The Many Faces of Josephine Baker

by Peggy Caravantes

  Creditors still hounded Joséphine to sell the property and pay all her debts. She ignored them and went back to Paris to appear in another show. In June the situation had become so critical that all of the utilities were turned off. In desperation, Joséphine invited some previous donors, bankers, and old friends to Les Milandes to discuss her finances. As a result, the popular French actress Brigitte Bardot went on television in 1964 to make an appeal for donations to save Les Milandes from its creditors. She spoke for only two and a half minutes, but donations poured in from all over the world. Although many people rescued her, not everyone thought Joséphine deserved charity, and several European newspapers ran criticisms. In Denmark, a man wrote a letter to the editor: “I, too, need $400,000. I don’t have a castle or jewels or umpteen kids, but I need it because I’m broke. Is it necessary to live in a castle? Why doesn’t Miss Baker just sell the whole thing and live in a decent house and bring up her kids like we all do?”

  Following advice from others in the entertainment business, Joséphine set aside the donated money to care for the children. Although grateful for the assistance, she realized she would need 20 times more than she had to save the château and keep her children properly cared for. Joséphine continued to perform, keeping up a hectic pace as she had done years earlier, when she was much younger. On July 25, 1964, at age 58, she had a heart attack—the first of several she would suffer through over the next few years. Following her two-month hospitalization in Paris, a weakened Joséphine returned to Les Milandes. Unable to manage the children, she boarded them at a lycée, a French school for older children located about 12 miles from Les Milandes.

  After a few weeks of rest, Joséphine resumed her grueling schedule—performances wherever she could schedule them, and appeals at conferences to gain support for the College of Brotherhood, which she still hoped to establish. She also spoke to the press about her aspirations for the college: “These youngsters will come here to learn how to live together…. We’ll have a series of professors from different countries, of all colors and religions and all standards of life to teach the essentials of brotherhood.” Creditors hovered over Les Milandes, waiting to confiscate it. The children, now all in their teens, took advantage of their mother’s absences and lack of discipline when she was home. They became wild, displaying bad manners and a lack of respect for anyone but themselves. Joséphine’s sister Margaret, who for many years had helped care for the children, was their most severe critic. She called them liars, cheaters, and spongers and even accused one of them of having stolen money she had saved for her own daughter’s medicine. Harry Janes and his wife, an English couple who often cared for the children in the summer, were shocked at the children’s irreverence and bad manners. Despite their atrocious behavior to others, the kids remained loyal to one another.

  Joséphine herself admitted, “The older children are beginning to worry me.” When she heard her first adopted child named Jean-Claude telling Moïse that he was superior because he was white, Joséphine couldn’t believe that a member of her Rainbow Tribe was racist. For just a little while, she wondered whether or not her plan to bring these adopted children together in a show of universal brotherhood had been a good idea.

  11

  Losing Les Milandes

  BY EARLY NOVEMBER 1965, THE creditors had become so insistent on repayment that Joséphine went to Morocco to beg King Hassan II for aid. In previous travels to that country, she became good friends with a woman named Kenza, who had close ties to the king. Joséphine relied on that relationship to persuade the king to help her financially. The monarch responded generously, giving her a $6,000 check, large enough to delay foreclosure on Les Milandes. He also promised her an annual donation of $20,000 to care for the children.

  In July 1966, Fidel Castro invited Joséphine and her children to Cuba to celebrate the seventh anniversary of his revolution. He offered to pay all the family’s expenses. Joséphine accepted the invitation, and she and the children enjoyed a peaceful vacation in a villa by the sea, about two miles from Havana. Joséphine gave a speech and sang for workers in the sugarcane fields. After leaving Cuba, Joséphine and the children went to Buenos Aires to see Jo. They had such a good visit that he agreed to come to the château for Christmas. Despite the restful trip, Joséphine became ill almost as soon as she arrived back in France. She had a recurrence of her intestinal problems from many years before and had to undergo a five-hour operation. The hospitalization costs added to her financial woes, and she decided to ask Castro for help since he had been so generous while she was in Cuba. He replied immediately that he was going to send her a present, which Joséphine interpreted as a pledge to provide financial assistance. Each day Joséphine anxiously awaited the mail’s arrival. When Castro’s present finally arrived, she was shocked to discover it was merely a box of two dozen oranges and six grapefruit.

  Joséphine could have saved the château and solved many of her financial problems by selling some of the property, but she refused because she continued to dream of putting an international College of Brotherhood there. Still ignoring her financial straits, in 1967 Joséphine invited a team of Danish architects to visit Les Milandes for a month to develop a master plan for the design of such a college. They created a detailed proposal, for which Joséphine managed to avoid paying them. However, her creditors could be put off only so long, and 1968 brought about their demands for the sale of Les Milandes. The Olympia Theatre’s director, Bruno Coquatrix, intervened on her behalf and got the sale annulled. Then he allowed her to perform at his theater to earn money to pay off her creditors. On June 6, after a short time there, she learned of the assassination of Attorney General Robert Kennedy. She left the show to fly to the United States so she could attend his funeral services at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

  Joséphine took her five oldest sons with her to the funeral. For each of them she purchased a navy blazer, gray flannel slacks, and black shoes. During the entire flight Joséphine embroidered tiny red-, white-, and blue-striped flags and the word FRANCE on each of the blazers. When he heard about the travel, Coquatrix was dismayed that she had bought six round-trip tickets that cost more than she had earned performing in his show. Worse still, Joséphine had a mild stroke upon her return to France. Her creditors backed off for a short while, but on September 22, 1968, she was served with an eviction notice.

  France had a law that a family with children could not be evicted during cold weather, so she actually had until March 15 to remove herself and her family from the premises. Her sister Margaret still owned a house in the village that had sprung up around Les Milandes, and Joséphine and her children could have gone there to live. But Joséphine would not even consider this option, and in early 1969, she quietly left Les Milandes and moved to Paris to stay with her younger children in a cramped two-bedroom apartment provided by Marie Spiers, the wife of Joséphine’s musical accompanist.

  Moïse explained what it was like for him and the other children to leave their home for the last time:

  When we left Les Milandes at the end of the school vacation, we were convinced that we would never see our château again. Still, in our heart of hearts, we hoped for a miracle. That came from living with Maman. We’d seen her move mountains so often…. “Not this time,” Akio insisted. He knew best. After all, he was the oldest, the boss, the one Maman left in charge in her absence. Jean-Claude, Brahim, Mara and I, the family “tough guys,” decided to knock down the cabin we had built in the woods. If we couldn’t enjoy it, no one would! Armed with pickaxes from the toolshed, we set to work angrily. As the cabin fell to bits, so did our childhood.

  With the château empty, Joséphine’s creditors moved in and began to auction off her personal and household goods.

  Joséphine’s personal objects put up for sale at the auction of household items to help pay her debts. © Pierre Vauthey/Sygma/Corbis

  French film actor Jean-Claude Brialy, who had recently purchased a restaurant in Paris, inv
ited Joséphine to perform in his cabaret beginning on March 27, 1969. She agreed, but before the opening, the purchasers of Les Milandes claimed they were moving into the château prior to March 15. In Joséphine’s eyes, the property was hers until that date. She left the children in Paris with Marie Spiers and returned to the château, where she barricaded herself in the kitchen. She notified reporters and photographers about what she was doing and posed for pictures while giving numerous interviews about her plight. She first told them, “I will not leave.” And then later to a reporter for Le Figaro, she said, “I’m not bitter. We can all live in a tent.” Fewer than 40 years before, Joséphine had been named the richest black woman in the world. Now she was destitute and effectively homeless.

  The new owners of Les Milandes were tired of her dramatics, and on March 12 at 7:00 AM, eight brawny men forced their way into the house. They grabbed Joséphine by her head, arms, and legs and roughly carried her outside. It was raining, and they dumped her on the wet ground. She was still in her nightgown and had a plastic shower cap over her bald head. With a blanket wrapped around her knees and holding a kitten, she sat shivering on the château’s front steps for seven hours. Eventually Henriette Malaury, a neighbor, took pity on her and contacted a judge who ruled that Joséphine could stay in the château three more days. But by then Joséphine had already fallen ill. She collapsed on the steps, and an ambulance took her to a hospital in Perigueux, a nearby village.

  While in the hospital, she scribbled her final thoughts about Les Milandes on a tablet:

  It was here that my Rainbow Tribe got its start. I hope that in years to come my children will represent every point of view as well as all colors and religions, because that is where true freedom lies. My young ones haven’t let me down. They are genuine brothers and sisters who deeply love one another. The Rainbow Tribe has advanced us all a thousand years.

  With her usual resilience, Joséphine regained her strength quickly. Just two weeks after collapsing, she was performing at the Paris cabaret, where owner Jean-Claude Brialy served as her master of ceremonies. He referred to the cabaret as Chez Joséphine for as long as she performed there. On opening night, a large group of famous performers—including Italian actress Sophia Loren, Princess Grace of Monaco, British musician Mick Jagger, and French actor and businessman Alain Delon—attended to show their support for Joséphine; many of them she barely knew. She gave 57 performances, one every night of the week except Mondays when the restaurant was closed.

  In June, while the children were not in school, Joséphine took them to Spain to vacation with some friends. Then in late July, she traveled to Monaco to give a benefit performance for the country’s Red Cross, of which Grace Kelly was president. Princess Grace had been in the Stork Club the night Joséphine was denied service and admired Joséphine’s spirit in standing up to the club owner and later to Walter Winchell. She said, “I wonder if I could have done the same.” Over the years Princess Grace had followed Joséphine’s activities and was familiar with her Rainbow Tribe, her desire for a College of Brotherhood, and her battle to hold on to Les Milandes.

  During the rehearsal for the benefit, the two women met, and Princess Grace discovered that Joséphine and her children were in effect homeless.

  GRACE KELLY

  Born in Philadelphia in 1929, Grace Kelly decided at an early age to become an actress. After finishing high school, she went to New York to enroll in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. When she was unsuccessful in getting acting roles on Broadway after graduation, she became a model for magazines like Cosmopolitan and Redbook. The film industry boomed after World War II, and Grace soon found success acting in movies. She starred in 11 films and over 60 television productions. She played opposite many of the famous male actors of the day, and in 1954 she received the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Country Girl.

  While at the Cannes Film Festival in Paris in 1950, she met Prince Rainier Grimaldi III of Monaco, who was searching for a bride. The cool sophistication of the beautiful blonde appealed to him, and he decided to ask Grace to become his wife. After the two married, she became Princess Grace of Monaco. Her husband insisted she give up her acting career and even banned her films in Monaco. The couple had three children: Caroline, Albert, and Stéphanie. In 1982, Grace was driving her Rover with her youngest daughter, Stéphanie, as a passenger. Grace suffered a mini-stroke, causing her to lose control of the car, which plunged down a cliff. After 24 hours in a coma, the princess died at the age of 52.

  The princess arranged for the Monacan Red Cross to give Joséphine a $20,000 down payment on a $100,000 villa in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, a coastal town about three miles from Monte Carlo. She also arranged for a guaranteed mortgage so Joséphine would never have to worry about being evicted. From the villa that Joséphine named Villa Maryvonne, she could see the Grimaldi castle where Grace and Prince Rainier lived. In September the children came from Spain to join their mother in their new home. Joséphine’s sister Margaret moved nearby so that she could help care for the Rainbow Tribe.

  Joséphine easily fit into the simple, quiet lifestyle of Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, where she made no effort to have people recognize her. However, sad feelings often overwhelmed her, because as the children grew older, they drew further away from her. The 10 sons, only seven years apart in age, became wild and unruly teenagers. Growing up under the care of nannies and nurses, the children had bonded with one another, not with their parents. Now in young adulthood, their relationship to Joséphine was not a close one. Her disapproval of their drinking, wearing hippie-style clothing, and staying out most of the night had no effect on them. Sometimes she blamed the situation on their not having had a father and felt guilty about having driven Jo away.

  Unfortunately she could not remedy the situation since she had little time to remain at home and nurture closer ties to her children. She still had to earn a living to support all of them, and doing so became more difficult with each passing year. In her mid-60s, Joséphine no longer received invitations to be in the large, glamorous shows. Rather, she performed mostly at clubs, hotels, or charitable events.

  In 1970, Joséphine again appeared at the annual Red Cross Gala in Monte Carlo. Even though she was no longer a big star, she had not been forgotten. A distinguished committee wanted to lobby for her to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She refused the idea, saying, “I don’t deserve this great honour. It should be shared by each man and woman on this earth who struggles to love and live in peace with his neighbor and himself. We’re all created in God’s image and we’re all each other’s redemption, resurrection and miracle. I believe in redemption. I believe in resurrection. I believe in miracles.”

  Even as her other children withdrew from her, her 13th child, 27-year-old Jean-Claude Rouzaud, grew closer to Joséphine and helped to find her jobs performing. When he visited her at Maryvonne, he acted as an older brother to the other children and sat at the head of the table at meals. His unofficial role as caretaker in the family was not well received by the rest of the Rainbow Tribe, many of whom considered him an outsider. One time, after some rebellion by the children, Joséphine surprised them by announcing that the second Jean-Claude would read a letter from her doctor. “Dear Boys and Girls,” read Jean-Claude, “You are being very mean to your mother. You are killing her. If you don’t start being nice soon, she will die.” As he concluded, Joséphine stood for a minute, almost as though she were going to bow, and then ran to her bedroom. The letter and her actions frightened the younger children, and the youngest, Stellina, started to cry. One of the older boys scoffed, “Don’t be silly. It’s an act. She’s nutty. Leave her alone.”

  However, Jean-Claude recognized how much Joséphine yearned to be a good mother to the Rainbow Tribe. He explained, “For fun, she would take all of us out to a restaurant together to eat and dance. Of course, it was always at the expense of someone else, but it was fabulous. Mostly she liked to go for walks, or to an amusement park or the theatre. Her
favorite outing was the zoo. She loved to see the animals through the eyes of the children.”

  In 1972, Joséphine received a welcome invitation: the American promoter Jack Jordan—who had arranged for her to appear at Carnegie Hall after the civil rights march on Washington—asked her to perform there again. This time proceeds from the four performances would benefit the United Nations Children’s Fund, otherwise known as UNICEF.

  UNICEF

  The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) was founded in 1946 to provide food, clothing, and health care to European children suffering from famine and disease after World War II. It became a permanent part of the United Nations seven years later, and it is now active in 190 countries and territories. UNICEF’s goal is to give children the best start in life so that they can have a bright future. It promotes education for girls, immunizations against common childhood diseases, and sufficient nourishment to grow strong, healthy bodies. UNICEF also works to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS among young people.

  In times of dire emergency, UNICEF is present to relieve suffering and to prevent exploitation. According to its mission statement, the organization is committed to ensuring special protection for the most disadvantaged children—victims of war, disasters, extreme poverty, disease, and those with disabilitie—so that they will have a world in which the rights of all children are recognized.

  The shows would also be a celebration of the 50 years since Joséphine first appeared in the road company of Shuffle Along. At first she was reluctant to go to America again. She protested, “Nobody wants me. They’ve forgotten me.” But Jordan and her sister Margaret convinced Joséphine that she should give it a try, and plans were made for her to travel to the United States in 1973. Before she left, Marshal Tito, president of Yugoslavia, invited Joséphine to visit him and his wife to talk about the possibility of helping her establish the College of Brotherhood. Although Tito offered to let her use a small castle for her school, Joséphine realized she no longer had the energy to pursue such an involved endeavor. Nothing else ever came of the idea.