciting figure, adored on both
sides of the Atlantic. And it was
not all that long before her death in
1966 that she had been her usual
success in Britain. In 1962 she was
the sensation of the Royal Variety
Show when the Queen told her: “I
was thrilled by your performance."
So what was so appealing about
this legendary figure?
Most of all, she was real to her
Jewish audiences; the people to
whom she seemed to bring a
combination of nostalgia and
downright love. She was the most
charitable figure in entertainment
histj.-y—spending hours in
draughty hotel lobbies signing
copies of her own autobiography
and records, the proceeds from
which went to charity. “I never
turn down a good cause," she once
said, "specially if it’s for my own
people.” A founding member of
the Jewish Theatrical League, she
was also an honorary member of
the Catholics' vaudeville charity.
But she was Jewish from the top of
her carefully coiffured hair style
down to the pointed toes of the
impossibly uncomfortable satin
shoes she wore for each
performance.
Like many other stars, Sophie
was born on the road. Only the
road in her case was the one
leading from Russia to Poland.
She was carried into the United
States by her 18-year-old mother,
who was even more confused than
most other immigrants who had to
tussle with the heartrending
formalities of Ellis Island. Jenny
KaJish had more worries than
ifiost. Not only did she have a babe
in arms as well as a two-year-old
son, but she didn’t even know her
name. Her husband had gone to
America a few months before, to
escape from the Army of the Tsar
and on the way over had taken the
name of an Italian who had died on
the journey. Mrs. Kalish
discovered that she was married to
a man called Abuza, a Yiddish-
speaking Italian.
In their own modest way, the
Abuzas prospered—serving the
best gefilte fish in the town in their
own kosher restaurant where the
speciality of the house was a
complete meal for 23 cents.
Then their daughter fell in love,
first with a man called Lewis Tuck
and then with the idea of going on
the stage. When Lewis deserted
her, she left her son Bert in the care
of her younger sister Annie and
narrowly avoided the fate worse
than death.
A series of lucky breaks brought
her to the attention of Florenz
Ziegfeld (she had by then added
two letters to her married name
and become Sophie Tucker) and
although her career with the great
showman was nipped in the bud by
the jealousy of the better-known
Nora Bayes, it was not long before
she was in the kind of vaudeville
known as the Big Time.
In the days when her parents
were alive she would write home to
them in Yiddish, although she
never really spoke the language
well. Her mother was her one real
love, and it was from her that she
gapped her feeling for doing good
works.
But she was not usually
reluctant to reveal her activities.
Indeed, if she had a god in addition
to the one to whom she would pray
every Rosh Hashana and Yom
Kippur from the balcony of the
Actors Temple off Broadway, it
could only be the one called
Publicity.
It was not until the early '50s
that she said she had found real
happiness. That was on her first
trip to Israel, to dedicate the
Sophie Tucker Youth Centre. She
was in the country for Passover
and was driven in a curtained car
to a military base where she and
her accompanist for 45 years, Ted
Shapiro enjoyed a seder conducted
by Chief Rabbi Herzog. Later she
and another Yiddishe Mama
called Golda Meir recalled
Passovers of their youth in
America and both regretted how
much their work had eaten into
their family lives.
Sophie Tucker was a paradox.
Generous beyond all measure to
her public and her charities, she
could never find enough love or
charity for either her husbands or
her son—whose own cards were
pasted into her scrapbooks
alongside those from stagedoor
keepers and convicts whom she
had entertained at prison concert
parties.
She was 78 when she died. Only
inoperable cancer had been able to
stop her show. As she had once
said: “I’ve got to go on. I’m the last
of the Red Hot Mamas."
London Jewish Chronicle
