TAMMY WYNETTE

WYNETTE, TAMMY (Virginia Wynette Pugh) (1942–1998) Singer

In the late 1960s, such hits as “Stand by Your Man” and “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” earned Tammy Wynette the title “First Lady of Country Music.”On May 5, 1942, she was born Virginia Wynette Pugh in Itawamba County, Mississippi. When she was only nine months old, she experienced the first of many personal tragedies, the death of her father from a brain tumor. Five years later, Virginia’s mother remarried. Because of tensions between Virginia and her stepfather, she spent much of her youth on her grandparents’ farm, where she was often called upon to pick cotton. Exhausted by farm work, she was determined “to get away as fast as I could,” as Wynette later remembered. Just months shy of her high school graduation, she dropped out to marry Euple Byrd in 1959. For five years, they struggled to make ends meet while living in a shack with no electricity. When the couple separated in 1964, Virginia Pugh was pregnant with her third daughter. Soon after birth, the baby contracted spinal meningitis, leaving Pugh with $6,000 in medical bills. Desperate to earn a decent living, Pugh moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where she worked as a beautician. At the same time, she harbored a grander ambition—to become a country singer. Pugh’s first step was winning a regular spot on The Country Boy Eddie Show, a local television program.  With the host’s encouragement, Pugh moved her family to Nashville, Tennessee, to further her career.

Pugh went door to door, visiting every record company lining the city’s Music Row, but no one seemed impressed by her. After a battery of rejections, she met Billy Sherrill at Epic Records. The oung producer had been looking for a female soloist, then an oddity in country music. Sherrill signed Pugh to Epic and christened her “Tammy Wynette,” taking her first name from the popular film Tammy (1965) starring Debbie Reynolds. In 1966, Wynette’s recording of the Johnny Paycheck song “Apartment No. 9” became her first hit. It was followed by a string of successful singles, including “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” and “I Don’t Want to Play House,” for which she won a Grammy Award in 1967. She received her second Grammy two years later for “Stand by Your Man,” which, sold more than 6 million copies and became her signature song. The song drew criticism from feminists, who interpreted its lyrics as encouraging women to accept any type of treatment from their spouses, including physical abuse. Wynette was deeply offended by the suggestion, maintaining “the song doesn’t say anything at all about being a doormat.” In fact, Wynette had her own difficulties standing by her man. In 1965, the year she divorced her first husband, she met Don Chapel, whom she married two years later. As her star rose, Wynette developed a close friendship with her childhood idol, country star George Jones. After Wynette’s marriage to Chapel was annulled, she and Jones married in 1969.

The couple worked together on a series of recordings, including the classic duets “We’re Going to Hold On” and “Near You.” Many of their collaborations seemed to chronicle their own stormy romance, also a favorite subject of tabloids and music industry gossip. As Wynette later assessed, “I was naggin’ and he was nippin’,” referring to Jones’s addiction to alcohol and cocaine. Wynette and Jones divorced in 1975, though they continued to record together for several more years. After a 44-day marriage to realtor Michael Tomlin and a brief affair with actor Burt Reynolds, Wynette finally settled down with George Richley, a singer-songwriter who became her manager. Married in 1978, the couple remained together until Wynette’s death. Beginning in the late 1970s, Wynette suffered a string of personal setbacks. In 1975, much of her house was destroyed by a fire. Three years later, she was kidnapped at a Nashville shopping mall and severely beaten. Her captor was never arrested. Wynette also found herself bankrupt in 1988 after investing her money in several unsuccessful real estate ventures in Florida.

Worst of all, Wynette suffered from serious health problems. Chronic infiammation of her bile ducts led to 17 operations. In constant pain, Wynette began abusing prescription painkillers. She eventually had to enter the Betty Ford Clinic in Washington, D.C., for treatment for her addiction. Despite her ailments, Wynette continued to perform and record. In addition to recording duets with rock artists such as Sting and Elton John, she had a surprise international dance hit in 1992 with “Justified and Ancient,” which she performed with the British synth-pop band KLF. The next year, Wynette joined fellow country legends  LORETTA LYNN and DOLLY PARTON on the successful album Honky Tonk Angels. She also reunited with Jones on the album One in 1995. To the shock of her fans, Tammy Wynette died in her sleep on April 6, 1998, at the age of 55. A blood clot that reached her lungs was given as the cause of death, but three of her daughters in a lawsuit alleged that painkillers contributed to her demise. Just five months after her death, Wynette was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Further Reading
Daly, Jackie, with Tom Carter. Tammy Wynette: A Daughter
Recalls Her Mother’s Tragic Life and Death. New York: Putnam, 2000.
Wynette, Tammy, with Joan Dew. Stand By Your Man. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
Honky Tonk Angels. Sony/Columbia, CD, 1993.
Tammy Wynette in Concert (1986). Rhino, VHS, 1995.
Tears of Fire: The 25th Anniversary Collection. Sony/Columbia, CD set, 1992.

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ANNA MAY WONG

WONG, ANNA MAY (1907–1961) Actress

Most often cast as an “Oriental villainess,” Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong was born in Los Angeles’s Chinatown on January 3, 1907. Her parents ran a laundry where Anna May worked after school, though she much preferred spending her time at early movie theaters known as nickelodeons. Unbeknownst to her conservative parents, at 12 she first appeared as a film extra in The Red Lantern (1914). She continued her work in secret for two more years. She finally confessed about her new career to her father when she obtained her first real role in Bits of Life (1921). Wong’s high cheekbones and straight black bangs made her a striking presence on screen. But it was not until she compellingly played a Mongol slave girl in the 1924 extravaganza The Thief of Bagdad that she earned international fame. In the late 1920s, she was widely sought for roles in mystery films, many of which were then set in urban Chinatown districts. Although appreciating the work, Wong resented that these films generally presented Asians only as villains, employing the crudest of stereotypes.

By 1928, she was so disgusted by the roles she was offered that she abandoned Hollywood for Europe. As Wong later told a London interviewer, “Why should [Asian characters] always scheme, rob, killfi I got so weary of it all.” In Europe, she found more satisfying parts in the German film Song (1928) and the English movie  Piccadilly (1930). Wong also made her stage debut opposite Laurence Olivier in  The Circle of Chalk, a play based on a Chinese legend that was written specifically for Wong. As talkies replaced silents, Wong also learned to speak French and German fiuently in order to keep her film career alive. Wong’s return to the United States in late 1930 ushered in the height of her film career. Although she had no problem finding film roles, the negative portrayals of Asian women continued to disturb her. Her greatest disappointment came with the casting of the film adaptation of Pearl Buck’s novel The Good Earth (1937). Wong lobbied hard for the lead role as the selfiess, stoic O-Lan. The part, however, was given to Luise Rainer, a German actress who won an Academy Award for her performance. Instead of the lead, Wong was offered the part of a scheming concubine. Insulted, she refused to appear in the film at all.

With the Good Earth fiasco fresh in her mind, Wong happily left the United States to visit China for the first time. Half hoping she could restart her career there, she was surprised to find herself vilified by Chinese officials for the stereotyped Chinese characters she had played. When she explained these were the only parts available to her, she was able to fend off further criticisms. Yet, disheartened by the experience, Wong returned home after 10 months. In Hollywood, she resumed her movie career, most notably playing a high-minded detective in the action film Daughter of Shanghai (1937). As the United States entered World War II, however, she found herself less in demand as an actress than as a consultant. As war movies came in vogue, producers were eager to hire her to teach Caucasian actors to act more convincingly Asian. Disgusted by this new indignity, Wong largely retired from film work. She only appeared in one more film and a few undistinguished television programs before her death of a heart attack on February 3, 1961.

Further Reading
“Anna May Wong.” In Notable Asian Americans. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995.
Gee, Emma. “Wong, Anna May.” In  Notable American Women: The Modern Period, 744–745. Edited by Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1980.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
Shanghai Express (1932). Universal, VHS, 1993.
The Thief of Bagdad (1924). Image Entertainment, DVD, 1998.

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OPRAH WINFREY

WINFREY ,OPRAH  (Orpah Winfrey) (1954– ) Talk Show Host, Actress

The phenomenal success of Oprah Winfrey’s daytime talk show has made her the wealthiest and most powerful woman in the American entertainment industry. Born on January 29, 1954, she was raised in rural poverty in Kosciusko, Mississippi, on a pig farm owned by her maternal grandparents. Her parents never married. She was originally given the name Orpah from the biblical Book of Ruth, but when it proved to difficult to pronounce, her relatives rechristened her Oprah. Oprah’s grandmother taught her to read when she was only two and a half. By the time she was ready to enter kindergarten, she was literate enough to write a note convincing her teacher that she belonged in first grade. Despite her academic promise, Oprah’s early childhood was otherwise grim. She later commented that “it was very lonely out in the country” and that her grandmother “could beat me for days and never get tired.”Oprah found little relief when at six she was sent to live with her mother, Vernita, at a rooming house in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Vernita worked as a housecleaner and was rarely at home. Eager for her attention, Oprah became rebellious, especially after she was sexually abused by a teenage cousin when she was nine. Vernita had so little control over her daughter that she considered placing her in a detention center. Instead, she sent Oprah to live with her father, Vernon, in Nashville, Tennessee, when she was 14. Soon after arriving, Oprah confessed that she was pregnant, a condition she had managed to hide for seven months. She gave birth prematurely, and the baby died two weeks later.

A successful business owner and city councilman, Vernon imposed strict discipline on Oprah, which she later credited with putting her on the right path in life. She was inspired to meet his high expectations of her, particularly in her school work. Oprah became an excellent student and an enthusiastic member of her high school’s drama and debate clubs. Her love of reading was also nurtured by her stepmother, Zelma. She took Oprah to the library every two weeks to pick out five books. Oprah was then expected to read them and write a report on each for her parents. While still a teenager, Oprah began her broadcasting career. After being named Miss Fire Prevention, she impressed the management of WVOL radio with her poise and speaking ability. The station hired her as a part-time newscaster in 1971. The same year, while attending Tennessee State University, she won the titles Miss Black Nashville and Miss Black Tennessee. The exposure led to her first television job. At 19, she was hired as a news reporter and anchor for WTVF, Nashville’s CBS affiliate. Before graduating from college, Winfrey was lured to Baltimore, where she anchored the news at WJZ-TV. Her frequent on-air mispronunciations led to her firing, although the station gave her a second chance as the cohost of a morning talk show, People Are Talking. Winfrey has said that “the day I did that talk show, I felt like I’d come home.” The audience embraced Winfrey with equal enthusiasm. Although she brought the show excellent ratings, the station continually criticized her appearance, particularly her weight. In their efforts to mold Winfrey’s image, the management sent her to a New York City hair salon, where a botched permanent left her bald. The experience made her vow never to listen to image consultants again.

In 1984, Winfrey took a new job as the host of AM Chicago (soon retitled  The Oprah Winfrey Show), which was then last in the ratings. Within four months, the show was leading in its time slot, besting even the show hosted by talk show pioneer Phil Donahue. One of her fans was composer Quincy Jones—a producer of the film adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple (1985). He invited Winfrey to audition for the role of Sofia, a powerful African-American woman whose spirit is broken by prejudice. Her acting debut earned her an Academy Award nomination. In 1986, The Oprah Winfrey Show was syndicated nationally. Within five months, it became the number-one talk show, drawing more than 10 million viewers a day. Its success owed much to Winfrey’s quick wit and empathy. As guests confessed their personal problems, Winfrey often held their hands and cried as they cried. She, too, made confessions. In 1991, on an episode about child abuse, Winfrey discussed the abuse she had suffered at the hands of male relatives. Her audience also became involved in her continual struggle with her weight. In 1988, thousands of viewers went on the liquid diet that allowed her to lose 67 pounds. After regaining the weight, she again inspired her audience to exercise as she advocated a responsible diet and physical activity as the keys to weight control. Of equal fascination to her fans has been Oprah’s romantic life. Since 1993, she has been engaged to Chicago businessman Steadman Graham. Her hesitancy to marry has fueled speculations that she is gay. I 1997, she answered the rumors with a public statement declaring that she is heterosexual. As Winfrey’s infiuence grew, so did her fortune. With her show owned by her own corporationHarpo Productions (Oprah spelled backward), Winfrey was earning about $80 million a year by 1990. Her personal worth is estimated at more than $725 million.

Her finances secure, Winfrey began producing movies dealing with subjects of importance to her. In 1989, she produced and starred in the television film The Women of Brewster Place, a drama based on the 1982 novel by Gloria Naylor about seven African-American women living in a tenement. The movie spawned a short-lived television series, in which Winfrey also appeared. Harpo has also produced  There Are No Children Here (1993), Beloved (1998), and Tuesdays with Morrie (1999). On September 17, 1996, Winfrey announced on her show that she wanted “to get the country reading.” She introduced viewers to Oprah’s Book Club, a monthly feature during which an entire show would be devoted to discussing a book of Winfrey’s choosing. Within a month after making her first selection, Deep End of the Ocean (1996), more than 750,000 copies of the novel were in print. Oprah’s Book Club has since made bestsellers of dozens of titles and made Winfrey herself the most powerful book marketer in the United States.

After the 1997 death of Princess Diana, Winfrey reevaluated her life and career. As a result, she recast her show, calling it “change-your-life TV.”By emphasizing self-help and advice, she tried to make the program “a catalyst for people beginning to think more insightfully about themselves.” Among the show’s new features was Oprah’s Angel Network, a campaign for donations of spare change for college scholarships. In 1998, the charity collected more than $1 million from viewers, which Winfrey matched penny for penny. She has also made substantial donations to Morehouse College, the United Negro College Fund, and many other charities.

In anticipation of ending her talk show in 2002, Winfrey, in partnership with television executives Marcy Carsey and Geraldine Lay bourne, formed Oxygen Media to create a female-oriented cable channel. In association with Hearst magazines, she also launched O, The Oprah Magazine, in April 2000. Targeted to women in their 30s, the glossy magazine features articles on family, health, spirituality, and books. The first issue was so successful that Hearst had to go back to press for 500,000 copies after the initial run of 1 million quickly sold out. Attesting to Winfrey’s unending ability to attract an audience, Winfrey herself appears on the cover of each issue.

Further Reading
Mair, George. Oprah Winfrey: The Real Story. Revised edition. Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing Group, 1998.
Pasternak, Judith Mahoney.  Oprah. New York: Metro Books, 1999.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
Beloved (1998). Buena Vista Home Entertainment, DVD, 1999.
The Color Purple (1985). Warner Home Video, DVD/VHS, 1997/1999.
The Women of Brewster Place (1989). Xenon, DVD/VHS, 2000/1998.

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MAE WEST

WEST, MAE (1893–1980) Actress, Singer

Clever and sultry, Mae West conquered both stage and screen, becoming America’s favorite “sex goddess” of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in Brooklyn, New York, on August 17, 1893, West was the daughter of a former prizefighter and a model. Her mother encouraged her to enter amateur talent contests. Billed as “Baby Mae,” she won her first contest at age eight with a song-and-dance act. Mae was soon in demand for child parts in stage shows. Almost immediately, she began rewriting her roles to better suit her talents, a habit she would practice throughout her performing career. By her teens, Mae was finding work in traveling shows. She briefiy teamed up with Frank Wallace, whom she married in a secret ceremony in 1911. They soon separated, and they divorced in 1942. At 18, West began appearing in musical revues in New York City. She also found success on the vaudeville circuit. Unlike most women in vaudeville, she usually performed as a solo act. Often dressed in satin and fur, she developed a sensual swagger while perfecting her comic gifts. West quickly emerged as a master of the double entendre. Even when she spoke a seemingly innocent line, her audience interpreted it as risqué. As West herself explained, “It wasn’t what I said, but how I said it.”

Disappointed with the roles she was offered, West decided to write her own. After penning three unproduced plays, she finally decided to produce her fourth herself. The play was provocatively titled Sex (1926) as a conscious bid for publicity. Broad sheet newspapers refused to run ads for the play, but the tabloids were plastered with stories about West and her production. She also sent boys all over New York with stickers featuring the play’s title. West later wrote, “If you stopped for a minute when one walked by, why you got a sticker stuck clean across your back, with SEX printed on it.”The play was an enormous success. West starred as Margy Lamont, a former prostitute with a heart of gold. Far from ashamed of her past, Lamont is unrepentant over how she earned the money to pay for her mansion. She jeers at a snobbish socialite, “The only difference between us is that you could afford to give it away.”Despite its racy subject matter, the play ran without incident for 41 weeks, in part because New York’s major was an admitted West fan. While the mayor was out of town, however, the vice mayor ordered a raid on the production. Sex was shut down, and West was arrested. In court, the city failed to prove that the play’s text was obscene. West, though, was found guilty of “corrupting the morals of youth.” Although she was fully clothed, her navel was said to move in an obscene manner during one of her dances. West was sentenced to 10 days in prison, though she was let out after eight for good behavior. She complained about the scratchy prison underwear but gleefully told the press that her jail experience had given her enough material for a dozen more plays. West’s next work, The Drag (1927), was among her most provocative. A comedic plea for tolerance of male homosexuality, it featured a great ball attended by drag queens. The play was produced in Paterson, New Jersey, but was deemed too controversial for Broadway. The next year saw the play that would make her a legend, Diamond Lil (1928). Set in New York’s Bowery, the play featured West as a singer hobnobbing with a variety of underworld figures. Showing an unerring instinct for how best to present herself on stage, West set Diamond Lil in the 1890s. Her full figure was too plump to dress in the slim, linear fiapper style that defined 1920s sexuality. Her physique was ideal, however, for the low-cut, corseted look of Gay Nineties fashions.

The play also showcased West’s own style of humor to its best advantage. As a critic in The New Republic wrote, “it uses every tried and trusted trick, hokum, motive and stage expectation, but always shrewdly.” However old-fashioned the plot, the play offered West plenty of wisecracks. Her favorite targets were sexual repression, hypocrisy, and romantic ideals. To West’s Diamond Lil, sex was nothing but a pleasure to be enjoyed, and the only person a woman could depend on was herself. After a raid shut down her next play, The Pleasure Man (1928), West went on tour with Diamond Lil. In 1932, she welcomed the chance to take on Hollywood, when her friend George Raft got her a small part as his girlfriend in Night After Night. West sparkled in her role, ad-libbing what became one of her most famous lines. After a coatchecker admires her jewelry with “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds,” West replied, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.” The line became the title of her 1959 autobiography.

Excited by its new star, Paramount Studios decided her next film would be an adaptation of Diamond Lil. The studio suggested calling it He Done Her Wrong, but West, offended by the passivity that title implied, insisted it be titled She Done Him Wrong. She also got her way in the selection of her costar—Cary Grant, a handsome actor 10 years her junior whom she spotted on the lot. The film broke box-office records, as did West’s next movie, I’m No Angel, which teamed her again with Grant. These two films brought Grant to stardom, saved Paramount from bankruptcy, and made West the most powerful woman in Hollywood. They also inspired Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America to inaugurate a strict code of what could and could not been seen and heard on screen. West made seven more films during the 1930s and 1940s, but the strict rules of the production code increasingly reined in her risqué humor. She also wore out her welcome with audiences by playing over and over again variations on her Diamond Lil character. By the late 1930s, West had fallen so out of favor that she was considered box-office poison. She had a modest success with My Little Chickadee (1940), costarring W. C. Fields, but by 1943 she was forced to retire from films.

West returned to the stage, first with a misguided new play titled Catherine Was Great (1944), then with a touring revival of Diamond Lil. During the late 1950s, West, now in her 60s, developed a musical comedy revue, in which she shared the stage with a troupe of male bodybuilders. One of her troupe, Paul Novak, became West’s companion for the last 25 years of her life. West’s brand of sexual humor found a new, young audience in the 1960s and 1970s. She tried to capitalize on the renewed interest in her movies by recording three record albums and appearing in two widely reviled films,  Myra Breckinridge (1970) and  Sextette (1978). At 87, West suffered a stroke. She died three months later, on November 22, 1980. West’s Diamond Lil has since emerged as iconic a film character as Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp. Those who have never seen her movies are still familiar with her face, her voice, and her sashay. Even better known are West’s bons mots—from “Come up sometime and see me” to “Peel me a grape”—making her perhaps the most quoted movie star of all time.

Further Reading
Curry, Ramona. Too Much of a Good Thing: Mae West as Cultural Icon. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Leider, Emily Wortis. Becoming Mae West. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997.
West, Mae. Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It. Revised edition. New York: Macfadden-Bartell, 1970.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
I’m No Angel (1933). Universal, VHS, 1993.
My Little Chickadee (1940). Universal, VHS, 1993.
She Done Him Wrong (1933). Universal, VHS, 1993.
Sextette (1979). Rhino, DVD/VHS, 2000/1997.

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ETHEL WATERS

WATERS, ETHEL (1896–1977) Singer, Actress

“Ethel Waters was the mother of us all,” said LENA HORNE about Waters’s infiuence as an interpreter of the American popular song. Born in Chester, Pennsylvania, on October 31, 1896, Waters was the result of the rape of her 12-year-old mother, who never fully recovered from the trauma. Unable to accept Ethel as her child, she sent the girl to live with her own mother. Though strong and devout, Ethel’s grandmother, a live-in maid, had little time to instill her values in her granddaughter. Left largely on her own, Ethel essentially had to raise herself, becoming a leader in street gangs in her poor neighborhood. Her only experience with close adult supervision was two years spent in a Catholic school. The kindness of the nuns there made her a dedicated Christian throughout her life.

After a brief marriage when she was 13, Waters left school and began working as a hotel chambermaid. At night, she frequented black theaters and nightclubs, perfecting her skill at mimicking popular performers. Soon she began performing as a singer herself with the African-American vaudeville circuit around Baltimore. Billed as “Sweet Mama Stringbean” because of her tall, lanky frame, Waters became the first woman to sing W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues,” a song that later became associated with BESSIE SMITH. In 1921 Waters began making recordings, and in the next year she became one of the first African-Americans to sing on the radio. Her early hits included “Down Home Blues,” “Dinah,” and “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Eventually recording more than 250 songs, Waters would be honored by the Popular Song Association in 1933 for introducing 50 hit songs to the American public.

Water’s singing style was clear and natural, though her soft voice did not have the power of many of her contemporaries’. Her singing, however, was distinguished by her tendency to dramatize the lyrics. She once wrote that “A song is a story—that’s how it is to me—and I sing it so it tells the story.”Throughout the 1920s, Waters performed in African-American clubs, but gradually also moved into the lucrative white vaudeville circuit. After appearing in the revue Africana (1927), she made it to Broadway in the all-black musicals Blackbirds of 1930 and Rhapsody in Black (1931–32). Waters also broke into movies with her first feature, On with the Show (1929). The first full-color talkie, it featured Waters singing “Am I Blue,” which became one of her many hit records. A year earlier, she had married Clyde Edward Matthews; the couple was divorced in 1934.

In 1933, Waters became the highest-paid performer ever to play New York City’s famed Cotton Club. There, she was seen by composer Irving Berlin, who invited her to join his Broadway show As Thousands Cheer (1933). Her gift for impersonation was well-used in a song Berlin wrote especially for her, “Thief in the Night,” which parodied the international sensation  JOSEPHINE BAKER. Waters also delivered a dramatic rendition of “Supper Time,” a dirgelike song that told of a black mother’s sorrow over her husband’s lynching. The only African American in an otherwise white cast, Waters challenged racial barriers when the show toured the segregated South. After the success of As Thousands Cheer (1933), Waters appeared in another musical,  At Home Abroad (1935), but longed to star in a drama. She appeared as a band vocalist for years, waiting for funding to come through for Mamba ’s Daughter, a play about an African-American family. In 1938 Water finally got her chance to play the hardworking, long-suffering grandmother in the piece, thereby becoming the first black actress to perform the lead role in a Broadway drama. Although the critical reception was mixed, audiences loved the play. On opening night, Waters received 17 curtain calls.

Thrilled with her acceptance as a dramatic actress, Waters denounced singing and looked for more plays to showcase her newly discovered talents. She found, however, that there were few roles in straight plays for African Americans. She instead settled for a part in  Cabin in the Sky (1940), an all-black musical inspired by AfricanAmerican folklore. Waters, however, insisted that her character be rewritten, making her into a respectable, pious woman instead of the passive victim of her husband’s philanderings. The successful show became an equally successful film in 1943. Playing opposite such accomplished performers as Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne, Waters created one of the movie’s most memorable moments in her performance of “Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe,” a song written for her for the film adaptation.

In the late 1940s, Waters again had trouble finding dramatic work, but also discovered that, middleaged and overweight, she was no longer in demand as a club singer. After several lean years, she made a comeback in the film  Pinky (1949), in which she played the grandmother of a young African-American woman trying to pass as white. Her performance in the controversial film earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. With her renewed acclaim as a dramatic actress, Waters returned to the theater in Carson McCullers’s play The Member of the Wedding. She had earlier turned down the part of Berenice, the wise housekeeper and caretaker of Frankie, a sensitive 12-year-old white girl. She took on the role only when McCullers agreed to rewrite the part, emphasizing Berenice’s religious piety. Waters also insisted that she sing during the play “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” a song she remembered from her youth. (She later used its title for her 1951 bestselling autobiography.) In part because of Waters’s changes, Berenice avoided the stereotypes associated with African-American “mammies,” instead becoming a full character that, in the words of poet Langston Hughes, was “one of both dignity and gentleness.”

In 1950 Waters became the first black performer to star in a television series, playing the title role in  Beulah. Though the series was popular, some African Americans denounced her for playing a maid. The criticism offended Waters, who took it as an insult to her own grandmother. Waters herself was disenchanted with the television industry and left the show after only a year. Once again, Waters had difficulty finding work, though she frequently appeared in revivals of Wedding. Weary of the entertainment industry, she took her career in a new direction after attending a crusade held by Baptist evangelist Billy Graham in 1957. She soon joined Graham’s touring group, first as a member of the choir and later as a soloist. Waters continued to appear with Graham until 1976, when a host of health problems made it impossible for her to perform. She died the next year on September 1 at the age of 79. Waters is remembered for her trailblazing work as both a singer and an actress. In music, she helped bridge the sounds of blues, jazz, and pop. On the stage and in films, she showed that African-American actors could attract audiences to serious drama.

Further Reading
Waters, Ethel, with Charles Samuels. His Eye Is on the Spar-
row. 1951. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1992.
———. To Me It’s Wonderful. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
Cabin in the Sky (1943). Warner Home Video, VHS, 1999.
An Introduction to Ethel Waters: Her Best Recordings 1921–1940. Best of Jazz, CD, 1996.
Member of the Wedding (1953). Columbia/Tristar VHS, 1988.
Pinky (1949). Twentieth Century-Fox, VHS, 1994.

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DINAH WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON, DINAH (Ruth Lee Jones) (1924–1962) Singer, Musician

Known as the “Queen of the Blues,” Dinah Washington was the dominant female singer of rhythm and blues during the 1950s. She was born Ruth Lee Jones in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in August 1924 (her exact birth date is debated). When she was three, her family moved to Chicago. Ruth received her first musical instruction at home, learning to sing and play the piano from her mother. By her teens, she was a well-known gospel singer at the St. Luke’s Baptist Church.

After winning a talent contest, Jones started performing in local clubs. In 1940, she returned to religious music when gospel singer Sallie Martin hired her as her pianist. Two years later, Jones went back to the nightclub circuit, playing piano at the Three Deuces, a Chicago jazz club where her idol BILLIE HOLIDAY was performing. Soon, Jones herself was singing in the back room. There, she was spotted by bandleader Lionel Hampton, who hired her as his vocalist. Hampton later claimed that he gave Jones the stage name Dinah Washington.

While singing with Hampton’s band, Washington began recording blues songs. In 1943, her “Evil Gal Blues” and “Salty Papa Blues” were hits with African-American audiences. Two years later, “Blowtop Blues”—the only song she recorded with Hampton—made her a star of rhythm and blues. After going solo in 1945, Washington was signed by Mercury Records, which would remain her label for 15 years. While a Mercury artist, she recorded more than 400 songs for the burgeoning urban blues market. With records such as “Long John Blues” (1947) and “Trouble in Mind” (1952), she was considered by many to be the successor of blues great BESSIE SMITH. Washington, however, prided herself on being able to sing in any genre. She had great success with covers of Broadway show tunes and even had a country hit with a cover of Hank Williams’s “Cold, Cold Heart” (1952).

Washington also developed a reputation as a jazz artist. On songs such as “Lover, Come Back to Me,” she had a fruitful collaboration with pianist Wynton Kelly, which some compared to the working relationship between Holiday and Lester Young. Washington frequently performed at jazz clubs and festivals. Her triumphant appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 was recorded in the concert film  Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959). Washington also played the Palladium in London. With Elizabeth II in the audience, the Queen of the Blues announced, “There is but one heaven, one hell, and one queen, and your Elizabeth is an impostor.”

For most of her recording career, Washington’s music was sold nearly exclusively to African Americans. In 1959, however, she broke into the larger mainstream market with “What a Diff ’rence a Day Makes.” In addition to hitting the top 10 on the R&B charts, the record won a Grammy Award. The next year, Washington had three crossover hits. With fellow Mercury artist Brook Benton, she sang the duets “Baby, You’ve Got What it Takes” and “A Rockin’ Good Way,” while on her own she had a number-one hit with the mournful love song, “This Bitter Earth.” On- and offstage, she had a flair for the flamboyant. She loved tight dresses and mink coats and enjoyed shocking people with her rough language. Washington had at least eight husbands and two sons. Late in her career, Washington became sensitive about her weight. Newly married to Detroit Lions football player Dick “Night Train” Lane, she went on a crash diet with fatal results. On December 14, 1963, Lane found Washington’s body in their Detroit home. Only 39, Washington had died from an accidental overdose of alcohol, sedatives, and diet pills.

Further Reading
Barbera, André. “Washington, Dinah.” In  American National Biography, edited by John Arthur Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, vol. 22, pp. 757–758. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Haskins, James. Queen of the Blues: A Biography of Dinah Washington. New York: William Morrow, 1987.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
The Essential Dinah Washington: The Great Songs. Mercury, CD, 1992.
First Issue: The Dinah Washington Story. Polygram, CD set, 1993.
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1958). New Yorker Films, DVD/VHS, 2000.

READ MORE - DINAH WASHINGTON

DIONNE WARWICK

WARWICK, DIONNE  (Marie Dionne Warrick, Dionne Warwicke) (1940– ) Singer

One of the first African-American recording artists to cater to a mainstream audience, Dionne Warwick is best known for her collaborations with songwriting team Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Born Marie Dionne Warrick in East Orange, New Jersey, on December 12, 1940, she began her career as an occasional fill-in singer for the Drinkard Singers, a gospel group managed by her mother, Lee. As a teenager, she formed her own group, the Gospelaires, with her sister Dee Dee and two cousins. On a scholarship, Warrick attended the University of Hartford in hopes of becoming a music teacher.

While at college, she worked as a backup singer. Working with the Drifters on their song “Mexican Divorce,” she was introduced to the then unknown songwriter Burt Bacharach. He was immediately struck by her talent and her presence. As Bacharach later remembered, “Just the way she carries herself, the way she works, her fiow and feeling for the music—it was there when I first met her.” Bacharach and his writing partner, lyricist Hal David, recruited Warrick to sing on a demo recording of several of their songs. The demo won her a contract with Spector Records. In 1962, she had her first hit with “Don’ t Make Me Over,” a song penned by Bacharach and David. Her name was printed as “Warwick” on the label, so Warrick adopted the misspelling as her new stage name. Through the 1960s, Warwick’s collaboration with Bacharach and David yielded dozens of top 10 hits. Among their charting songs were “Walk on By” (1964), “I Say a Little Prayer,” (1968), and “Alfie.” Warwick’ s recordings of “Do You Know the Way to San Josefi” (1968) and “I’ll Never Fall in Love” (1970) also won Grammy Awards. Critics and the public agreed that Warwick’s polished and controlled voice made her the perfect interpreter of Bacharach David’s sophisticated pop songs.

In 1972, the team of Bacharach and David broke up, with acrimony on both sides. Warwick, who learned about split from a newspaper article, later described the news as “devastating.” Under contract with Warner Brothers to deliver an album of Bacharach-David songs, Warwick took her former friends to court for breach of contract. At the same time, she was being sued for alimony by her husband Billy Elliott, whom she had married in 1965. The couple had two sons, David and Damon, before divorcing. Creatively, the 1970s were difficult for Warwick. Although she toured constantly, she had only one hit, “Then Came You,” a collaboration with the Spinners. On the advice of an astrologer and numerologist, she briefiy added an e to the end of her last name, but the new billing did little to change her luck.

In 1979, Warwick finally received a career boost when she signed with Arista Records, which later became the label of her cousin, singer WHITNEY HOUSTON. Arista paired her with singer Barry Manilow as her producer. The resulting album, Dionne (1979), produced two Grammy-winning hits, “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” and “Deja Vu.” Warwick had less success as the host of Solid Gold, a television countdown of the music charts. Hired in July 1980, she was fired in less a year. Officially, the producers maintained they wanted a younger host, but rumors spread that Warwick had been deemed too difficult to work with. Warwick had another hit album with Heartbreaker (1982), produced by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees. But for the rest of the decade, she did her best work for charitable causes. In 1984, she sang with the all-star group USA for Africa on “We Are the World,” whose proceeds were donated to African famine relief. Two years later, Warwick brought together Stevie Wonder, Gladys Knight, and Elton John to sing “That’s What Friends Are For.” Going to number one on the charts, the song earned $2 million for AIDS research. It also marked her public reconciliation with Burt Bacharach, who wrote the song with his wife, Carole Bayer Sager.

In the 1990s, Warwick became the spokeswoman for the Psychic Friends Network, a telephone psychic service advertised on a highly successful infomercial. She also continued to record, making some of the most adventurous albums of her career. Among them were Aquarela do Brasil (1994), a collection of Brazilian music, and Friends Can Be Lovers (1993), which included duets with Houston, Luther Vandross, and Lisa Stansfield. A revival of interest in her classic records of the 1960s inspired her to make Dionne on Dionne (1998). With her sons as backup singers, Warwick reinterpreted her earlier work on the album, which included a hip-hop version of “What the World Needs Now” and a salsa-fiavored remake of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose ?”

Album discography

Year    Album Title
1963    Presenting Dionne Warwick
1963    Anyone Who Had a Heart
1964    Make Way for Dionne Warwick
1965    The Sensitive Sound of Dionne Warwick
1966    Here I Am
1966    Dionne Warwick in Paris
1967    Here Where There is Love
1967    On Stage and in the Movies
1967    The Windows of the World
1968    Dionne Warwick in Valley of the Dolls
1968    The Magic of Believing
1969    Dionne Warwick's Greatest Motion Picture Hits
1969    Promises, Promises
1969    Soulful
1970    I'll Never Fall in Love Again
1970    Very Dionne
1971    The Dionne Warwicke Story: Live
1972    Dionne (1972 Album)
1972    From Within
1973    Just Being Myself
1975    Then Came You
1975    Track of the Cat
1977    A Man and a Woman (w/ Isaac Hayes)
1977    Only Love Can Break a Heart
1977    Love at First Sight
1979    Dionne (1979 Album)
1980    No Night So Long
1981    Hot! Live and Otherwise
1982    Friends In Love
1982    Heartbreaker
1983    How Many Times Can We Say Goodbye
1985    Finder of Lost Loves
1985    Friends
1987    Reservations for Two
1990    Dionne Warwick Sings Cole Porter
1993    Friends Can Be Lovers
1994    Celebration in Vienna ^
1994    Aquarela Do Brazil
1998    Dionne Sings Dionne
2000    Dionne Sings Dionne Vol. 2
2004    My Favorite Time of the Year
2006    My Friends & Me
2008    Why We Sing

Further Reading
“Dionne Warwick.” In  Contemporary Black Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.
Ebert, Alan. “Dionne on Dionne.” Essence. January 1992, pp. 62+.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
Dionne Warwick: Her Classic Songs, Vol. 1. Curb, CD, 1997.
Dionne Warwick: Her Classic Songs, Vol. 2. Curb, CD, 1998.
Dionne Warwick: The Definitive Collection. Arista, CD, 1999.

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GWEN VERDON

VERDON, GWEN (Gwyneth Evelyn Verdon) (1925–2000) Dancer, Actress, Singer, Choreographer

The definitive Broadway dancer of the 20th century, Gwyneth Evelyn Verdon was born on January 13, 1925, in Culver City, California. A childhood case of rickets left her legs deformed. As therapy, her mother, a dancer with RUTH ST. DENIS’s Denishawn troupe, enrolled her in dance classes when she was only two. Gwen studied a wide range of dance styles, including ballet, ballroom dancing, and tap. By age six, she was a professional dancer, often billed as “the fastest little tapper in the world.” With fiaming red hair and alabaster skin, her beauty won her the Miss California title when she was 14. In 1941, Verdon eloped with James Henaghan, a  Hollywood Reporter journalist. After five years, they divorced, and she resumed her dance career. They had one child, James.

Verdon won a spot as an assistant to Jack Cole, a noted Hollywood dance coach. Under his direction, she made her Broadway debut in 1950 in Alive and Kicking, but the musical was a commercial failure. While working with Cole, she became the leading interpreter of his expressive, sometimes erotic dance style. She appeared as a specialty dancer in several films, including On the Riviera (1951) and Mississippi Gambler (1953), in which she choreographed her own movements. She was also hired to teach stars such as MARILYN MONROE and BETTY GRABLE how to move seductively on screen. Eager to get out from under Cole’s thumb, Verdon accepted an invitation from choreographer Michael Kidd to audition for his Broadway show Can-Can. Cast as the second female lead, she stole the show during its tryouts. The show’s jealous lead, the French actress Lilo, insisted Verdon’s role be cut back. Verdon was so annoyed that she announced that she would soon be leaving the production. The night  Can-Can premiered on Broadway, however, Verdon became an instant star. After she performed her first number, she rushed to her dressing room for a costume change. She did not hear the audience chanting her name until a producer brought Verdon, wearing her bathrobe, back onstage for a curtain call. After winning her first Tony for  Can-Can, Verdon became the hottest dancer in musical theater.

Her next show was Damn Yankees, the story of a baseball fan willing to sell his soul to see his favorite team win. Verdon appeared as Lola, the devil’s helper, and performed a memorably seductive dance to the song “Whatever Lola Wants.”The musical ran for more than 1,000 performances and won Verdon a second Tony Award. Verdon also starred in the film adaptation in 1958. Damn Yankees marked the beginning of her collaboration with choreographer Bob Fosse. They worked together on New Girl in Town (1957) and Redhead (1959), for which Verdon was awarded two more Tonys. In 1960, she and Fosse were married. After the birth of their daughter, Nicole, in 1963, Verdon briefiy retired from show business. In 1966, she was lured back to star in Sweet Charity, a musical about a dance-hall girl that was directed and choreographed by her husband. Exhausted by its long run,  Verdon surrendered the lead to Helen Gallagher before the show’s close.

Shirley MacLaine took over the part for the 1969 film version, though Verdon generously coached her for it. In 1971, Verdon and Fosse were legally separated, though they never divorced. They continued their working relationship, most notably in Verdon’s last musical, Chicago (1975). Verdon originated the role of Roxie Hart, a gold digger acquitted of shooting her lover. Audiences considered the show too dark and cynical in its first run, though it was revived to great acclaim in 1996. Her dancing days over, Verdon began taking straight acting roles in the 1980s. She appeared in small parts in several films, among them Cocoon (1985) and Marvin’s Room (1996). Verdon also was a guest on many television series including Magnum, P .I. and Homicide. Her television work won her three Emmy nominations. After Fosse’s death in 1987, Verdon emerged as a guardian of his artistic legacy. In 1999, she collaborated with dancer Ann Reinking—Fosse’s former lover—on the dance revue Fosse, which was awarded a Tony for best musical. The following year, Gwen Verdon died on October 18 at her daughter’s home in Woodstock, New York. That night, the lights of Broadway were dimmed in her memory.

Further Reading
Berkvist, Robert. “Gwen Verdon, Redhead Who High Kicked Her Way to Stardom, Dies at 75.” The New York Times, October 19, 2000, p. 21.
Grubb, Kevin Boyd. Razzle Dazzle: The Life and Work of Bob Fosse. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
Damn Yankees (1958). Warner Home Video, VHS, 1991.

READ MORE - GWEN VERDON

SARAH VAUGHAN

VAUGHAN, SARAH (1924–1990) Singer

Called by Frank Sinatra “one of the finest vocalists in the history of pop music,” Sarah Lois Vaughan was born on March 27, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey. She began taking piano lessons at seven and by her teens had become a church organist. Vaughan dropped out of high school to work as a singer and pianist in local nightclubs. On a dare, Vaughan entered a talent contest at the famed Apollo Theater in New York City in 1942. Performing “Body and Soul,” she won not only first prize but also the attention of singer Billy Eckstine. Eckstine convinced Earl Hines to hire Vaughan as a singer for his big band, which then included bebop innovators Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Two years later, Vaughan quit to join Eckstine’s own band, where she worked with many other jazz greats, such as Miles Davis, Art Blakey, and Dexter Gordon. Vaughan began performing as a solo act in 1945. The same year, she made her first important recording, “Lover Man.” Among her other early hits were “If You Could See Me Now” (1946), “It’s Magic” (1948), and “(I Love the Girl) I Love the Guy” (1950). In 1946, Vaughan married trumpeter George Treadwell, whom she divorced 12 years later. She was subsequently married to and divorced from professional football player Clyde Atkins, estaurateur Marshall Fisher, and trumpeter Waymon Reed. With Atkins, she adopted a daughter, Deborah, who later became an actress working under the name Paris Vaughan.

Vaughan started recording with Mercury Records in 1954. The company encouraged her to sing both pop and jazz, releasing each genre on a different label. Although she generally preferred jazz, she recognized few differences between the two styles. “I just sing,”  Vaughan explained. “I sing whatever I can.” Vaughan also became known for her phenomenal range. She maintained it was two and a half octaves, though her control over her voice allowed her to make it seemed even greater. In performance, especially, she displayed an enormous talent for improvising. Though Vaughan returned to the same standards throughout her career, she took pride in saying she never sang a song the same way twice. For decades, Vaughan toured jazz venues in the United States and Europe backed by a trio of piano, bass, and drums. Beginning in 1954, she also became a fixture the Newport Jazz Festival. Later in her career, Vaughan frequently sang concerts with major city orchestras. Although some critics complained that Vaughan’s sometimes showy vocal technique detracted from her ability to interpret a song, most lavished praise on her voice, which only became richer with time. Her fans included her contemporary  ELLA FITZGERALD, who once claimed that “the greatest singing talent in the world today is Sarah Vaughan.” By the 1980s, Vaughan’s talents were earning her awards and accolades worldwide. In 1981 she won a special Emmy Award for outstanding individual achievement for the television special “Rhapsody and Song: A Tribute to George Gershwin.” Vaughan received her first Grammy Award two years later for best female jazz performance for her album Gershwin Live! Her second Grammy, a special lifetime achievement award, came in 1989.

Widely known by the nickname “The Divine One,” Vaughan spent her final months recording songs for Quincy Jones’s  Back on the Block. The album included “Birdland,” the only recorded duet between Vaughan and Fitzgerald. On April 4, 1990, the jazz world mourned when Vaughan died suddenly of lung cancer at her home in Los Angeles, California.

Discography

    * 1944 Sarah Vaughan and Her All-Stars (Continental Records)
    * 1949 Sarah Vaughan in Hi-Fi
    * 1954 The Divine Sarah Sings
    * 1954 Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown
    * 1955 In the Land of Hi-Fi
    * 1957 At Mister Kelly's
    * 1957 Swingin' Easy
    * 1957 Passing strangers, duet with Billy Eckstine
    * 1957 Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine: Irving Berlin songbook
    * 1957 Sarah Vaughan Sings George Gershwin
    * 1957 Sarah Vaughan Sings Broadway: Great Songs from Hit Shows
    * 1958 No Count Sarah
    * 1959 After Hours at the London House
    * 1959 Vaughan and Violins
    * 1960 Dreamy
    * 1961 The Divine One
    * 1961 The Explosive Side of Sarah Vaughan
    * 1961 Count Basie/Sarah Vaughan
    * 1961 After Hours
    * 1962 You're Mine You
    * 1962 Sarah + 2
    * 1963 Sarah Sings Soulfully
    * 1963 Snowbound
    * 1963 Lonely Hours
    * 1963 We Three (with Joe Williams and Dinah Washington)
    * 1963 The World of Sarah Vaughan
    * 1963 Sweet 'n' Sassy
    * 1963 Star Eyes
    * 1963 Sarah Slightly Classical
    * 1963 Sassy Swings the Tivoli
    * 1963 Vaughan With Voices
    * 1964 Pop Artistry
    * 1964 Sweet 'N' Sassy
    * 1964 The Lonely Hours
    * 1965 !Viva! Vaughan
    * 1965 Sarah Vaughan Sings the Mancini Songbook
    * 1966 The New Scene
    * 1967 Sassy Swings Again
    * 1967 It's A Man's World
    * 1971 A Time in My Life
    * 1972 With Michel Legrand
    * 1972 Feelin' Good
    * 1973 Live in Japan
    * 1974 Send in the Clowns
    * 1977 I Love Brazil
    * 1977 Ronnie Scott's Presents Sarah Vaughan Live
    * 1978 How Long Has This Been Going On?
    * 1979 The Duke Ellington Songbook, Vol. 1
    * 1979 The Duke Ellington Songbook, Vol. 2
    * 1979 Copacabana
    * 1981 Songs of the Beatles
    * 1981 Send in the Clowns
    * 1982 Crazy and Mixed Up
    * 1982 Gershwin Live!
    * 1984 The Mystery of Man (aka Let It Live, Sarah Vaughan Sings the Poetry of Pope John Paul II)
    * 1986 South Pacific (A studio cast recording with Kiri Te Kanawa, Mandy Patinkin, and José Carreras)
    * 1987 Brazilian Romance
    * 1989 Back On The Block
    * 2009 Everything I Have Is Yours, back in print, featuring 1945-47 session recordings via Shout! Factory

Further Reading
Brown, Denis.  Sarah  Vaughn: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood, 1991.
Gourse, Leslie. Sassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
The Essential Sarah Vaughan. Mercury, CD, 1992.
Sarah Vaughan: The Divine One (1993). BMG  Video, VHS, 1993.
Sarah Vaughan: Jazz Profile. EMD/Blue Note, CD, 1998.

READ MORE - SARAH VAUGHAN

SOPHIE TUCKER

TUCKER, SOPHIE  (Sophie Abuza) (1884–1966) Singer

For more than 60 years, Sophie  Tucker was a dynamic live performer whose bold and sometimes racy singing style won her the title “Last of the Red Hot Mamas.” On January 13, 1884, she was born Sophie Abuza in Russia. Her parents soon immigrated to the United States, first to Boston, then to Hartford, Connecticut, where they opened a restaurant. Sophie, hating working in the family business, was drawn to the performers from a local vaudeville theater who frequented her parents’ establishment. As a girl, she often sang for their entertainment in exchange for a little pocket change. She decided show business was a much better way to earn a living than cooking meals and washing dishes. In 1903 she married Louis Tuck and had a son, Albert. Though she later affectionately referred to Tuck as “a card and a wonderful dancer,” she was disappointed by his inability to provide for the family. She soon left Albert with her family and took off for New York, hoping to carve out her own career as a singer.  Calling herself Sophie Tucker, she found work in cafes, beer halls, and movie houses, often singing as many as 100 songs a night. Moving into burlesque, she was initially forced to work in blackface, because theater managers, believing she was unattractive, wanted to hide her features. But when her luggage failed to arrive at one venue, she had to go on stage without makeup. She was such a hit with the audience that night tat she refused to ever perform in blackface again.

In 1909, Tucker had become so successful that she was hired for the prestigious Ziegfeld Follies. She was quickly dismissed, however, when other female stars felt threatened by her show-stopping numbers. She then left for Chicago, where she appeared in several musical comedies and refined her vaudeville act. Tucker found great success belting out songs with suggestive lyrics, most notably the naughty “Nobody Loves a Fat Girl, But Oh How a Fat Girl Can Love.” She also pleased crowds with sentimental ballads, including “M-O-T-H-E-R—A Name That Means the World to Me,” a tear-jerking tribute to maternal love. Carefully crafting her act, Tucker learned to sing a variety of tunes to keep her audiences attentive. In her biography, titled Some of These Days after her signature song, she wrote, “I would start off with a lively rag, then would come a ballad, followed by a comedy song, and a novelty number . . . and finally, the hot song. In this way, I left the stage with the audience laughing their heads off.” Tucker also excited her fans with her extravagant and ever-changing costumes, which cost many thousands of dollars each time she retooled her act. By 1920, Tucker was a headlining star in New York. She achieved equal, if not greater, fame in England during her first tour there in 1922. Fitting well into the British music hall tradition, Tucker earned the adoration of English audiences on two more tours in 1925 and 1934. During the latter, she played a command performance for the royal family.

As vaudeville’s popularity waned in the 1930s, Tucker began to work in films and radio, but neither medium made good use of her talents. She was always at her best with a live audience, and her act lost much of its punch when she had to clean up her language for a mass audience. (She once bemoaned what radio did to her routines, explaining, “I couldn’t even say ‘hell’ or ‘damn,’ and nothing, honey, is more expressive than the way I say ‘hell’ or ‘damn.’”) Tucker felt much more at home in nightclubs, which she continued to play for the rest of her life. She also later appeared regularly on television, enjoying particular success as an early star of British TV.

In her personal life, Tucker, after her first husband’s death in 1914, had two unsuccessful marriages to pianist Frank Westphal (1914–19) and personal manager Al Lackey (1928–33). She remained devoted to her family and used her fortune to make sure her parents lived well. Tucker was also extraordinarily generous to a wide variety of charities, which she supported with sizable donations and benefit performances. Founded from the proceeds from her autobiography, the Sophie Tucker Foundation established a chair for the theater arts at Brandeis University in 1955. According to the New York Times, Tucker donated an estimated $4 million to charity during her lifetime. In 1965, Tucker collapsed onstage while performing in New York. She died four months later, February 9, 1966. A veritable institution of American entertainment, Tucker—with her brassy sound, comic sense, and intimate rapport with her audience—continued to find new generations of fans long after the vaudeville days that made her a star were all but forgotten.

Further Reading
Sochen, June. From Mae to Madonna: Women Entertainers in Twentieth-Century America. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999.
Tucker, Sophie. Some of These Days: The Autobiography of Sophie Tucker. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1945.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
Broadway Melody of 1938 (1937). MGM/UA, VHS, 1992.
Last of the Red Hot Mamas. Memoir Classics, CD, 1998.
Some of These Days. Pearl, CD, 1997.

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LILY TOMLIN

 TOMLIN, LILY (Mary Jean Tomlin) (1939– ) Comic, Actress

Renowned for her inventive comic characters, Lily Tomlin was born Mary Jean Tomlin on September 1, 1939. Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, she often accompanied her alcoholic father to bars, where she amused patrons by imitating their neighbors. Tomlin briefiy attended Wayne State University as a premed student but quit after her performance in a campus play convinced her that she had a fiair for comedy. For several years, she performed on local television and in coffeehouses. To further her career, Tomlin moved to New York City in 1965. Engagements at such clubs as the Improv and Cafe Au Go Go led to a job performing on the nationally televised Garry Moore Show (1958–67). She left after three shows over arguments with the writing staff about the quality of her material.

In 1970, Tomlin returned to television as a regular on the comedy revue  Laugh-In (1968–73). She became instantly famous for her monologues delivered in the voices of various characters. The most popular were Ernestine, a surly telephone operator, and Edith Ann, a five-and-a-half-year old who was wise beyond her years. She showcased these and other characters on several successful comedy albums, including  This Is a Recording (1971), for which she won a Grammy Award. While working her 1972 album  And That’s the Truth, she began writing with playwright Jane Wagner, who has remained a frequent collaborator. A proud feminist, Tomlin refused to perform jokes on Laugh-In that she deemed sexist or racist. She also made news by walking off  The Dick Cavett Show, a television talk show, when a fellow guest, actor Chad Everett, described his wife as his possession. In a 1981 interview, she replied to the question of how feminism had affected her career with, “If it hadn’t been for the women’s movement, people would call it my hobby.” After Laugh-In, Tomlin appeared in a series of television specials that challenged network censors. The most notorious was a one-hour variety show for CBS written by Tomlin and comic Richard Pryor. The network wanted to cut a sketch titled “Juke and Opal,” in which Pryor portrayed a methadone addict. When Tomlin threatened to sue, CBS put the sketch at the end of the special and added an incongruous laugh track to detract viewers from the disturbing material. The special won an Emmy for its writing.

By the mid-1970s, Tomlin was also appearing in films. She made an auspicious debut in a dramatic role in Nashville (1975), in which she subtly portrayed the emotions of a mother of two deaf children drawn into a brief affair with a womanizing pop star. The performance won her a Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. After garnering good reviews in the modern-day noir The Late Show (1977), her film career almost ended with the critical and popular disaster Moment by Moment (1978), a romance costarring John Travolta and written by Wagner. Tomlin scored a much-needed hit two years later with the light office comedy 9 to 5 (1980), which also featured JANE FONDA and  DOLLY PARTON. Most of her subsequent film work has been in supporting roles in fairly insubstantial comedies, including  Big Business (1988), The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), and Disney’s The Kid (2000). Tomlin has found much more success as a stage performer. After winning a special Tony Award for her show Appearing Nitely (1977), Tomlin received the best reviews of her career for The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1986). This onewoman show, written and directed by Wagner, allowed Tomlin to create an array of unforgettable characters—from the bag lady Trudy to the miserable teen Agnes Angst to the caustic socialite Kate. Using virtually no props or scenery, she transformed from one to the next, employing just her voice and manner to indicate the character she had become. Tomlin and Wagner were hailed for daring to depict with affection characters who often bordered on the grotesque. Tomlin once explained, “I don’t necessarily admire them, but I do them all with love.”Winning a Tony for its original run, Tomlin revived  Search on Broadway in November 2000. Reviewers marveled at the energy Tomlin, at 61, still brought to the demanding show. “It’s exhilarating,” Tomlin told USA Today, adding, “It’s such a joy to perform. . . . It’s fun to play, you know?”

Further Reading
Kaplan, James. “The Search for Lily Tomlin.” US Weekly. January 22, 2001, pp. 58–61.
Sorensen, Jeff.  Lily Tomlin: Woman of a Thousand Faces. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989.
Wagner, Jane. Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.

Recommended Recorded and Videotaped Performances
Nashville (1975). Paramount, DVD/VHS, 2000/1991.
9 to 5 (1980). Twentieth Century-Fox, VHS, 1995.
The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1992).
Wolfe Video, VHS, 1995.

READ MORE - LILY TOMLIN