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Pi*e II THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE December 23, 1977 Elaine Ebwers Holiday 2FOR1SALE Tell a friend! Now, (or a limited time only, you can each save 50% when you sign up together for our "Lookin’ Great in 78" shape-up program! $E98 Offer • ■ per person per month expires Dec. 31st (Regular Sll 95value) Complete 4-month program!Unlimited visits Call now for free salon tour! * C*** WP«»r» Figure Mom tfT7 Baine Powers ^ Figure Salons KeepirViton the light side Sandy Springs Shopping Center 6125 Roswell Road N.E. 252-8065 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