Mister D: This just made me think…wouldn’t it just make perfect sense for Bette to make the Sophie Tucker story for the big or little screen someday. I think she mentioned once that she wouldn’t do it, but, hey, she changes her mind alot just like the rest of us…anyway, this guy said it all.
Tucker music revue short on racy flair that made her unique
By DAMIEN JAQUES
Journal Sentinel theater critic
Last Updated: Nov. 11, 2002
If you were born after World War II, there is little chance that you remember Sophie Tucker in performance. Although she worked into the 1960s, appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” on TV and at the Latin Quarter in New York, she was so far out of the popular culture mainstream by then that she was virtually invisible.
If You Go
“Sophie Tucker, American Legend” continues through Jan. 5 in the Stackner Cabaret at the Baker Theater Complex, 108 E. Wells St. Tickets are on sale at the Rep’s box office in the complex’s lobby, by phone at (414) 224-9490 and online at www.milwaukeerep.com
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But Tucker was a remarkable performer from the early part of the 20th century up to the Second World War. A singer and comedian with a flair for the bawdy, she capitalized on her large size and plain looks. A feminist when that was hardly fashionable, she created an image of a sexually bold and independent woman.
Offstage, Tucker was known for her business smarts and financial generosity. By all accounts, she was an intriguing woman, full of moxie and spunk.
What a shame it is that the musical revue of her life, titled “Sophie Tucker, American Legend,” fails to capture this. Surprisingly short on the cleverly racy patter for which Tucker is remembered, the show is presented as more of a reverential concert than a lively slice of her performing persona.
The Milwaukee Repertory Theater opened a production of the piece Saturday night in its Stackner Cabaret. The two-performer show features a singer-actress playing Tucker and an accompanist who trades banter with her.
Playwright Jack Fournier and his creative collaborator, actress Kathy Halenda, simply missed the boat on this one. Rather than emphasize Tucker’s personality and the marvelous monologues that were a part of her act, they jammed 20 songs into a show that runs a little more than an hour. Do the math, and you know what you are getting.
Tucker wasn’t Kate Smith or Ethel Merman. Few people now know how she sounded in song. Her reputation did not come from her singing style or fabulous pipes.
To be fair, some of the tunes in this show are uniquely Tucker’s, and they reflect her public image. “Some of These Days” was her signature song, and “I Don’t Want to Be Thin” and “I’m Living Alone and I Like It” are important to establishing who Tucker was. In addition, “America, I Love You” and “My Yiddishe Momme” represent the star’s Jewish immigrant roots and give us a glimpse of a softer and more personal side.
But I would enthusiastically trade “Life Begins at 40,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “There’ll Be Some Changes Made” and other tunes in this show for more of Tucker’s suggestive trash-talking. Bette Midler, who has appropriated Tucker material for years, delivers more of it in one of her concerts than we get in this revue.
The Rep’s production of “Sophie Tucker” contains a huge irony. Carolynne Warren, a superb cabaret performer who usually stars as herself in her own shows, plays the title character. (Jack Forbes Wilson is her accompanist.)
Warren is a warm, funny and spontaneous singer-actor-comedian whose original material regularly wanders into Tucker territory. An element of naughty danger energizes her shows.
All of that is restrained in her portrayal of Tucker here. It appears that the real Carolynne Warren is struggling to break out of the blond-wigged straitjacket Fournier and Halenda have imposed on her, and one wishes she would.
The revue runs for almost two more months. Junk this pale portrait of exuberant sexuality and let Warren do her own cabaret act. It has heart – and a heartbeat.
E-mail Damien Jaques at djaques@journalsentinel.com.
A version of this story appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Nov. 12, 2002.
