Tribute singer brings sultry Sophie Tucker to Summerlin

Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Sophie Tucker was sexy when sexy wasn’t cool.

Tucker, who was born in Russia in 1884, was an icon of steaming sexuality — a past generation’s version of Pamela Anderson, Jessica Alba and Carmen Electra.

Tucker was billed as the “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas.” She became a sultry star of Broadway, film and nightclubs and once was arrested for a suggestive wiggle. She boasted of her hearty sexual appetite in songs such as “There’s Company in the Parlor, Girls, Come on Down.”

But she also was the first person to sell 1 million records — 1926’s “My Yiddish Momme.” One side was sung in Yiddish, the other in English.

“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor,” Tucker once said. “Believe me, honey, rich is better.”

Singer/comedian Sharon McNight brings Tucker back to life in the one-woman show “Red Hot Mama!” on Saturday night at the Starbright Theatre in Summerlin. The show is presented by Michael Chapman and ChapQuist Entertainment.

“Her career spanned 60 years and she was no milquetoast,” McNight says on the phone from Hollywood, Calif.

“She started in burlesque and moved to vaudeville. She had a huge voice. She shot from the hip and was risque and bawdy.

“Someone once told me I sounded just like Sophie Tucker so I started out with a couple of her songs here and there and just kept adding more into my nightclub act.”

Eventually the songs coalesced into a show that McNight has been performing off and on for the past six years. “I read her autobiography and saw so much of my life in the book.”

The show takes place in a nightclub where Tucker sings and talks about her history and her life. “I tell her story through the material she sang.”

This will be the first time McNight has performed the show in Vegas. But she would like to find a venue here where she can stage “Red Hot Mama!” and several other one-woman shows, including “Betty, Betty, Bette,” about Betty Hutton, Betty Grable and Bette Davis, and “Gone But Not Forgotten,” about such stars as Martha Raye and Patsy Cline.

McNight, who has a master’s degree in directing from San Francisco State College, made her Broadway debut in 1989 in “Starmites” and received a Tony nomination. She has recorded several albums, including “The Sophie Tucker Songbook” and “Offensive Too, Volume Two.”

McNight says she hopes to bring her shows to Vegas because Los Angeles does not appreciate live performances.

“Anyone over the age of 40 is not appreciated at all,” she says. “There is a lot of ageism and sexism there.”