Mae West: Red-Hot Influence

In January it's time to remember a singer and comedienne who was a big influence on MAE WEST, though she never admitted it.
• • Sophie Tucker [13 January 1884 — 9 February 1966] was one of the most popular entertainers in America during the first third of the 20th century. Almost ten years older than Mae and not as controversial when she launched her career, Sophie Tucker had an ethnic appeal which upped her forward momentum and she was, in fact, a much bigger draw in vaudeville than the Brooklyn bombshell.
• • Born Sophia Kalish to a Jewish family in czarist Russia, she emigrated as an infant and her parents settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Her family changed its name to Abuza and opened a restaurant. Little Sophie sang for tips in this eatery. In 1903, the nineteen-year-old was briefly married to Louis Tuck — — then decided Tucker was a nice stage-name.
• • LIKE Mae West, Sophie Tucker did the circuit, playing piano and singing in vaudeville houses in blackface. In Sophie's case, she claimed that theatre managers told her she was "too fat and ugly" to be accepted by an audience in any other context.
• • LIKE Mae, Sophie Tucker made a name for herself in a [then popular] style known as a "Coon-Shouting" — — in other words, performing minstrel and black-influenced songs. Also, as Mae West did, Tucker hired some of the best black singers of the day to teach her how to do the blues properly; she also hired black composers to write songs for her act.
• • UNLIKE Mae, Sophie Tucker even sang songs that acknowledged her heft, such as "Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love." Never apologizing for her size, Mae would never do a song like that.
• • On December 28th, 1919, Sophie Tucker was the big headliner, with her Kings of Syncopation, at the 44th Street Theatre (near Broadway). Vaudevillians on the same bill that night were Ames & Winthrop, Riggs & Witchie, and a 26-year-old brunette named MAE WEST.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: Sophie Tucker • • 1917 • •
NYC
Mae West.