Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
Some of These Days
Author: Sophie Tucker
Author: Armond FieldsPublisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786415770
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
Sophie Tucker appeared in only seven American stage musicals and appeared only twice on Broadway but, then, it was difficult to cast her in a show. A buxom and ebullient performer, she--and her audiences--quickly found that playing herself was most effective. This is a biography of a vaudeville and cabaret performer who saw herself as one of the first liberated women and one of the last "red hot mamas." It tells the story of her birth as her mother traveled to Boston from Russia, her childhood in Boston, and her first public performance at Poli's Vaudeville Theatre at the age of 13. It also tells the story of her troubled marriage to Louis Tuck and the birth of their son, her meeting with Willie Howard, a vaudeville veteran who encouraged her to go to New York and pursue a stage career, her discovery by Flo Ziegfeld (of the Ziegfeld Follies), and her rise to headliner status under the guidance of her agent William Morris. She was best known for appearing on stage with just a piano player, and openly discussing her life and Jewish upbringing.
Red Hot Mama
Author: Lauren Rebecca SklaroffPublisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477312366
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 303
Book Description
The “First Lady of Show Business” and the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” Sophie Tucker was a star in vaudeville, radio, film, and television. A gutsy, song-belting stage performer, she entertained audiences for sixty years and inspired a host of younger women, including Judy Garland, Carol Channing, and Bette Midler. Tucker was a woman who defied traditional expectations and achieved success on her own terms, becoming the first female president of the American Federation of Actors and winning many other honors usually bestowed on men. Dedicated to social justice, she advocated for African Americans in the entertainment industry and cultivated friendships with leading black activists and performers. Tucker was also one of the most generous philanthropists in show business, raising over four million dollars for the religious and racial causes she held dear. Drawing from the hundreds of scrapbooks Tucker compiled, Red Hot Mama presents a compelling biography of this larger-than-life performer. Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff tells an engrossing story of how a daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants set her sights on becoming one of the most formidable women in show business and achieved her version of the American dream. More than most of her contemporaries, Tucker understood how to keep her act fresh, to change branding when audiences grew tired and, most importantly, how to connect with her fans, the press, and entertainment moguls. Both deservedly famous and unjustly forgotten today, Tucker stands out as an exemplar of the immigrant experience and a trailblazer for women in the entertainment industry.
Red Hot Mama
Author: Lauren Rebecca SklaroffPublisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477316345
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
The “First Lady of Show Business” and the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” Sophie Tucker was a star in vaudeville, radio, film, and television. A gutsy, song-belting stage performer, she entertained audiences for sixty years and inspired a host of younger women, including Judy Garland, Carol Channing, and Bette Midler. Tucker was a woman who defied traditional expectations and achieved success on her own terms, becoming the first female president of the American Federation of Actors and winning many other honors usually bestowed on men. Dedicated to social justice, she advocated for African Americans in the entertainment industry and cultivated friendships with leading black activists and performers. Tucker was also one of the most generous philanthropists in show business, raising over four million dollars for the religious and racial causes she held dear. Drawing from the hundreds of scrapbooks Tucker compiled, Red Hot Mama presents a compelling biography of this larger-than-life performer. Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff tells an engrossing story of how a daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants set her sights on becoming one of the most formidable women in show business and achieved her version of the American dream. More than most of her contemporaries, Tucker understood how to keep her act fresh, to change branding when audiences grew tired and, most importantly, how to connect with her fans, the press, and entertainment moguls. Both deservedly famous and unjustly forgotten today, Tucker stands out as an exemplar of the immigrant experience and a trailblazer for women in the entertainment industry.
The Journey Home
Author: Joyce AntlerPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684834448
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 440
Book Description
Anarchists and Zionists, "sob sister" writers and Supreme Court justices, rabbis and reformers, personalities as diverse as Emma Goldman, Sophie Tucker and Gertrude Stein have left their indelible mark on the American century.
The Heat of the Sun
Author: David RainPublisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 080509671X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
An exuberant debut that sweeps across the twentieth century—beginning where one world-famous love story left off to introduce us to another With Sophie Tucker belting from his hand-crank phonograph and a circle of boarding-school admirers laughing uproariously around him, Ben "Trouble" Pinkerton first appears to us through the amazed eyes of his Blaze Academy schoolmate, the crippled orphan Woodley Sharpless. Soon Woodley finds his life inextricably linked with this strange boy's. The son of Lieutenant Benjamin Pinkerton and the geisha Madame Butterfly, Trouble is raised in the United States by Pinkerton (now a Democrat senator) and his American wife, Kate. From early in life, Trouble finds himself at the center of some of the biggest events of the century—and though over time Woodley's and Trouble's paths diverge, their lives collide again to dramatic effect. From Greenwich Village in the Roaring Twenties, to WPA labor during the Great Depression; from secret work at Los Alamos, New Mexico, to a revelation on a Nagasaki hillside by the sea—Woodley observes firsthand the highs and lows of the twentieth century and witnesses, too, the extraordinary destiny of the Pinkerton family. David Rain's The Heat of the Sun is a high-wire act of sustained invention—as playful as it is ambitious, as moving as it is theatrical, and as historically resonant as it is evocative of the powerful bonds of friendship and of love.
Sophie and Me
Author: Lois Young-TulinPublisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1469763710
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 248
Book Description
She was the one, the only American Red Hot Mama. Her career spanned six decades, taking her from the cramped apartment above her parents restaurant in Hartford, Connecticut, to the worlds greatest music halls. And she became, and remains, one of the biggest influences on women entertainers and comedians in American history. Sophie and Me is the story of Sophie Tuckerthe colorful, spicy, bold entertainer who broke boundaries in the industry and whose popularity during her life, and celebrity even beyond it has not waned. Told through the eyes of her great-grand niece, to whom Sophie took under her wing and was both mentor and surrogate grandmother, Sophie and Me takes the reader on an intimate journey through Sophies extraordinary life. Sophie Tucker was an original. Zaftig, full-bodied in looks and voice, she was strong and independent before it became acceptable for women. Sophie and Me is the story of the American dream and of one woman who refused to compromise her looks or heritage to reach success. A woman who lived an untraditional life in traditional times. A woman who achieved vast fame and fortune, and yet never really was the Yiddishe Momme she sang about.
A to Z of American Women in the Performing Arts
Author: Liz SonnebornPublisher: Infobase Publishing
ISBN: 1438107900
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 273
Book Description
Presents biographical profiles of 150 American women of achievement in the field of performing arts, including birth and death dates, major accomplishments, and historical influence.
Shout, Sister, Shout!
Author: Roxane OrgillPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0689819919
Category : Popular music
Languages : en
Pages : 168
Book Description
Biographical sketches of ten outstanding female singers of popular music in the twentieth century.
Budapest and New York
Author: Thomas BenderPublisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 9781610440400
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 426
Book Description
Little over a century ago, New York and Budapest were both flourishing cities engaging in spectacular modernization. By 1930, New York had emerged as an innovating cosmopolitan metropolis, while Budapest languished under the conditions that would foster fascism. Budapest and New York explores the increasingly divergent trajectories of these once-similar cities through the perspectives of both Hungarian and American experts in the fields of political, cultural, social and art history. Their original essays illuminate key aspects of urban life that most reveal the turn-of-the-century evolution of New York and Budapest: democratic participation, use of public space, neighborhood ethnicity, and culture high and low. What comes across most strikingly in these essays is New York's cultivation of social and political pluralism, a trend not found in Budapest. Nationalist ideology exerted tremendous pressure on Budapest's ethnic groups to assimilate to a single Hungarian language and culture. In contrast, New York's ethnic diversity was transmitted through a mass culture that celebrated ethnicity while muting distinct ethnic traditions, making them accessible to a national audience. While Budapest succumbed to the patriotic imperatives of a nation threatened by war, revolution, and fascism, New York, free from such pressures, embraced the variety of its people and transformed its urban ethos into a paradigm for America. Budapest and New York is the lively story of the making of metropolitan culture in Europe and America, and of the influential relationship between city and nation. In unifying essays, the editors observe comparisons not only between the cities, but in the scholarly outlooks and methodologies of Hungarian and American histories. This volume is a unique urban history. Begun under the unfavorable conditions of a divided world, it represents a breakthrough in cross-cultural, transnational, and interdisciplinary historical work.
