‘Outrageous Sophie Tucker’ movie shown; book authors in town

By ALAN SMASON, Exclusive to the CCJN

Back a century ago, there was no Lady Gaga, Madonna or Beyoncé. But in the waning days of vaudeville, there was a no-nonsense woman who captivated audiences and spoke and sang so provocatively that she was considered something of a scandalous woman. Yet, she was beloved by millions nationwide, who made her one of the most popular stars in America for more than half a century.

Susan and Lloyd Ecker stand in front of a portrait of Sophie Tucker. (Photo courtesy of Susan and Lloyd Ecker)

That star was Sophie Tucker, a woman who made frequent trips to New Orleans performing at the fabled Blue Room in the Roosevelt Hotel. Tucker’s influence is still felt today by performers like Bette Midler, who continue her brassy and risqué manner on stage.

For Susan and Lloyd Ecker, the authors of “I Am Sophie Tucker: A Fictional Memoir,” the road to producing a major documentary film, “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker,” that was shown Sunday at the Uptown Jewish Community Center at 1:00 p.m., is all a part of a continuum that began with Midler. Now, it is all about to lead to the next stage, the development of their material into a major Broadway musical and a possible film project with Harvey Weinstein.

Married for 39 years, the two’s first date was to a Bette Midler concert at Ithaca College in upstate New York. Susan Ecker recalls the two were sitting on the front row  when “Mr. Big Shot” told her he would be right back. He climbed onto the stage and, to her surprise, introduced Bette Midler to the audience with Barry Manilow playing piano and serving as her musical director. He made an obvious impression and the two were soon inseparable and big Midler fans.

The Eckers “fictional memoir” on Sophie Tucker. (Courtesy Prospecta Press)

But Midler’s love of Tucker piqued the Eckers’ interest. The Eckers became successful in business and eventually sold their Internet business, babytobee.com, for an unbelievable sum of cash that left them financially independent, but also left them with a lot of time on hands. “What do you want to do now?” he remembers asking his wife.

They read Tucker’s autobiography and found her character fascinating, but Lloyd thought there might be more to the story. “Let’s find out who Sophie Tucker is,” he told Susan. “From that (book) we’ll make a documentary and then after we make the documentary we’ll make a Broadway musical. Then after that, we’ll make a film that Bette Middler can star in. And after she wins the Academy Award, then we will have dinner with her.”

Some might call it overreaching. “It was a grand plan,” Lloyd Ecker recalls. But so far it’s working.

Their book refutes a number of items Tucker wrote in her autobiography, “Some of These Days.”  The Eckers were able to secure the rights to many of Tucker’s scrapbooks along with much of the correspondence she had over the course of her long show business career. That’s when they noticed that given a choice of writing the truth or inventing a legend, Tucker chose the latter.

After meticulously scanning the stories in her scrapbooks found at Brandeis University and the New York Library at Lincoln Center, the Eckers began to find inconsistencies in her accounts. “We realized that 85% of that book was false. It never happened the way she said it did or it never happened,” Lloyd continued.

Instead of writing a typical biography, the Eckers elected to write what they call “a fictional memoir” spoken in the first person by Tucker. “It would give you a feel for her talking and we feel like we got her,” Ecker said.

“The Outrageous Sophie Tucker” film released by Menemsha Films.

The Eckers now say that their research is probably 85% accurate. There are areas that can never be verified, but they believe the final result is closer to the truth than Tucker’s own autobiography. “The other 15%…who knows?” Lloyd Ecker posits.

With their first 400 page book released, the Eckers took to producing the documentary that was shown at the JCC as part of the Morris and Cathy Bart Film Series.

Titled “The Outrageous Sophie Tucker,” it features vintage clips of Tucker along with remembrances by musical enthusiasts like Michael Feinstein, reporters like Barbara Walters and fellow stars like Tony Bennett and Carol Channing. Directed by former record producer and three-time Emmy winning music composer (“Hill Street Blues” and “St. Elsewhere”)William Garecki, the film mixes several rare moments from Tucker’s appearances in film and TV with remarkable photos taken over the course of her more than 55-year show business career.

The film has been shown to critical acclaim in the area of Miami and in Los Angeles and was well received in New Orleans. There was an expectation that the documentary film would be released commercially in the fall. However, the plan is now for Menemsha Films to release the film as a DVD or BlueRay on August 11.

The authors of the book and producers of the $500,000 film were in the audience on March 22 and had an impromptu talk-back and question and answer period with the film’s viewers after the showing.

And as to Lloyd Ecker’s grand plan, there has been a meeting with Hollywood tycoon Harvey Weinstein at which there was a pitch for Lady Gaga to be considered to portray Tucker. Perhaps that dinner with Midler is not as much a dream as we might have suspected.