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.
Review of The Outrageous Sophie Tucker
