Josephine Baker (83 page)

But when Bob came by, she said nothing.

After the April in Paris Ball, Josephine and I went to the reopening of Chez Bricktop, and the next night, we saw a Broadway show called
Raisin
. (It was a musical version of
Raisin in the Sun
.) Debbie Allen was the ingenue. “That girl should play the young Josephine in the movie of my life,” said Josephine.

Our next date took us back to the West Coast, and I thought we should go there as soon as possible. We had proved that only Josephine's presence on the scene could sell tickets. But she had decided on a detour to Istanbul, to celebrate the opening of a bridge across the Bosporus. “Jean-Claude, did you know it is a dream of mankind, to unite the Occident and the Orient?”

No, I didn't know, but I knew publicity in Istanbul would not help us sell the 3,734 seats in the Circle Star Theatre, twenty-five miles from San Francisco. Once again, it was I who was sent to California to smooth things over, while Moustique accompanied Madame to Turkey.

They may have made friends there, but Gasser Tabakoglu, Josephine's official translator, was not one of them. “She was nasty to me all during her stay,” he says. “She had arrived claiming to be the official ambassador of UNICEF, but two days later, Danny Kaye came, and he was furious. He too claimed to be the official ambassador, not Josephine. They were supposed to open the bridge together, but now he refused. It was finally decided that Josephine would come from the European side and Danny Kaye from the Asian side and they would meet in the middle of the bridge. There were so many people following them—children carrying flowers and dressed in folk costumes, sword dancers, diplomatic leaders and army officers—that the bridge started shaking.

“Josephine and Danny Kaye cut the ribbon, and didn't speak to each other. And when she was asked about her children, she claimed she even had a Turkish child, which was not true. When I finally put her on the plane, with flowers and the little dog, I said to myself, ‘Thank God she's gone!' ”

Gasser's troubles were over when Josephine's TWA flight left the ground, but her producers' troubles were just starting up again. She was to fly to London, stay overnight, and catch an early-morning flight to San Francisco. When the customs agent in London told her Moustique would have to be quarantined—“Even the queen cannot come in with a foreign dog”—Josephine, who had been attempting to hide the fist-sized puppy under her blouse, flew to France. Next morning, she learned there was no flight from Orly that would get her back to the States in time.

Even if all had gone according to plan, the scheduling would have been tight. Josephine was to arrive in San Francisco only a few hours before her opening. A press conference had been scheduled at the airport. All day, we waited. No Josephine. It was hot, and I felt something
bad was going to happen. I called London. She had come in on the flight from Istanbul, but after that, all traces of her had been lost.

Meanwhile, bulletins from the Circle Star were jubilant. Opening night was sold out. At 5
P.M
., people were already arriving to have dinner in the restaurant connected to the theater. By 6
P.M
., we decided to tell the press the truth. We didn't know where Josephine was.

Jack was a wreck. We'd messed up at the April in Paris Ball, lost money in Detroit; we were still coasting on six-month-old reviews from Carnegie Hall. If we flopped in San Francisco, it was over. Eight
P.M
. arrived, Josephine did not.

The next day, she got in, took one look at the theater-in-the-round, and exploded. “How can I change costumes in this livestock auction ring?”

“But Josephine,” said Jack, “we're going to have an electric golf cart.” “No,” she said, “I'm not a cow.” As though cows were customarily transported by golf cart.

We held a press conference, and she was cold but controlled—she'd been opening a bridge, mankind's dream, Danny Kaye was there, it's wonderful to be in San Francisco—until a pretty black girl asked, “Miss Baker, what do you think of black people in America today?”

She wheeled on the girl. “How can you use the words ‘black people'? Don't you know black is the same as nigger? We are colored people!”

The girl remained composed. “Miss Baker, I am black, and black is beautiful. You have been away from home too long, I'm sorry for you.”

A chill spread through the room, the press conference was over. That night, the show went well, though there were only three hundred people in the house; one of them was Alex Haley. Chauffeured by a theater employee, Josephine came on in the golf cart, like an Amazon on a horse, and caroled, “Hi, everybody, do you love me on my scooter?”

Afterward, they had kept the restaurant open for us, and we had dinner and champagne. We were faking it, trying to be cheerful, but it was like after a defeat in a war.

Back at the hotel, I was lying in bed, in the dark, filled with rage against Josephine. I had given up my club, my name, to go to America with her because she needed someone to protect her, and to put the blue pills under her tongue, but she was too crazy. To disappoint thousands of people, break her producers, wreck a show, it was too much. Idly, I considered strangling her. But she'd made enough front pages, and besides people would say I was her lover.

Josephine was psychic, she could always sense what I was thinking, and she came through the door from the bathroom and said, in her nice-little-girl voice, “Jean-Claude, don't look at Mother, I'm naked.” I didn't believe it. The way she said naked, it was an invitation. I've seen her so many times naked, in the dressing room, in the hospital, but in the intimacy of the bedroom? Am I crazy? No, I'm not, she is the snake, she is temptation, when she says no it's yes, when she says yes it's no.

I look. She's standing in front of a mirror, her back to me, the only illumination coming from the bathroom. In that half-light, I can make out—dimly—the little neck, the little breasts. The face I can't see very well. Her head is bald, except for a few downy tufts of gray hair. She seems so defenseless, my anger disappears. I just feel sad.

We were booked for four nights. She had missed the first, only a few people showed up on the second, and the third day, Jack Jordan disappeared, taking with him the last five thousand dollars in the box office. I convinced Josephine to play the show anyway. “If Jack isn't here tomorrow, we can keep the costumes in lieu of salary.” (Poor Jack had already paid for those costumes twice, but I was shameless.)

Only the tap dancer, dear Gene Bell, who was seventy-one years old in 1992, remembered San Francisco as a good time. “They gave us each a large dressing room stocked with liquor, and our names were written in gold on the doors.

“Josephine with the two dogs, and on the bicycle with rhinestones on her leather jacket—it was a killer show!”

It was a killer show, all right, it nearly killed Jack Jordan. He was still missing when we closed on Sunday. I had hired a security guard to watch Josephine's costumes. Even Yvonne Stoney was not allowed into the dressing room.

“San Francisco was a disaster,” Yvonne says. “I felt so bad about it because Jack and Howard had struggled to bring her over. I mean, when she came to Carnegie Hall, she didn't have anything, they had to practically buy her underwear, and from the reception she got there, I thought she would kiss their feet, but she treated them like dirt.”

It had been a long time since she'd kissed a man's feet. Yvonne remembers her saying, “Men fuck you and that's the end of it, they use you and abuse you and once they get what they want, they keep walking. I did all that when I was young, I don't need it anymore.”

Josephine, says Yvonne, “was a shrewd businesswoman, she always came out on top. I remember after Carnegie Hall, she had me pack
fifty-three thousand dollars in a paper bag, and then a shower cap, so she could hide it in her pocketbook, and not have to pay taxes on it. In San Francisco, she confiscated each costume as she took it off, before she walked out on us.”

In time, Yvonne forgave me for double-crossing Jack. “You had to be on her side, you were her son.”

A friend who was a director of Swissair loaned us a station wagon, and we sneaked the costumes to the airport. They were sent to Paris under the name of Jean-Claude Rouzaud. Josephine could show any nosy officials that she was traveling with nothing but her makeup and Moustique.

She and I were parting once again. “You were right,” I told her. “I am going to stay in America.”

“I knew it,” she said. “But don't go to Hollywood, go to New York. If you make it there, you won't need me
or
old Europe. And try to find us a theater for around Christmas. I am the Universal Mother, we do a family show, and mothers will come and bring their children, it will sell out.”

She could take your breath away. She stranded companies, audiences, managers, and drifted onto a plane that would take her someplace else without a care for the mess she left behind.

I went straight back to New York, and this time, Peter Brown had an idea for me. “I've booked the Palace for two weeks around New Year's Eve. Go to Nelle Nugent, she's Jimmy Nederlander's right hand, and tell her I'm willing to give you my option.”

I put on my gray mink coat, very European, and go out into the snow. I take a taxi to the Palace, and beard Nelle Nugent in her office. I'm on a holy crusade to bring joy to New York, this dreadful city without human feeling. “Madame,” I say, “my mother and I just finished a triumphal tour in America, we are free, and we would like the theater Peter Brown has been kind enough to offer us—”

“Triumphal tour?”
says Nelle Nugent. “What the hell are you talking about? We lost seventy-five thousand dollars on your show in Detroit!”

I gape. I'm from France, I don't know the Nederlanders own the Fisher Theatre in Detroit.

She throws me out. I'm back in the snow again. I see the people in Times Square, the faces of all those monsters, I'm in a foreign land, trying to make myself understood in a language I don't speak well.

Suddenly I remember a restaurant called Le Mistral to which I've been with Josephine. I go there and request an audience with Jean Larriaga, the
grand seigneur
of the place. He appears, a short Frenchman, leads me to the bar, listens to my woes. “We went bankrupt, the producer abandoned us, Mother went back to France, she wants me to find a theater for Christmas because we need money . . .”

Next thing I know, he's put me at a table to have lunch with six other people, and a woman is asking me about my brothers and sisters, and how old the youngest is. I tell her Stellina is ten. “How nice,” she says, and turns to the man next to her. “Jimmy, you must bring Josephine for Christmas, she has a little daughter the same age as our Christina.”

I deduce that this man is in show business, and give him the same spiel I'd tried on Nelle Nugent, adding only that Nelle Nugent has thrown me out of her office. He is baffled. “Don't you know who I am?” he says. “I'm Jimmy Nederlander. I
own
the Palace.”

Forty-five minutes later, we were in his office, and it was Nelle Nugent's turn to gape. (Only recently, she told me that when I came back to the Palace with her boss, she thought, “How could this guy find Jimmy Nederlander so fast? I can't find him myself!”)

Mr. Nederlander had me call Josephine. “I'm not talking to you,” she said. “You're a traitor.” I said Mr. Nederlander was booking her into the Palace, wasn't it wonderful? and he took the phone. “Miss Baker, your son is the fastest talker I ever met. I want you here tomorrow.”

Impossible. She couldn't leave the children, she was booked for the ball at Versailles, but her Jean-Claude knew everything, he could get the press releases started. Mr. Nederlander agreed, yet I was worried. Why was I a traitor? Back at Peter Brown's, I called Marie Spiers and asked what was going on.

After San Francisco, Josephine had gone to spend a few days with Marie in Paris, and Marie had confronted her with a copy of
France-Dimanche
. “You're hiding something from me.” The newspaper featured
pictures of Josephine and Bob Brady (“twenty years younger, and an American millionaire”), along with a story about the “shadow” over their happiness. I was quoted as saying, “Maman is not divorced from Jo Bouillon,” something I did not even know.

Josephine swore to Marie that there was nothing to the story. Again, it was “I don't know that man.” She was going to appear at the Versailles ball after all (I had convinced Jean-Louis Barrault to approach her directly—he told her, “France needs you”), and since I had been invited too, I decided to fly to Paris for a couple of days. I could attend the party and, while in town, clear up the
France-Dimanche
mystery.