Sophie Tucker’s first tour of theaters in the far west comes at an interesting point in her career. By 1910 she’s a sensation in New York, her home town, and very big in Chicago. She’s really just become a headliner. She’s also just recorded her first cylinders for Edison and in 1911 is to record Some of These Days, her greatest hit and lifetime theme song. The Sophie Tucker of 1910 is big and loud but typical of many physically large, anti-victorian  and funny female entertainers of the day like May Irwin, Stella Mayhew, and Trixie Friganza. She’s far from a polished performer. A review in 1912 says “If someone could lasso Sophie Tucker and tame her enough to smooth the haremscarem edges flying about her  performance, there would be an immense comedienne revealed for Miss Tucker has splendid talents entirely undeveloped”

William Morris
Sophie was fortunate to have William Morris, one of the best agents of the day, guiding her career. Morris eventually represented Al Jolson, the Marx Brothers, Mae West and Charlie Chaplin founding the William Morris Endeavor, now the world’s largest talent agency. Morris was concerned about Sophie becoming over exposed in the two big cities so he negotiated a five month rail tour of the west at $250 a week plus rail fares. The tour would take her to theaters of the Pantages circuit in Seattle, Vancouver, B.C., Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Denver plus smaller towns along the way.

Alexander Pantages & Klondike Kate
Alexander Pantages, the builder and owner of the biggest western theater circuit  was another interesting character of the vaudevile era. Born in Greece in 1875 he ran way and went to sea at the age of nine! After two years at sea, he disembarked in Panama and worked on the French canal attempt. He moved to San Francisco after contracting malaria and worked as a waiter and boxer. In 1897, he drifted to Dawson in the Yukon gold territories where he ultimately gave up mining to become the partner/lover of “Klondike Kate” Rockwell, in a small but profitable vaudeville theater called the Orpheum. When their affair ended he went to Seattle and she unsuccessfully sued him for stealing the money he used to open a theater there. From this humble start he built a circuit of 30 theaters he owned and another 42 he booked for. He was ruined by two 1929 rape trials. While ultimately acquitted, he never recovered in spirit and sold his theaters for much less than construction cost to RKO.

Sophie Arrested!
In the second big city stop of the tour, Portland, Sophie did a number called the Angleworm Wiggle during which she shimmied (as one might guess) and was arrested. She was bailed out and repeated the performance in the next show resulting in her re-arrest. According to Tucker, the woman who complained to the police about her was a Mrs. Baldwin, head of the Portland Department of Safety for Women, who was having a political fight with the chief of police and was looking for a way to embarrass him. Baldwin complained to the chief that Tucker’s performance was “immoral and indecent.” The chief saw the show and refused to arrest Tucker; he didn’t find the song immoral. So Baldwin went to the mayor, swearing out another complaint, adding that Tucker had ridiculed her from the stage by ad-libbing, as she wiggled her fingers up and down her torso, “very immoral.” Local friends helped her find a good local attorney who got the DA to drop the charges. The net result was a mountain of publicity and booming ticket sales. (The only versions of the song online are hammer dulcimer!)

If you’re Taylor Swift or Li’l Wayne, your audience finds out about you and your new songs on the internet. Radio and even television still have some role to play but even they are moving to internet delivery. CD sales are dropping rapidly and those CDs that are purchased are purchased online. Physical CD Stores are rarer than movie rental stores, another dying category.The biggest stars still do live performance tours but even that is a declining market.

In Sophie Tucker’s day, the big media for music were sheet music, cylinder recordings and Vaudeville.

Vaudeville was the end of a long run of live variety entertainments in America. The term first appears in 1871 as part of the name of a variety company, Sargent’s Great Vaudeville Company. While Sargent’s adopted this novel name there was nothing else novel about the company. Before 1880, American variety entertainment was a lower class affair often with suggestive and racial humor and scantily clad ladies. It wasn’t that theater owners and entertainers were ignoring the middle class, it was that the industrial revolution hadn’t yet had time to create a middle class.

Tony Pastor

The early genius of Vaudeville as a kind of entertainment was Tony Pastor, a theater owner and a former circus ringmaster who began in the 1880s featuring “polite” variety programs at several of his New York theaters. Pastor barred the sale of liquor, eliminated questionable material, and gave away gifts of coal and hams. This approach quickly took off. Theaters filled with women and children as well as whole families.

As is often the case, the originator isn’t the one who carries an innovation to its peak. In the case of Vaudeville that position belonged to Benjamin Franklin Keith who made the rules stricter and more consistent and ultimately applied them to thousands of theaters. Every act was reviewed and material that was unsuitable was cut. Performers who broke the rules were dismissed.

Like the variety shows before them, Vaudeville consisted of a dozen or more acts many involving multiple performers. Keith also originated the idea of the continuous performance where one show began right after the previous one ended. Reportedly his belief was that this approach could get around people’s unwillingness to enter a lightly-filled theater. More obviously, it helped keep the expensive asset in continuous use.

In fact, Keith was a major proponent of making theaters more expensive to erect. It was during this era that theaters got grander and more baroque in their decoration. That helped increase their appeal to all classes of society

When Sophie Tucker was a child she attended vaudeville performances and met the entertainers at her parents’ restaurant. By the the time she was old enough and famous enough to perform in vaudeville, it was a huge business with thousands of venues organized into circuits managed by bookers like Keith and his manager Albee. Over time Keith bought most of the other big circuits, notably the Orpheum circuit that Sophie often performed on ultimately controlling all of big time Vaudeville.

Ultimately sound movies which began in the late 20s slowly killed off vaudeville since they made the most desirable performers available to many venues at the same time. Keith Albee Orpheum ultimately merged with Joesph P. Kennedy’s film booking company under the RCA and became RKO (Radio Keith Orpheum). Sophie had long since moved back to clubs and cabarets.

2007 WESTPEX Cinderella

Engraved Stamps
For all of the classic period of stamp issuance, engraving was the primary design & production technique used. Securities designers like engraving because it is difficult to copy. Collectors have come to like engraving perhaps because it has an elegant classical simplicity that reminds one of the earliest and most valuable issues. The 2007 WESTPEX souvenir issue, the Norton I Exhibition Tax issue, had this engraved look. Creating an effective engraved look from scratch using digital tools is a difficult task. It’s much easier to do as I did that year and start with an existing engraved issue as a base for a modern pastiche.

For 2011, I chose a theme honoring a woman, Sophie Tucker. Ignoring queens, images of women (at least “real” women) on stamps are much rarer than images of men. In this case I wanted a stamp with a full figural image not just a head and so I turned to the U.S. newspaper stamps where a large number of allegorical women appear.

First Issue US Newspaper Stamps

Newspaper Stamps
Newspaper stamps are postage not revenue stamps. The first one appeared in Austria in 1851. They pay the rate provided for the mail delivery of newspapers and circulars. Small values were designed to be affixed to the wrappers of individual copies of newspapers. Larger values showed payment for bulk quantities. In the United States, the first newspaper stamps issued was a set of four typographic and embossed designs showing Franklin on three issues, Lincoln on one. They were created and printed by the National Bank Note Company and were used by being glued to individual newspaper wrappers (Scott says they were all “no gum” but some collectors believe PR3 came gummed). They were reissued in 1875. All of these early issues (PR1 to PR8) are relatively scarce and exist mostly canceled with a blue brush mark (never a CDS or city mark – these are forgeries)

Proof of Second Allegorical Series

In 1975 The Continental Bank Note company took over the printing of newspaper stamps with a long series (24) of engraved issues showing classic allegorical figures. With values ranging from 2 cents to $60 these and all future issue were designed to be affixed in a receipt book rather than to an individual newspaper. A second series of allegorical designs was issued in 1895 and by now the government was doing its own printing. In 1899, the government demonetized newspaper stamps and sold almost 27,000 sets to the public.

PR114 - The base for the design

The one cent value of this demonetized series (PR114) is the least expensive U.S. newspaper stamp currently available and the one I selected for a design base.

1909 Sheet Music

Next, A Picture of Sophie
I needed a full length figural picture of Sophie Tucker to replace the statue of freedom on the original stamp. There were lots of choices here since the sheet music of songs she sang was very popular and widely saved. Entertainment stars weren’t as in control of their images back then so often each new piece of music showed a different image of the star. The one that best suited my purpose was a long, thin, elegant one that appeared in 1909, two years before the performance commemorated by our souvenir. I scanned the music cover at high resolution, selected out the image needed and sized it to the scan of the original stamp.

Attempt at Engraved Backgound

For a while I tried creating my own engraved background to fill the frame behind Sophie. The results never looked right – too regular, not engraved enough. Instead I resorted to the approach I had used in 2006 of “cloning” small portions of the existing background to cover the whole area.

Lettering

Early Lettering

Next came the lettering. Four different fonts are used on the original stamp. The fancy numerals, the two sans serif fonts for the words U.S. POSTAGE  and NEWSPAPERS PERIODICALS and an old fashioned serif font for the spelled out value. My prior experimentation had led me to a font called United States that’s based on the serif font used in most U.S. stamps of the era. I used this for the words “Sophie Tucker” in side frames. I didn’t duplicate the very unusual back slant of the right side type or the lined fill of the original. Instead used an beveled and embossed effect. Both the original and my variation have drop shadows behind the letters.

The United States front only works in comparatively large size so for “WESTPEX” I used a simpler sans serif font called Gothic. It also has a beveled and embossed effect applied.

Unissued Monochrome Block

The Die Proof
The WESTPEX souvenir sheet will be a block of four with each of the for examples colorized differently just like the 2007 Norton sheet. In addition, in the past few years, the chairman has always funded an additional WESTPEX souvenir to be sent as a gifit to volunteers and friends of WESTPEX. Considering a plain black and white variation for that purpose turned into the idea of a die proof where a single stamp was printed in one or no as a way of focusing on the design itself

Looking at a lot of real samples made me realize we should reproduce an approval signature. At first I thought about getting Ed to sign them but ultimately decided on the signature of the US Postmaster General of the era, Hitchcock. A nice proof image with his signature was conveniently available on the internet.

Rubber Stamp Effects Trials

To simulate a rubber stamped serial number. I played with a number of rubber stamp fonts and effects before settling on the one used. Since these “die proofs” were going to be home printed we had the luxury of choosing to do individual serial numbers on each copy as it might have been originally. Photoshop was used to simulate the look of an india paper proof pasted to a die sunk card

Production
The final card proofs were laid out in InDesign and printed four up on an Canon ink jet printer. They were then hand cut on a guillotine paper cutter. Two were damaged in the cutting, leaving the issue at 198 examples. Along the way one of my proof readers suggested Sophie was worth more than one    cent. I agreed, hence the late change to $1)

From 34,000 in 1890, San Francisco’s population had grown to 416,000 by 1910. That made it the largest city west of the Missouri river and the 10th largest city in the U.S. In the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake there were attempts to redesign the layout of the city but in the end it was rebuilt, and surprisingly quickly, along the pre-earthquake street plan. Of course, in the process of rebuilding steel, brick and concrete largely replaced wood, changing the character of the city.

By 1911 cable cars which dated to 1873 were widely being replaced by electric mass transportation and older shorter structures were being replaced by much taller buildings like the Phelan building. Golden Gate park’s transformation from sand dunes had been completed and the Cliff House had been rebuilt yet again after a 1907 fire.

The Barbary Coast was roaring again by the beginning of 1907. The city archives show a list of more than 40  “Resorts, Cabarets and Saloons” on Pacific Street alone. The popular music of the time were mostly rags like  ArthurCollins-TemptationRag newly recorded on Edison’s wax cylinders