All Blood Runs Red

by Phil Keith

  In 1919, at age thirteen, she was dancing on street corners in St. Louis, living in cardboard lash-ups, working part-time as a waitress and scrounging food from the trash bins behind the restaurant where she worked. Her dancing saved her: she attracted the attention of the director of the St. Louis Chorus and ended up as a dancer in a vaudeville show at age fifteen. Her natural talent, smile and admirably long legs led to other gigs and a move to New York and the Harlem Renaissance. She performed in a number of revues, and when the opportunity came to join La Revue Negre, in Paris, she jumped at it. At that time, Paris was having its own version of the Harlem Renaissance, called Le Tumulte Noir.

  At age nineteen, Baker was a sensation: she had been convinced to perform on stage all but nude. Her signature costume became a string of oversize pearls and a belt of fake bananas. Her gyrations and the overtly sexual nature of her performances left many customers breathing heavily and thinking thoughts about activities that did not involve the wearing of garments. At the height of her fame, Baker had Parisian women coating their skin with oils that would make them look darker. (Josephine identified as African American but her father was most likely white and she, therefore, was a very light-skinned black woman.) There were Baker robes, pajamas, and banana belts, and for the younger girls, Baker dolls. A special pomade was manufactured to help provide the signature forehead curl “Ba-kir” wore constantly.

  In all other respects, she was a complete naïf. She was barely literate and although she had been married briefly, back in America, to a Pullman porter, she was extremely gullible and easily swayed. Thankfully, she had met and come under the protection of Bricktop, who helped guide her through her enormous fame and popularity in France.

  “Oh, how she could wear clothes,” Bricktop remembered, “although her fame would rest a lot on her ability to perform without them. I became her big sister. She’d come into Le Grand Duc and ask me about everything. She’d say, ‘Bricky, tell me what to do.’ She wouldn’t go around the corner without asking my advice.”

  Baker became well-known to Eugene Bullard as well, and Baker often babysat for Bullard’s daughters. There is a tantalizing wisp or two of evidence that the two may also have been lovers, at some point, but there is no firm proof. Again, as with Bricktop, neither one of them mentioned the other in their separate memoirs as being intimate with one another. They were surely well acquainted and spent a great deal of time together—why ignore their mutual attractions? Was it, perhaps, to keep any affair quiet? It is impossible, now, to know.

  There are other intriguing commonalities between the pair. Bullard never renounced his American citizenship, but Baker did. She became a citizen of France in 1937. Bullard had become a citizen automatically upon his being wounded in battle for France in the Great War. Both ended up working for the Deuxième Bureau, an espionage agency, in 1939, and both were honored, post–World War II, by the French government for their work on behalf of France during the war.

  Baker and Bullard were also fellow club owners. Josephine opened her nightspot in December 1926. The timing was perfect because during the last half of that delirious decade, there were still plenty of customers and expatriate dollars to go around.

  As what the Americans called the Roaring Twenties continued, the money rolled in. Eugene Bullard was able to pay his powerhouse talent and share enough of the proceeds with Bricktop to keep her happy and not interested in going elsewhere to earn more. He could also afford to pay for good staff and top-flight bartenders—and some major muscle: he hired Charlie “Blink” McCloskey, the former heavyweight prizefighter who Bullard had known prewar. “Blink” would be his ever-faithful doorman and bouncer for many years.

  Bullard presided over a nightclub that was “the” place for the well-heeled and fashionable to congregate. Like Zelli’s, he had the business designated as a “bottle club” so it could stay open all night. Soon he was greeting and in some cases befriending a new wave of celebrities, all of whom wanted to enjoy the cozy and smoke-filled confines of Le Grand Duc. Among these new habitués were Clifton Webb, the actor, dancer, and singer who appeared in numerous movies and stage plays and was twice nominated for an Academy Award; the actress Tallulah Bankhead, who had yet to make the transition from stage to screen star; and James J. “Jimmy” Walker, who in 1926 became mayor of New York City. Pablo Picasso was a regular, too. Although already a world-famous artist, he was nonetheless still struggling financially. Somehow, though, his bills at Le Grand Duc always got paid. His presence and cachet (as far as Bullard was concerned) far outweighed the cost of his champagne.

  Picasso was not the only famed artist who drank bubbly at Le Grand Duc. Two other regulars were Man Ray, best known for his portrait photography but also an avid painter, and Moise Kisling, Bullard’s old friend and compatriot from the Foreign Legion. Kisling was still living and painting during the day in his spacious loft not far from Le Grand Duc and spending many evenings in Bullard’s company at the club.

  Even though the money flowed into the nightclub as fast as the champagne flowed out of the ice-cold bottles, the relationship between Bricktop and Bullard could be tense, at times. Bricktop had been raised as a “genteel” sort under the guidance of a struggling yet doting mother. She was well educated, and although not a college graduate, she had gone through high school with high marks in an integrated environment. Eugene Bullard, as we know, came to manhood in the company of Gypsies, sailors, toughs, boxers, Legionnaires, and utter war. He smoked, he drank, he cursed, and had a hair-trigger temper—especially when it came to matters of race and racial prejudice. Hardly a week went by without some sort of confrontation and a bar fight that often spilled out into the streets.

  Bricktop witnessed scenes like the following: “I once saw him beat up three sailors with absolutely no help. [Bullard] was drunk, but when one of the sailors knocked him down, he sobered up the instant he hit the floor. One of the sailors was about to kick him, and he said, ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t hit a guy when he was down.’ The sailor said, ‘On your feet, nigger.’ Gene jumped up swinging. It took five cops to break up the fight.”

  For Bullard, it was all about maintaining the place he had carved out for himself in the café society of Paris, and protecting his turf. As Craig Lloyd states, “Bullard was undoubtedly a central figure in the dazzling panorama of late-night and early morning Montmartre.”

  Additionally, beyond the boozy champagne nights and soft jazz wafting over the ritzy crowds, there were local gangs to deal with, payoffs to be made to sticky-fingered suppliers, drunken patrons to toss out, and many starving artists or shell-shocked comrades from the war to support or protect.

  Their other rivalry was the business itself. Most likely, to keep Bricktop performing at the club, Bullard had given or sold her an ownership stake in Le Grand Duc. The two owners/managers didn’t always see eye to eye, but they made it work, and the partnership was very successful, lasting four profitable years, until each of them courted separate and bigger ambitions.

  Before moving on to those ambitions, one more Le Grand Duc–era item must be mentioned. In July 1928, a monument was dedicated at Garches, outside Paris, to all the American pilots who had flown for France in the Great War. The Lafayette Escadrille Monument became the final resting place of fifty of the sixty-eight American pilots who died in the war. The structure itself was constructed as a half-scale model of the Arc de Triomphe, with a subterranean crypt for the fliers entombed therein.

  This edifice would have been a great source of pride for Eugene Bullard, but one of the organizers behind the monument was his old enemy, Dr. Gros. He purposefully left Bullard off the monument as well as the guest list for the dedication. Fortunately, one of his old war buddies, Ted Parsons3, tracked Bullard down and took him to the ceremony. Dr. Gros was not pleased. Needless to say, Bullard was thrilled—because of the monument, and ruining the racist doctor’s enjoyment of the occasion.

  As the decade ended, B
ullard was ready to move on from Le Grand Duc, its owners, and those who worked there. But there was one more task to do for Bricktop—manage her wedding. In December 1929, she married Peter DuConge, a jazz saxophonist. Bullard was DuConge’s best man, and he arranged for the ceremony to be held at the same venue where he and Marcelle had exchanged their vows. Bricktop recalls that Bullard “guided us through the intricacies of a French marriage ceremony and prompted us when to say ‘oui.’”

  Then it was back to work. However, it would not be at Le Grand Duc. Bullard sold his ownership share of the club because he was about to preside over a nightclub that was completely his own.

  * * *

  1 His mother’s appellation was “because of his plump teddy-bear qualities.”

  2 Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (New York: Scribner, 1964).

  3 Edwin Charles “Ted” Parsons was already an experienced combat pilot when WWI began, having flown for Pancho Villa’s forces in 1915-16. He volunteered for France and even remained with the Lafayette Escadrille (where he met Gene) when all American pilots were invited to transfer to the Army Air Service. He finished the war as an “ace” with eight kills. He then became an FBI agent, private detective, film technical advisor for aviation and in WWII a pilot and instructor for the US Navy, ending the war with a Bronze Star and as a rear admiral. When he died in 1968 he was the last surviving ace from the Lafayette Escadrille.

  14

  L’ESCADRILLE WITHOUT WINGS

  The impact of the stock market crash that took place in the United States in October 1929 was not felt right away in Europe, but over time the effects were inescapable. It was probably not the best time for an ambitious nightlife impresario to strike out on his own.

  However, that is exactly what Eugene Bullard did. Though he had flourished at Le Grand Duc, he was restless. He’d had a hot and cold relationship with George and Madame Jamerson, who did indeed retain some ownership of the club, and there were continuing spats with Bricktop. His marriage was on the rocks and he needed a distraction to keep his focus on his work. Given his gifts as an impresario and the many people he knew in elite social circles, Bullard wanted to run his own establishment. With the dawn of the new decade, he began to see Le Grand Duc as a vision in his rearview mirror.

  By early 1931, he was ensconced in his own establishment, a bar at 5 rue Pierre Fontaine, not far from Place Blanche and the Moulin Rouge. He named his new club “The Squadron,” or, in French, “L’Escadrille,” in honor of his aviation service during the Great War, and perhaps also to recapture some of his “glory days” and the special camaraderie he had felt with so many of his pilot friends. In addition to the club, he also purchased a nearby gym at 15 rue Mansart that was named “Bullard’s Athletic Club.” It offered steam baths, workout facilities, a boxing ring, ping pong tables, and massages. Adding a gym to the night club was an inspiration: each complemented the other. Exhausted club patrons could revive with steam, exercise, and massages and then start the party all over again.

  By 1931, though, the Montmartre scene was finally feeling the impact of difficult times. The Wall Street collapse had triggered a worldwide recession as well as a full-blown depression in the United States. Money was tight, and the rich “fat cats” of the 1920s had slunk away to lick their financial wounds or were jumping out of windows. Deep-pocketed Americans no longer filled the pulsating clubs. Even the citizens of Paris were watching their purses and wallets with a great deal of worry.

  Like Bullard, Bricktop had branched out and then owned her own club, but by 1931 she would be forced to close it and return to singing for her supper.1 Even Joe Zelli had given up, returning to New York, where he got into the cheese and salad dressing business—a far cry from hot jazz and chilled champagne.2 One by one, other clubs and cabarets closed down. There were simply too many venues for the shrinking pool of patrons who still had discretionary cash.

  Bullard, however, seemed to be exempt. He had, of course, made many friends. His fame had spread across the city, and the fact that he spoke French, German, and a smattering of Italian as well as his native English made him much more cosmopolitan than most of his rivals. The gym helped, too, especially since his club patrons received preference for membership and could avail themselves of private lockers and dressing rooms.

  Also helping to underwrite the new nightclub was the occasional catering gig: large, society parties for those who could still afford such affaires magnifiques were still being held in the best neighborhoods of the city. One such extravaganza, whose entertainment was arranged and produced by Gene, was richly described in Craig Lloyd’s book, as follows:

  Bullard’s friendship with Parisian Oscar Mauvais, the owner of the club Jardin de Ma Sueur on rue Caumartin, resulted in his being hired for a major social event in the summer of 1931. Knowing of Bullard’s familiarity with Biarritz and his connections with African-American performers, Mauvais asked him to arrange part of the entertainment for a party at the Hotel Negresco in honor of King Alphonso XIII of Spain. The deposed monarch, who was still tangling with General Francisco Franco, had taken up residence in Paris after being exiled earlier that year by Franco’s Republican political insurgents. An American millionaire whose daughter had been married into the Spanish royal family was sponsoring the gala. Bullard’s task was to put together a troupe of dancers, dress them “in the old plantation costumes of colored folk,” and perform the high-stepping cakewalk.3

  Bullard hired nineteen dancers, including an instructor, Nettie Compton, and since a twentieth was needed, he joined the group in the two-hour rehearsals taking place each of the four days before the affair. Costumes were lent him by another Parisian friend, the ex-producer of the Josephine Baker revue.

  Bullard’s troupe, “laden with champagne appeased by a lot of hot coffee,” cakewalked into the grand ballroom at 3:00 a.m. to the beat of black American Hugh Pollard’s band. The king and other guests were delighted, giving them three encores. The entertainers were then treated to a huge supper in the hotel’s dining room, which the king visited, toasting and shaking hands with all of them.4

  That must have been some party, wondrous to behold, and amazing that it could be pulled off, given the constraints of a worldwide depression and the king’s abdication.

  Even during the difficult years of the early ’30s, Bullard was able to book the best acts. When Louis Armstrong came to Paris and encamped there for several months in 1934, he spent numerous nights at L’Escadrille. He was a sensational hit, and Bullard enjoyed many lucrative evenings with his club enveloped in “Satchmo’s” outsized personality.

  Armstrong and his third wife, Alpha, rented an apartment in the rue de la Tour Auvergne, and may have contemplated becoming an expatriate himself. “I just lazied around Paris for three or four months [and] had lots of fun with musicians from the States—French cats, too. And I’d do a concert now and then.” In his biography on Armstrong, Laurence Bergreen reports that the trumpet player enjoyed “socializing with other expatriate members of American café society, many of them black—Josephine Baker, Bricktop, Bobby Jones, and Arthur Briggs—taking his ease at Café Boudon, nursing aperitifs, observing the scene. He acquired a stature in Paris that he had never attained at home.”

  Armstrong and Bullard hit it off as friends, helped by both being black men from the Deep South who had escaped dire poverty. Those who still had the means to enjoy Parisian nightlife and acts like Armstrong, Bricktop, Fats Waller, and Josephine Baker needed a place to congregate and that spot, more and more, became L’Escadrille.

  Bullard’s Athletic Club flourished as well. His old pal from the war, Jeff Dickson, the man who had put up the bold $2,000 bet that Bullard could not get designated as a pilot, reappeared in Paris as a boxing promoter. He booked many of his contestants into Bullard’s gym to work out. The world bantamweight championship boxing match of 1934 was held in Paris between “Panama” Al Brown a
nd Young Perez, and both fighters trained at the Bullard Athletic Club.

  Bullard’s success had an impending cloud hanging over it, though: the same one causing increasing concern across France. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, Bullard and many of the old hands from the previous war grew very nervous. Here was the same enemy, supposedly taught a lesson in the “war to end all wars,” on the rise once again. Nazism was beginning to creep into every corner of Europe, and Paris was no exception.

  Bullard’s friend and fellow club owner Jocelyn Augustus Bingham, whom everyone called “Frisco,”5 recalled one day, in 1935, when the two went to their favorite brasserie to have one of their frequent luncheons. Several Germans entered the eatery and made some remarks to Bullard about being black. “Gene looked at them and told them they’d better leave the place or they’d be sorry. They didn’t. Instead, they sat down and ordered lunch. When it was served, Gene went over to the table, picked up a plate of spaghetti, and pushed it into the face of one of the Germans.”

  The resulting row required a number of gendarmes and several bystanders to separate Bullard and the Germans. He was willing to take them on—all of them at once. He held his own against the furious Aryans until the melee got untangled. The Germans were kicked out of the bistro, fuming, with threats of jail if they didn’t disperse. Bullard was, after all, a well-known local war hero, and he was practically immune from arrest; still, it was an ugly prelude of much worse yet to come.

  There was no escape for Bullard even in his own athletic club. He proudly tacked up the flags of all nations who had boxers and members in his gym. There were twenty-one national flags, including Germany’s, on display. One boxer who worked out there wanted another flag flown—the swastika of the Nazi Party. Walter Neusel was the so-called “Blond Tiger” of Germany. At his professional apex, in 1934, this heavyweight would take on the world champion, fellow German Max Schmeling, in front of a record one hundred thousand fans in Hamburg. Eugene Bullard, the welterweight who had been known as “Sparrow,” proved too much for Neusel, however.