Josephine Baker (34 page)

Married or not, politically dopey or not, Josephine made it off the ship, escaping into the Rolls-Royce of Miki Sawada. (The Rolls flew the Japanese flag.) With them rode Curt Riess, a German journalist who had first met Josephine in Berlin.

When I contacted him in 1991, Riess was eighty-nine years old, living near Zurich; he was a little deaf, but very sharp. In 1935, he had been in New York working for
Paris-Soir
, which commissioned him to ghostwrite, under the byline of some prominent black person, a series of pieces on Harlem. Having read that Josephine was returning to America, Riess decided to ask her to be his “author.”

She was delighted. “She clapped her hands like a happy child. She introduced me to her husband, an Italian count with small eyes and a little mustache. ‘We live at the St. Moritz,' said the count, and we all drove to this hotel. But when people in the hotel saw the countess was a colored person, their faces froze. The concierge explained that the count was welcome, but not his wife. And this man that for years had lived off his wife moved in. Josephine, her maid, Mrs. Sawada, and I stood outside on the street.”

“I took Josephine around in the consulate car,” said Miki Sawada. “We went to several hotels, but were turned down. To top it off, the consulate chauffeur began to complain that he didn't want to be seen driving a black woman. In the end, I took her to my studio where I did my painting and told her she could stay there.

“ ‘America will not welcome home her own daughter,' she said in tears. I could not believe this could be the same woman I had seen in Europe, standing triumphant on the stage, showered with flowers. Here she was huddled before me on the floor, weeping.”

Remembering the letter she had written Miki—“I don't want to be refused in a hotel”—you find yourself wondering why she had swept into the St. Moritz. Had she gone there intentionally to create a problem? Did she have too much faith in the power of celebrity? In Miki's being the wife of a diplomat? Did she feel immunized by her own fame, believing it would save her from the indignities other blacks had to endure?

It is possible that she was just being naive, trusting too much in
Pepito's ability to perform miracles. (Poor Pepito, he had dreamed with her, and with her he had become more than himself, a hustler transformed by his obsession. But how could a newcomer to America have known how deep racism ran, and in what genteel places? I think this was the first time he ever failed Josephine, and I also think it was the beginning of the breach between them.)

“Naturally,” says Curt Riess, “she could have gone to Harlem and found a place to stay, but why should she have had to? In Paris, in all of Europe, she was a star, why here should she be a second-class woman?”

Her primary challenge was, of course, to reconquer the entire city of New York. And she lived in various places while she was making the effort. First, she left Miki's studio for Curt Riess's hotel, the Bedford, on East Forty-fourth Street. “It was a hotel of artists and actors and newspaper people,” Riess says. “There she was admitted. She was by no means sad. She got a penthouse with a terrace, and spent a fortune on toys—dolls, electric trains, she played for hours on the floor. And she ate. I never saw anyone eat like that.” (She may have been living at the Bedford, but she sent postcards from the St. Moritz as though she were staying there. Not being able to accept the rejection, she ignored it.) She did not ignore Curt Riess. “Yes, she had a romance in New York,” he says. “With me.”

Later, she was the houseguest of Sylvio Romano, an Italian movie star. A friend of Pepito's, he and his younger brother, Annio, lived on East Sixtieth Street. “She stayed with us for a month or two,” Annio says. “I used to play guitar for her when she wanted to learn a song.

“She could read people's minds, and she had the softest skin. Once when she took a shower, she opened the door and asked me for a towel, and I saw that body. Mama mia! She was like an angel coming from the sky, she was beautiful.”

To gather material for their
Paris-Soir
series, Curt Riess and Josephine went to Harlem. “Some friends held a nice welcome-home party for her,” he says, “but the result was not nice. It was Josephine who made the mistake. To show the difference between her and the ladies and gentlemen of Harlem, she insisted on speaking only French, which few of them could understand. It was childish, but amusing. She was eager to make them realize she had outgrown Harlem.”

While waiting for
Follies
rehearsals to begin—they were put off several
times—there were diversions. Josephine went to the premiere of
Porgy and Bess
, and afterward to a party for its composer, George Gershwin, given by publisher Condé Nast in his Park Avenue apartment. One of the other guests, Gloria Braggiotti (then fashion editor of the
New York Post
), asked Josephine why she was wearing green fingernails. “To be different,” she said.

Lucius Beebe, a chronicler of high society, was also present, and reported an exchange between Josephine and Beatrice Lillie, the comedienne then appearing with Ethel Waters in
At Home Abroad
. (One top white star, one top black star, Lillie and Waters mirrored the pairing of Fanny Brice and Josephine.)

Miss Lillie (who was Lady Peel, by virtue of marriage to an English lord) had listened, Beebe said, as Josephine “in a flood of French” went on about “how much pleasure she took in Miss Lillie's performances, how she envied her wit . . . and was overwhelmed at this so happy and providential concurrence of kindred spirits.” When Josephine came to a stop, Lucius Beebe contended, “Miss Lillie looked up and said: ‘Honeychile, yo' mighty good yo'self.' ”

On October 13, Josephine flew home to St. Louis, stopping first in Chicago.
SOCIALITES WELCOME FOREIGN NOBILITY
, boasted the
Chicago Defender
, reporting that its editor, Robert S. Abbott, and Mrs. Abbott had entertained the Count and Countess Abatino at a reception attended by hundreds who “came to bask in the sunshine of the charm and the vivaciousness of the honoree.”

Billy Baker was conspicuous by his absence.

If Josephine wasn't looking up old husbands, she and Pepito did manage to spend one evening with an old friend. They went to see Lydia Jones, who had been Josephine's first roommate in Paris.

Lydia had been working at the Cotton Club when she met Ed Jones. “He came in one night, said, ‘I like you, would you have dinner with me?' and all the girls asked me, ‘Don't you know who that is? He is one of the richest men in Chicago.' ”

One of the three Jones brothers who had made a fortune in the numbers racket (they were so powerful that Al Capone bought them out, rather than starting a war with them), Edward Jones adored Lydia. He married her, making her Lydia Jones Jones, festooned her with diamonds, set her up in a mansion in Chicago.

“The time the
Defender
gave the big party for her,” Lydia says,
“that's when she and Pepito came to our house and had dinner. Our cook had prepared soul food, and Pepito couldn't get enough fried chicken.”

Leaving Pepito in Chicago, Josephine flew to St. Louis. “She came alone,” her brother Richard said. “She just slept and ate, that's all. She slept with our grandmother, who was surrounded by monkeys and parakeets. I was married then, and Margaret was married, and Willie Mae was already dead. I spent time with Josephine, and my wife was vexed, she was jealous, but I said, ‘I'm just going to see my sister. I haven't spent time with her in fourteen years.' ”

“I was not reared up with Aunt Tumpy, I did not know her,” says Richard, Jr. “When I finally met her in 1935, I was very aware that she was famous, and I was very aware she looked so different from Sister—my Aunt Margaret—and so much lighter than my father. My father was proud that I could dance, and he took me in front of Aunt Tumpy, and I had to dance for her, between the living room and the kitchen of my grandmother's apartment. I did a split, I stood on my head, I did a kind of shuffle, but I didn't like it because they made me wash before I got to Aunt Tumpy.

“I was six years old, and she just looked at me with her aunt smile, no applause. You know, she was the star of the family, so nothing impressed her. But she was impressed with my father, she bought him a truck.”

She was also impressed with Margaret's husband, handsome, light-skinned Elmo Wallace. Margaret told me that Josephine pulled her aside and said, “Oh, Sister, where did you find that good-looking man?”

Still, Richard, Jr., says, “I think Aunt Tumpy was absolutely flabbergasted that the beautiful house she had bought them was gone. Now, my grandmother's apartment was on the second floor, and you had to go downstairs to the outdoor toilet. Josephine Baker had to go outside! She had to ask me to get her a basin of water so she could wash up, because there was no bathroom.”

“She didn't appreciate it,” says Helen Morris. Seventeen years old at the time, Helen remembers Josephine's entertaining the fire department. “My brother Virgil was a fireman, and one day she had all the firemen come over and eat dinner with her. She was wearing a long velvet gown, and as soon as one of those firemen would step on it, she'd stop dead till they got off. She would wear those costumes around that little apartment, she just dusted the floor with them.”

In St. Louis, in 1990, Helen took me to meet Beredester Harvey, another Martin family friend. “When Josephine came home in 1935, it was Depression time,” Beredester said, “and she would be sweeping around, coming in and out in these gorgeous robes, and everybody in the next houses would run outside. She'd just stand downstairs and talk with the neighbors, and she'd be wearing an evening dress. But you see, we wasn't accustomed to that, why, it was like having the queen of England to visit.”

Beredester said Josephine had always been the talk of the neighborhood. “We would read about her accomplishments, she was a star in our life because we were so young, and it was just exciting. Helen and I tried to pattern after her. Helen's brother Ikey built us a stage in the yard, and we would dress up and be showgirls.”

The St. Louis Argus
reported that, on this brief trip, Josephine had “succeeded in eluding the watchful eyes of the press.” She visited the site where the Booker Washington had stood, she went to a grammar school and spoke to little children in French and English, but she wouldn't talk to reporters, and neither would her relatives, who “declined to divulge anything about her visit or her past history.” Then suddenly, she was gone. She flew back to Chicago, picked up Pepito, went to a football game, and returned to New York.

With Pepito, Zito, and the Sawadas, she went to the French Casino to see a revue imported from the Folies-Bergère, and staged by Jacques Charles. She also went to the Cotton Club, where the Nicholas Brothers were appearing. “Harold and I had heard she was the toast of Paris,” Fayard Nicholas said. “And we were going to be in the
Follies
with her, so we went and introduced ourselves.”

The Nicholas Brothers were fixtures at the Cotton Club, they had been there when Ethel Waters introduced “Stormy Weather,” they had worked with Duke Ellington and Lena Home and all those gorgeous showgirls. “Most of the showgirls,” Fayard said, “were real tall, almost six feet, and light brown, teasin' brown, they called it.”

But most of the audience was lily-white, especially the ones in the good seats. So when Fayard caught sight of Josephine up front, he was surprised. “It was the first time I had seen a black seated at ringside. This was one of the most famous clubs in America, and it was in Harlem, where mostly black people lived, but they couldn't come to see these shows. Except for maybe Bill Robinson, or the Jones brothers from Chicago. But even those people they would sit them on the side, see?
So when I saw Josephine Baker sittin' ringside, I said, ‘Wow! it must be because she is a French citizen.' ”

Josephine appeared as a guest star on
The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour
, was introduced to the radio audience by the crooner Rudy Vallee, and somewhere along the line, met Joe Louis, who invited her home for dinner. “His young wife is charming,” she commented. “Joe is calm, silent. He gives an impression of strength that—I don't know why—reassures and comforts me.”

October passed. Sixteen thousand Italians gathered in Madison Square Garden to rally for Mussolini, Haile Selassie was nominated for the Nobel peace prize, and Josephine found a photographer who made her happy. His name was Murray Korman, and he lit her so she looked white. She had hundreds of copies made to send to friends in France.

“My dear Carlos,” she wrote to Carlo Rim (she continued to add an
s
to his name), “you see me as I am here. But be assured, if I want to make a telephone call in the street, I'm still a
négresse
.”

Rim said the pictures made him sad. In them, she sported “a light complexion. . . . You do not recognize her.”

She promised she would be back when the show was over, “and I will find again my France, and my freedom.”

Finally, rehearsals began. Through what Pepito called a curious twist of destiny, the
Follies
would be playing the Winter Garden, in the same building that had housed the Plantation, where Josephine had worked as a chorus girl.

Now her days were filled with new dances, new songs by Vernon Duke and Ira Gershwin. Vincente Minnelli (then twenty-eight years old and responsible for scenery and costumes) told me, “Josephine kept asking the count how she should express herself. She didn't like what we did with her. I made her a beautiful gold dress for the ‘Maharanee' number, and Balanchine staged a great dance called ‘5
A.M
.' for her.

“Everybody would come at the same time and ask for changes—‘I can't dance in that dress,' ‘The lighting is too strong'—and I don't know how I did not become crazy.”