Category: television history

Calendar: May 19

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of May

Marked Encounters

May 19, 1971 marked the death of British-American actor, Alan Young.

Alan Young was born Angus Young on November 19, 1919, in North Shields, Northumberland, England, to Scottish parents. The family moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, when he was a toddler, and to West Vancouver, Canada, when he was six years old. Bedridden as a child because of severe asthma, he came to love listening to the radio. By the time he was in high school, Young already had his own comedy radio series on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation network.

After leaving the Canadian armed service, Alan Young moved to Toronto and resumed his Canadian radio career, where he was discovered in 1944 by an American agent who brought him to New York to appear on American radio. He first appeared on the Philco Radio Hall of Fame. This led to his own American radio show, “The Alan Young Show”, a NBC summer replacement for entertainer Eddie Cantor’s show.

Alan Young’s film debut was in the 1946 film “Margie”, a romantic comedy that became a box office hit. Moving to TV, he wrote a pilot for CBS in 1950, resulting in live variety revue “The Alan Young Show” that earned him the 1951 Best Actor Emmy and the nomination for outstanding personality. After that show’s cancellation, Young acted in “Androcles and the Lion”, “Gentlemen Marry Brunettes” and two films produced by George Pal: the 1958 “Tom Thumb” and the 1960 film “The Time Machine” base on the story by H.G. Wells and starring Rod Taylor.

Young was best known, however, for the CBS television show “Mister Ed” which ran from 1961 to 1966. In this series, he starred as Wilbur Post, the owner of Mr. Ed, a talking horse who would not talk to anyone but him, thus causing comic situations for Wilbur Post, with his wife, neighbors, and acquaintances. Young was approached for “Mister Ed” by producer Arthur Lubin, who had created the popular 1950 film “Francis the Talking Mule”. Young initially turned down the part but eventually accepted it. Owning a portion of the show, he made a fortune off the royalties.

During the 1970s he became active in voice acting. He voiced Scrooge McDuck for numerous Disney films, and voiced Haggis McHaggis on “The Ren and Stimpy Show”. With Bill Burt, Young wrote the autobiography “Mr. Ed and Me,” which was published in 1995.

After 1997, Alan Young lived in Woodland Hills, California, at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital, a retirement community, where he died of natural causes on May 19, 2016 at the age of 96.

Calendar: April 7

 

A Year: Day to Day Men: 7th of April

A Casual Pose

On April 7, 1939 David Frost, the journalist and writer, was born in Tenterdon, England.

David Frost was chosen by writer and producer Ned Sherrin to host the satirical program “That Was the Week That Was” (TW3) after Frost’s flatmate John Bird suggested Sherrin should see Frost’s cabaret act at The Blue Angel nightclub. The series, which ran for less than 18 months during 1962–63, was part of the satire boom in early 1960s Britain and became a popular program.

In 1968 Frost signed a contract worth £125,000 to appear on American television in his own show on three evenings each week, the largest such arrangement for a British television personality at the time. From 1969 to 1972, hosted “The David Frost Show” on the Group W (U.S. Westinghouse Corporation) television stations in the United States. Throughout the years of his show, David Frost, known for his personalized style of interviews, spoke with such personalities as Jack Benny, Tennessee Williams, and Muhammad Ali; he was also the last person to interview Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran following the 1979 Iranian revolution.

In 1977 “The Nixon Interviews”, a series of five 90-minute interviews with former US President Richard Nixon, were broadcast. Nixon was paid $600,000 plus a share of the profits for the interviews, which had to be funded by Frost himself after the US television networks turned down the program, describing it as “checkbook journalism”. Frost’s company negotiated its own deals to syndicate the interviews with local stations across the US and internationally, creating what filmmaker Ron Howard described as “the first fourth network.”

For the show, David Frost taped around 29 hours of interviews with Nixon over a period of four weeks. Nixon, who had previously avoided discussing his role in the watergate scandal which had led to his resignation as President in 1974, expressed contrition saying “I let the American people down and I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life”.

David Frost was the only person to have interviewed all eight British Prime Ministers serving between 1964 and 2014 and all seven US Presidents in office between 1969 and 2008. He was very active with the Alzheimer’s Research Trust and the Elton John AIDS Foundation. His conversations with Nixon became the subject of Ron Howard’s 2008 film “Frost/Nixon”, nominated for five Golden Globes and for five Academy Awards. David Frost died on August 31, 2013 at the age of 74 on board the cruise ship MS Queen Elizabeth, on which he was engaged as a speaker. His memorial stone is in Poet’s Corner of the Westminster Abbey for his contribution to British culture.

Calendar: March 25

Year: Day to Day Men: March 25

Brushstrokes of Light

The twenty-fifth of March in 1939 marks the birth date of Dorothy Catherine Fontana, an American novelist and television script writer and story editor. She is best known for her work on the original “Star Trek” series. 

Born in Sussex, New Jersey, Dorothy Catherine Fontana attended New Jersey’s Fairleigh Dickinson University where she graduated with an Associate Degree as an Executive Secretarial major. After graduation, Fontana relocated to New York City where she became junior secretary at the Screen Gems Studios office. She later relocated to Los Angeles where she gained employment at Revue Studios as secretary to Samuel A. Peeples, the  scriptwriter for the 1960 television Western “Overland Trail”. 

After the series was cancelled, Samuel Peeples and Fontana began work on the 1960 Western series “The Tall Man” for Revue Productions. Fontana wrote the story for episode six “A Bounty for Billy” and episode thirty-three “The Cloudbusters”. She worked with Peeples on “Frontier Circus” and, for producer Nat Holt, on “Shotgun Slade”. All of Fontana’s stories at this time were created under the name of Dorothy C. Fontana. 

In 1963, Dorothy Fontana saw an opportunity for a position on NBC’s new Marine Corps series “The Lieutenant”. She began working as a secretary for NBC producer Del Reisman who had previously edited for Rod Sterling’s “The Twilight Zone”. As one of only a few female writes at NBC, Fontana adopted the gender-blind pen name, D. C. Fontana, to prevent her stories from being prejudged. She became secretary for Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Lieutenant series, who encouraged her writing. As the series came to an end in 1964, Fontana published her first novel “Brazos River” written in collaboration with Harry Sanford. 

In mid-1964, Gene Roddenberry began work on “Star Trek”. Encouraged by associate producer Robert H. Justman, Roddenberry assigned Fontana the task of writing the teleplay for an episode he called “The Day Charlie Became God”. She created the script for “Charlie X”, the second episode of the first season, for which she received credit for the teleplay. Fontana wrote episode nineteen of the first season, “Tomorrow is Yesterday”, that became the first “Star Trek” episode solely written by a woman. She also rewrote “This Side of Paradise”, the twenty-fourth episode in which flower spores induce Spock to fall in love. In September of 1966, Fontana was promoted to story editor by Roddenberry and the NBC network.

Dorothy Fontana worked on “Star Trek” through the entire second season as both story editor and rewriter. She was responsible for the ideas behind second season’s episodes “Journey to Babel” and “Friday’s Child”. Instrumental in the rewrite of the 1968 “The Ultimate Computer” episode, Fontana was one of four writers who made initial changes in Harlan Ellison’s “The City on the Edge of Forever”. The script was ultimately rewritten three more times by Roddenberry before it was aired. Fontana left the “Star Trek” team prior to the third season but wrote scripts for it on a freelance basis. Among these were the episodes “The Way to Eden”, “The Enterprise Incident” and “That Which Survives”.

During the 1970s, Fontana took on many roles: scriptwriter, story editor, and associate producer. She wrote the script for Roddenberry’s 1973 “Genesis II” and was both story editor and associate producer on “Star Trek: The Animated Series” which won the 1975 Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Series. Fontana worked briefly on the 1977 “Fantastic Journey” and wrote for several series including “The Six Million Dollar Man”, “The Waltons”, and “The Streets of San Francisco”. For the first season of “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, she worked as both story editor and associate producer; however, her relationship with Roddenberry became strained so she left the series in May of 1988. 

Dorothy Fontana continued to work within the “Star Trek” universe. She wrote the 1989 “Vulcan’s Glory”, a “Star Trek: The Original Series” novel published by Pocket Books. Fontana wrote the “Dax” episode of “Star Trek; Deep Space Nine”, sharing a joint credit with Peter Allan Fields. For the show “Babylon 5”, she wrote “The War Prayer”  and “Legacies” episodes for the first season as well as “A Distant Star”, a second season episode that featured her character Neroon. Fontana also created scripts for Bethesda Softworks’s “Star Trek: Legacy” and “Star Trek: Tactical Assault” video games.

A board member of the Writers Guild of America and a twice-inducted member of the American Screenwriters Association Hall of Fame, Dorothy Catherine Fontana died of cancer at the Burbank Hospital in California on the second of December in 2019. 

Calendar: March 19

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of March

White Anchors on Black

March 19, 1928 was the birthdate of Patrick Joseph McGoohan, an American-born Irish actor, writer and director.

In 1959, ITC Entertainment production executive Lew Grade approached Patrick McGoohan about a television series in which he would play a spy named John Drake. Having learned from bad contract experiences in the past, McGoohan insisted on several conditions in the contract before agreeing to appear in the program: all the fistfights should be different, the character would always use his brain before using a gun, and, much to the horror of the executives, no kissing. The series debuted in 1960 as “Danger Man”, a half-hour program geared toward an American audience. Production lasted a year and 39 episodes.

Patrick McGoohan was one of several actors considered for the role of James Bond in the movie “Doctor No” and later for the James Bond role in “Live and Let Die”, but turned both of them down. After he had also turned down the role of Simon Templar in “The Saint”, Lew Grade asked him if he would like to give John Drake another try. The show was resurrected in 1964 as a one-hour program, now known by the name “Secret Agent”. The scripts now allowed McGoohan more range in his acting. The popularity of the series led to McGoohan becoming the highest-paid actor in the UK, and the show lasted almost three more years.

Knowing of McGoohan’s intentions of leaving “Secret Agent”, Grade asked if he would at least work on something for him. McGoohan gave him a run-down of what would later be called a miniseries, about a secret agent who resigns suddenly and wakes up to find himself in a prison disguised as a holiday resort. Grade asked for a budget, McGoohan had one ready, and they made a deal over a handshake early on a Saturday morning to produce “The Prisoner”. Apart from being the star of “The Prisoner” in his role as Number Six, McGoohan was the executive producer, forming Everyman Films with series producer David Tomblin, and also wrote and directed several episodes, in some cases using pseudonyms.

Patrick McGoohan appeared in many films and television series: “Ice Station Zebra” in 1968, “Silver Streak” in 1976, “The Man in the Iron Mask” in 1977, “Escape from Alcatraz” in 1979, and received two Emmy Awards for his performances on the show “Columbo”. His last film role was as the voice of Billy Bones in the animated film, “Treasure Planet”, released in 2002. That same year, he received the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for his show “The Prisoner”.

Calendar: March 9

Year: Day to Day Men: March 9

The Cross Bearer

The ninth of March in 1940 marks the birth date of actor Raúl Rafael Carlos Juliá y Arcelay known for his intense and varied roles on stage and screen. For each of his film roles, Raúl Julia did extensive character research to familiarize himself with their experiences and ideologies. During his life, he did charitable work mostly focused on at-risk youth, the Latin-American community and the arts.

Born in a suburb of San Juan, Puerto Rico, Raúl Julia attended a private Catholic school in Hato Rey. He later attended Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola where. interested in the works of Shakespeare, he organized and performed in plays of “Julius Caesar”, “Hamlet’, “King Lear”, and “The Tempest’. Julia studied for a year at New York City’s Fordham University before attending the University of Puerto Rico where he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree. Although his parents wanted him to have a career in law, Julie chose acting as full-time career.

In Puerto Rico, Julia performed in several Shakespearean plays including “Macbeth” and “Othello” at San Juan’s theaters. He was subsequently recruited by actress and comedian Lillian Hurst to perform alongside her. During one of their performances, Julia was noticed by actor Orson Bean who suggested he continue his acting career in New York City. After working a variety of odd jobs in Manhattan, he sought work in both Broadway and off-Broadway productions. 

After receiving his Actors Equity card, Raúl Julia was able to get a role in the production of “Bye Bye Birdie”. In September of 1968 after four auditions, he debuted in his first Broadway production as the character Chan in “The Cuban Thing”. In the following two years, Julia appeared in playwright Arthur Kopit’s 1969 production “Indians” and Mel Arrighi’s 1970 “The Castro Complex”. Julia also worked in the medium of television in the early 1970s as Rafael the Fix-It Man, a recurring role in the third season of “Sesame Street”. 

Julia performed in several major theatrical productions during the 1970s. For his role of Proteus in the 1971 rock musical “Two Gentlemen of Verona”. he was nominated for a Tony Award and won the 1972 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance. In 1974, Julia received his second Tony Award nomination for his role of Charley Wykeham in the 1974 Broadway revival of “Where’s Charley”. In 1976, he was nominated a third time for his role of Mack the Knife in “The Threepenny Opera”. From late October of 1978 to June of 1979, Julia played the role of Count Dracula in the Broadway revival of “Dracula” with Edward Gorey’s stage sets.

 Raúl Julia’s film career began with roles in three films during the early 1970s: the crime thriller “The Organization”; the drama  “The Panic in Needle Park”, his first feature film; and the film adaption of Richard Fariña’s novel “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me”. The most notable of Julia’s film work at this time was his role of prison inmate Valentin Arregui, played opposite William Hurt as Luis Molina, in the 1985 drama “Kiss of the Spider Woman”. To understand his role, Julia traveled to South America where he interviewed rebels and ex-prisoners to familiarize himself with their experiences. He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award and won, along with William Hurt, the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures Award for Best Actor.

In addition to being a distinguished actor in numerous film, television and theater productions, Julia continued the charitable work that had been done by his parents. Concerned about the rising levels of violence among teenagers, he sponsored screenwriting programs and supported young actors. Julia was constantly involved with the Latin American community and served as the chairman of the Joseph Papp Celebrity Coalition for Racial Harmony. As part of his work for The Hunger Project, he made monthly donations, promoted the program through advertisements and narrated its bilingual videos. Julia was given the Global Citizen Award for his work with The Hunger Project and, in 1992, received the Courage of Conscience Award. 

Unknown to the public, Raúl Julia suffered from stomach cancer for three years prior to his death. During those years, he played the title role in the 1992 Broadway revival of “Man of La Mancha”, with performances eight times a week. Julia also reprised his role as Gomez Addams in the 1993 “Addams Family Values” and took a supporting role in the 1994 television series “Down Came a Blackbird”. In early 1994 during the filming of “The Burning Season” in Mexico, Julia was airlifted to a hospital in Los Angeles for medical attention. Upon his recovery, he finished the film.

On the sixteenth of October in 1994 after attending New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Julia was rushed by ambulance to the North Shore University Hospital in Long Island due to intense abdominal pains; his situation gradually worsened. On the night of the twentieth, Julia suffered a stroke, fell into a coma and was put on life support. Raúl Julia died on the twenty-fourth of October at the age of fifty-four from complications of a stroke, never having gained consciousness. His body was flown to Puerto Rico where a state funeral attended by thousands was held in San Juan. 

Calendar: February 20

Year: Day to Day Men: February 20

This Old House

The twentieth of February in 1906 marks the birth date of American character actor Gale Gordon. He had a long and prolific career in both radio and television series. Gordon’s portrayal of grumpy and arrogant characters made him the comic foil on “Our Miss Brooks” and three Lucille Ball series.

Born Charles Thomas Aldrich Jr. in New York City, Gale Gordon was the son of vaudevillian Charles Thomas Aldrich and English actress Gloria Gordon. His first appearance on radio broadcast was the roles of Mayor La Trivia and Foggy Williams on the 1935 “Fibber McGee and Molly”. Gordon was the first actor to play the role of Flash Gordon on the 1935 radio serial “The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon”. 

From 1937 to 1939, Gordon starred as The Octopus in the “Speed Gibson” radio series. During the years of World War II, he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard where he served for four years. At the end of the war, Gordon returned to radio and played the role of Rumson Bullard on “The Great Gildersleeve”, one of the earliest spin-offs in the entertainment industry. In 1946, he had one of his most dramatic roles on radio, the bachelor amateur detective Gregory Hood on the popular 1946-1947 “The Casebook of Gregory Hood”. The series was originally just a summer replacement for the canceled “The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”; the network had failed to reach a contractual agreement with the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle estate.

In 1950, Gale Gordon played John Granby, a former city dweller turned farmer, in the radio series “Granby’s Green Acres”, which was the model for the 1960s television series “Green Acres”. He created the role of principle Osgood Conklin on the 1948 radio series “Our Miss Brooks” and later carried the role to the 1952 television series. Gordon also worked at this time on the radio show “My Favorite Husband” in which he played Rudolph Atterbury opposite Lucille Ball as Liz Cugat. He and Ball had previously worked together from 1938 to 1939 on “The Wonder Show” with actor and singer Jack Haley, later known as the Tin-Man in “The Wizard of Oz”

Gordon was the first choice for the role of Fred Mertz on the 1951 television situation comedy “I Love Lucy”. However, he had made a commitment to his role in “Our Miss Brooks”, in addition to his other concurrent radio shows. Gordon did appear in two guest roles on “I Love Lucy” as Ricky Ricardo’s boss, Alvin Littlefield, the owner of the Tropicana Club. In the late 1950s, he was a regular on the 1957 NBC sitcom “Sally” and also appeared on ABC’s “The Real McCoys” with Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna. Other appearances included a guest role on the 1960 ABC “Harrigan and Son” and roles in two episodes of “The Donna Reed Show” and seven episodes of “The Danny Thomas Show”.

Lucille Ball created “The Lucy Show” in 1952 and planned to hire Gale Gordon for the role of the banker Theodore J. Mooney. However, after the death of actor Joseph Kearns who played George Wilson on “Dennis the Menace”, Gordon had signed a contract to play John Wilson on the show. When “Dennis the Menace” ended its run in the spring of 1963, Gordon joined “The Lucy Show” for the 1963-1964 season. After the sale of Desilu Studios in 1968, Lucille Ball discontinued the show and remade it into “Here’s Lucy” with herself as producer and distributor. Gordon took on the role of her boss, Harrison Otis. 

When “Here’s Lucy” ended in 1974, Gordon basically retired from acting. His friend and acting cohort, Lucille Ball persuaded him to take a role in her new series “Life with Lucy”, which ran for three months. Gordon’s final acting appearance was a 1991 reprise of Mr. Mooney for the first episode of”Hi Honey, I’m Home”, a thirteen episode television comedy.

Gale Gordon and his wife Virginia Curley lived on a 150 acre ranch he had helped construct in Borrego Springs, California. Gordon wrote two books in the 1940s: “Leaves from the Story Trees” and “Nursery Rhymes for Hollywood Babies” and two one-act plays. He was also one of the few carob growers in the United States. Gordon’s wife of nearly sixty years died in May of 1995; he died of lung cancer one month later on the thirtieth of June. Gordon was inducted posthumously into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1999 and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Second Insert Image: Publicity Photo, Gale Gordon and Eve Arden, “Our Miss Brooks”, September 1955

Third Insert Image: Publicity Photo, Gale Gordon and Jay North, “Dennis the Menace”, circa 1962-1963

Calendar: February 11

Year: Day to Day Men: February 11

The City’s Pier

The eleventh of February in 1938 marks the first televised broadcast of a science fiction program. The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, adapted Karel Čapek’s seminal play, “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)” into a thirty-five minute production which aired at 3:30 in the afternoon. 

Born in January of 1890, Karel Čapek was a Czech writer, playwright and journalist. He became best known for his science fiction works, most notably the 1936 “War with the Newts”, a satirical work of exploitation and human flaws, and his “R.U.R.”, a three-act play with prologue that introduced the word robot to the English language. Although nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Čapek never received the award. Several awards, however, commemorate his name among which is the Karel Čapek Prize that is awarded to those who contribute to the reinforcement and maintenance of democratic and humanist values in society. 

The robots in Čapek’s 1920 “R.U.R.” are not robots in the popularly understood sense of an automaton or a mechanical device. They were artificially biological organisms that were similar to humans. These robots more closely resembled more modern conceptions such as replicants ( 1982 Blade Runner ) or android hosts ( 2016 Westworld television series ). Their skin and brains were produced in vats, their bones in factories, and their nerve fibers, arteries and intestines were spun on factory bobbins. The robots, themselves living biological beings, were finally assembled on factory lines as opposed to grown or born.

“R.U.R.” had its first theatrical premiere on the twenty-fifth of January in 1921 at Prague’s National Theater. English writer Paul Selver translated the play into English and sold it to St. Martin’s Theater in London. The translation was adapted for British theater by actor Sir Nigel Ross Playfair in 1922. Performance rights for the United States and Canada were sold in the same year to the New York Theater Guild. The American premiere of “R.U.R.” took place in October of 1922 at New York City’s Garrick Theater on 35th Street in Manhattan where it ran for one hundred and eighty-four performances. 

In April of 1923, actor and director Basil Dean produced “R.U.R.” in Britain for the Reandean Company at London’s St. Martin’s Theater. This version was based on Playfair’s adaptation and included several revisions from the New York Theater Guild. During the 1920s, the play was performed in several British and American theaters. In June of 1923, Karel Čapek sent a letter to translator Edward March with the play’s final lines that had been omitted from previous translations. A copy of this final and complete translation of Čapek’s play later appeared in the 2001 journal of “Science Fiction Studies”.

The BBC airing of Čapek’s “R.U.R.” occurred just two years after England launched the broadcasting service; it is unclear whether any recordings of the event survived. The play’s effects, though very rudimentary by today’s standards, made it very suitable for showing on the new television medium. Although its popularity peaked in the 1920s, Čapek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” became the foundation of many of science fiction’s modern franchises, both film and television. 

Calendar: January 19

A Year: Day to Day Men: 19th of January

Parallel Fences

On January 19, 1955, the television program “The Millionaire” premieres on the CBS channel.

The Millionaire was an American anthology series that aired from 1955-1960 and  was sponsored by the Colgate-Palmolive Company. The series, produced by Fred Henry and Don Fedderson, explored the ways that sudden and unexpected wealth changed life, for better or for worse. The show became a five season hit during the “Golden Age of Television”. The series told stories of people who were given one million dollars from a benefactor who insisted that he remain anonymous.

The benefactor was named John Beresford Tipton, Jr. Viewers heard his voice, making observations and giving instructions; they saw only his arm as he reached for a cashier’s check for one million dollars each week and handed it to Michael Anthony, his executive secretary. It was Anthony’s job to deliver that check to its intended recipient.

Invariably, The Millionaire began with a very brief opening theme fanfare behind the ascending title frame, followed by the camera’s training directly upon Michael Anthony, played by veteran character actor and radio and
television announcer Marvin Miller. The unseen John Beresford Tipton was played by another veteran character actor and voice artist, Paul Frees.

The series ran for 206 episodes, and Tipton made 206 millionaires. The beneficiaries were not always poor but could be from any social class or occupation, from secretaries and construction workers to professionals like doctors and lawyers. Nor were they always likely to find their lives changed for the better because of their sudden wealth.

Calendar: January 13

Year: Day to Day Men: January 13

Armand: Old English

The thirteenth of January in 1886 marks the birth date of Russian-born American entertainer Sophie Tucker who was known for her forceful delivery of comical and risqué songs. She received billing as ‘The Last of the Red-Hot Mammas’ due to the frequent sexual subject of her songs, an unusual topic for female performers after vaudeville’s decline. Tucker became one of the most popular entertainers in the United States during the first half of the twentieth-century. 

Born Sofiya Sonya Kalish to a Jewish family in Tulchyn of the Russian Empire, Tucker immigrated to the United States with her family in September of 1887. The family settled in Boston for eight years and then relocated to Hartford, Connecticut where they opened a restaurant. In 1903 at the age of seventeen, Sofiya eloped with Louis Tuck and two years later gave birth to her son Albert. The couple separated after the birth and later divorced in 1913. After leaving her son with her parents, Tucker found work in New York City’s cafés and beer gardens where she sang for food and received tips from customers; most of her earnings were sent to her family for her son’s support. 

Sophie Tucker made her first theatrical appearance at a vaudeville venue’s amateur night. A heavy-weight person, she added weight-related humor and songs to her acts. In 1909, Tucker performed in the Ziegfeld Follies and was noticed by William Morris, a theater owner and the future founder of Hollywood’s William Morris Talent Agency. Two years later, she released her first recording of Shelton Brooks’s “Some of These Days” which soon became her signature song; her 1926 version sold a million copies and stayed number one for five weeks. In 1921, Tucker hired songwriter and pianist Ted Shapiro as her musical director and accompanist. He would remain with Tucker for her entire career and often exchanged jokes with her between musical numbers.

Tucker became friends with Mamie Smith, the first African-American woman to make a blues recording, and Ethel Walters, who became the highest paid African-American recording artist at that time. It was Walters who introduced Tucker to jazz, a music form Tucker later introduced to her white vaudeville audiences. In 1925, lyricist Jack Selig Yellen wrote “My Yiddishe Momme” which became another of Tucker’s signature songs. Now a successful singer, Tucker’s fame spread to Europe and she began a tour of England which culminated in a performance at the London Palladium for King George V and Queen Mary.

In 1926 Sophie Tucker re-released her hit song “Some of These Days”. It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc by the Recording Industry Association of America. Tucker made her film debut in 1929 with a lead role in Lloyd Bacon’s Pre-Code musical film “Honky Tonk” which featured a number of her famous songs. This early feature sound film is now considered lost, only the Vitaphone soundtrack and its trailer still exist. When vaudeville was becoming passe in the early 1930s, Tucker turned to nightclubs where she could continue to perform for live audiences.

During 1938 to 1939, Tucker had her own radio show on CBS, “The Roi Tan Program with Sophie Tucker” and made numerous appearances on such programs as “The Radio Hall of Fame” and “The Andrews Sisters’ Show”. In 1945, she created the Sophie Tucker Foundation, which supported various actors’ guilds, hospitals, synagogues, and Israeli youth villages. Tucker appeared on many popular talk and variety shows in the 1950s and 1960s among which were “The Tonight Show” and “The Ed Sullivan Show”.  

Sophie Tucker served from 1938 to 1939 as president of the American Federation of Actors, an early trade union originally for vaudeville and circus performers that expanded to include nightclub performers. She continued to perform for the rest of her life with several tours to England; her singing at the Royal Variety Performance aired on the BBC. Tucker’s last television appearance was the color broadcast of the October 3, 1965 “Ed Sullivan Show” in which she sang “Give My Regards to Broadway” and her signature song “Some of These Days”.

Tucker died of lung cancer and kidney failure in February of 1966, at the age of eighty, in her New York, Park Avenue apartment. She had played shows at New York’s Latin Quarter just weeks before her death and had two years of engagements planned. Tucker is buried in Emanuel Cemetery in Wethersfield, Connecticut. 

Note: Sophie Tucker’s 1926 version of “Some of These Days”, which featured Ted Lewis and His Band, can be found by entering the title in the search box.