As soon as she returned from her visit with Tito, it was time for Joséphine to head to the United States for her performances at Carnegie Hall, where her longtime friend, 80-year-old Bricktop, would introduce her. Joséphine’s return to the New York stage was marked by glittering, exaggerated costumes. On opening night, her 67th birthday, she appeared in a net body stocking that sparkled with beads and sequins. She wore a four-foot-high headdress made of orange feathers, and in her hand she held a rhinestone-studded microphone. For other performances she wore similar extravagant outfits. The show itself was a mixture of old and new songs, both of which were well received by New York audiences. For the four performances she earned $120,000, temporarily removing the specter of poverty.
After the time at Carnegie Hall, Joséphine wanted to return to Monaco, but Jack Jordan had arranged a two-month tour for her in the United States. Showing some of the stubborn spirit from her younger days, Joséphine told him: “I don’t understand what you are talking about because my English isn’t very good. But you know something? I listen when I hear the money. And it doesn’t sound like the right money … you keep on talking and when you get finished you let me know what the outcome is. Goooood night!”
With that challenge she went home to Monaco, only to find a new problem. Her older daughter Marianne, who was just entering her teens, had run away. Although she eventually returned, during the heartbreaking time she was gone, Joséphine developed severe irregular heartbeats. She was admitted to the American Hospital in Paris, where her heart was stopped and restarted to restore the rhythm. Doctors recommended that she have complete rest for at least four months and then a quieter lifestyle for a year. Joséphine could not obey their orders. She still had to earn a living to support herself and the children, and she insisted on meeting a contract obligation in Copenhagen, Denmark. She feared that if the public learned how ill she had been, she would get no more performance offers. Only a week out of the hospital, she was working her usual 12-hour days.
By September 1973, Jordan had amassed enough money to attract Joséphine back to the United States for the 17-city tour he had arranged. Jean-Claude accompanied her on the tour and began to use Baker as his last name. When Joséphine had a four-day break in the schedule, she accepted an invitation from Prime Minister Golda Meir to fly to Israel to celebrate the country’s 25 years of existence. Joséphine was one of only 450 invited guests. She attended the official activities, but she also visited in the home of an Arab porter she met at the Jerusalem International Hotel, where she was staying. He lived in the West Bank village of Bethany. At his home, she noticed the family used a block of ice to chill their food. When Joséphine returned to Jerusalem, she sent an electric refrigerator to his home. This was a generous act that she could not afford.
Because she took time to make arrangements about the refrigerator, Joséphine was a day late returning from Israel to her next performance in San Francisco. Jordan had to refund money to the sold-out crowd, and he lost thousands of dollars. He told Joséphine that he planned to take the lost money out of her pay. She responded by quitting the show. She had Jean-Claude pack up all her costumes and she returned home to France.
By this time, Jean-Claude was becoming tired of Joséphine’s unpredictable nature. He didn’t want to leave the United States, where he had hoped to stay and get work. To gain attention for himself, he talked freely to members of the press about Joséphine. One newspaperman claimed Jean-Claude announced Joséphine’s engagement to a Mexican artist, Robert Brady. Although Jean-Claude denied having done so, Joséphine threw a temper tantrum. Back in France, she dumped him. Jean-Claude was shocked: “I saw her use everybody, but I never thought she would do it to me. I said to myself: ‘But I am her son!’ It made no difference.”
Joséphine returned to New York for a weeklong Christmas show at the Palace Theatre on Broadway, an arrangement made by Jean-Claude before their split. The Palace was the most impressive vaudeville theater in America at that time. However, when she arrived, she did not receive the usual welcome for a star. Instead of her name being in large letters on the 10-story-high billboard, her name appeared only in small aluminum letters on the marquee. In addition, Jordan hired a group of picketers to march outside the theater to protest Joséphine’s having broken her contract with him.
Even worse, no efforts had been made inside the theater to even clean the stage, and the band seemed bored by her performance. Despite Joséphine’s hard work during rehearsals, opening night did not go well. Advancing age and poor health dimmed her memory, and she sometimes forgot the words to the songs as she sang. Despite a negative preshow review and a bad rehearsal, when the show opened, Joséphine sang 12 songs and made the accompanying costume changes, gave monologues, and danced the Charleston. At the end, the audience rose as one to give her a standing ovation that lasted 30 minutes.
Joséphine went through a remarkable transformation when she performed. People who saw her in the dressing room before the show could not believe the change that took place in front of their eyes. She seemed 20 years younger in the spotlight than she did in daylight. Thanks to makeup and stage lighting, the bags under her eyes disappeared. Her spine straightened and her thighs tightened. Her chin lifted and her head went back. When she received the cue to go onstage, the fading 64-year-old woman became a glamorous star filled with energy.
12
The Curtain Falls
WITH JEAN-CLAUDE NO LONGER at her beck and call, Joséphine took her nephew Richard Jr. with her as she made the rounds of galas and receptions in New York. Even after her many years of financial woes, she treated 20 people to a steak and champagne dinner at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The extravagant expense shocked Richard, and he asked her how she planned to pay for it. Her response was typical Joséphine: “I have an image to maintain and I’m going to maintain it.”
The expensive dinner caught the attention of a private New York club called Raffles, whose clientele were wealthy and well known. The small club hired Joséphine to perform during January and February 1974. Opening night brought out such celebrities as actresses Debbie Reynolds and Paulette Goddard, and artist Andy Warhol. Despite the glittering crowd, Joséphine was too tired to put on a good show. Yet for some reason, reviewers were kind about her poor performances, and she received invitations to several other nightspots. By April she was exhausted from performing so many shows, and she returned to Monaco.
Meanwhile, Jean-Claude had realized that Joséphine’s dropping him was the best thing that could have happened to his career. Using money saved from the sale of a nightclub he had owned in West Berlin, he went back to New York, where he kept the last name Baker and produced a French-language cable TV show that included documentaries, news programs, and dramas shown internationally. On West 42nd Street, he also opened a restaurant that he called Chez Joséphine.
Back at Maryvonne in Monaco, Joséphine continued to be plagued by money worries. She owed social security payments for her employees, and taxes to more than one government. She had huge telephone bills of as much as $800 a week; many of the calls were international. While she was gone, her children charged untold amounts at the local shops. Joséphine paid each of her creditors a little bit at a time, hoping to keep them happy until she could pay the bills in full. Because of her failing memory, she had the additional expense of having to hire a secretary named Marie-Joli to help with correspondence. Marie-Joli arrived for work on the first day driving a white Fiat. Joséphine took one look at it and decided she wanted such a car for herself. The secretary’s first correspondence for Joséphine was a letter to Gianni Agnelli, president of Fiat in Italy, asking him to give her a Fiat. He did.
Just as she almost despaired of ever being free of financial worries, André Levasseur, her costume designer for the past 10 years, proposed putting on a special celebration for that year’s Monacan Red Cross Gala. It would be a review celebrating Joséphine’s 50 years in French show business. Her former employer, cabaret owner Jean-Claude Bria
ly, agreed to be the master of ceremonies for Joséphine, which would tell her life story in song and dance. Although she would be onstage for most of the show, younger dancers would portray Joséphine as a young woman.
Joséphine onstage for the production of Joséphine with master of ceremonies, French actor Jean-Claude Brialy. © René Maestri/Sygma/Corbis
Joséphine was excited about the show, especially since her children would see her in a performance that reflected her early glory days for the first time. The revue received such acclaim from reviewers and audiences alike that the producers decided to take it to Paris. Joséphine rejoiced at the thought of returning to the scene of her earliest show-business victories. However, the big theaters refused to book the performance because of her poor health. The director at the Casino de Paris, where she had triumphed in earlier years, offered to make an exception if Joséphine allowed a young, promising black dancer to practice alongside her and be prepared to take her place if Joséphine should become ill. Joséphine refused, adamantly stating, “Nobody can take my place.”
Her refusal to have an understudy closed the door on any big theater possibilities, so the producers decided to use a former music hall called the Bobino Theatre.
Being in Paris again infused Joséphine with new energy as the show’s rehearsals continued throughout early 1975. Even her memory seemed improved, but the producers took no chances and placed large cue cards on the floor all around the Bobino stage. Before the official opening, a TV news crew interviewed Joséphine and asked her if her children had seen the show. They were all at school, but she told the newsmen, “At this moment it is good they are not here, because when I’m with them, I forget everything…. Only my children count. And right now it is necessary that I have peace and tranquility so I can give myself entirely to the public of Paris.”
BOBINO THEATRE
The Bobino Theatre was a small music hall in the neighborhood of Montparnasse on the left bank of the River Seine in Paris. For over 100 years, the city’s best singers appeared there. Located on the Rue de la Gaite, which means “street of joy,” it was surrounded by cafes, bars, and small restaurants. Its audiences were made up of students, workers, artists, and small-business people. To provide an appropriate setting for Josephine, the owners extended the stage, put new carpet in the building, enlarged the orchestra pit, and provided more space for costume storage The Bobino stopped functioning as a theater in 1983, after 183 years. Today it is a cabaret
The positive audience reaction to the show when it was performed in several small theaters convinced the producers that Joséphine was a hit, and they booked it weeks in advance. When the show opened on April 8, 1975, Joséphine appeared in costumes representing her lifetime of performances. The 34 songs she sang in 15 scenes also came from her life. She ended the show with “Paris Paname,” a new song written especially for her. The audience loved her and gave her a 30-minute standing ovation.
One reviewer praised her comeback as an eternal return. A dinner at the Bristol for 250 people followed and honored her 50 years in show business. The table centerpiece was a seven-tiered cake iced with spun sugar that Princess Grace helped her cut. It was 4:00 AM when Joséphine finally left the Bristol and her admirers.
After the final curtain fell on Wednesday night, the second evening of the performance, Joséphine and several of her co-stars went to a restaurant across the street from the theater to eat her favorite meal, spaghetti. Next she wanted to go dancing, but the others pled weariness and went home. Joséphine, only two months away from her 69th birthday, replied, “Tired? Young people are no fun anymore.”
Thursday, April 10, was a typical day—phone calls, a light lunch, and an afternoon nap. She had a 5:00 PM appointment with a journalist, so Pepito’s niece Lélia Scotto, who was staying with Joséphine, went to wake her up for the appointment. Joséphine was sleeping so soundly that the young woman hesitated to disturb her. She waited a while and then decided that it was rude to keep the journalist waiting longer. Lélia tried to awaken Joséphine but could not because, about an hour earlier, Joséphine had drifted into a coma caused by a stroke.
Joséphine triumphantly appears before an audience in her final performance at the Bobino Theatre in Paris.
© James Andanson/Sygma/Corbis
The doctor who responded to Lélia’s frantic call sent an ambulance to transport Joséphine to Pitié-Salpêtrière, a nearby hospital with the best emergency room in Paris.
Both Princess Grace and Joséphine’s sister Margaret rushed to the hospital upon hearing that Joséphine had been taken there. Doctors said there was a 70 percent chance Joséphine would be impaired if they performed surgery. Margaret refused to let them operate, knowing her sister would never have been happy if she could not walk or talk. Joséphine died at the hospital the next day on Saturday, April 12, at about 5:00 in the morning. Princess Grace issued a statement to the press, assuring all who had loved Joséphine that the star’s last years had been happy ones.
On the hotel bed where Lélia had been unable to rouse Joséphine was a pile of newspapers. Apparently Joséphine had been enjoying the enthusiastic reviews of her latest triumph. When she was 21, Joséphine had told Marcel Sauvage, one of her biographers: “I shall dance all my life. I was born to dance, just for that. To live is to dance. I would like to die breathless, spent, at the end of a dance.” She accomplished that goal, and although her death certificate showed “cerebral hemorrhage” [a type of stroke that causes bleeding inside the brain] as the cause of death, many who knew her well believed she died of joy over her triumphant return to the Paris stage at the age of 69.
On April 15, 1975, at 12:00 PM, a procession stretched across the city, carrying Joséphine’s body from the hospital to the Church of the Madeleine. It paused in front of the Bobino Theatre, where her name still blazed in lights. Gray, overcast skies added to the sober mood of the 20,000 mourners who turned out for the funeral. Only 3,000 attendees could fit inside the church; others amassed on the steps and spilled out onto the sidewalks of the square. The number of flashbulbs popping made it seem more like a theater opening than a funeral.
PITIÉ-SALPÊTRIÈME HOSPITAL
Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, located near the Seine River in Paris, is one of Europe’s largest teaching hospitals. However, it has a long and unusual history dating back to 1656 when King Louis XIV of France decided to rid Paris of some of the 50,000 beggars, homeless people, thieves, and prostitutes who roamed the streets each day. He ordered the design of a building to house these people. Construction began in 1620 on a site that previously housed a gunpowder factory. Since gunpowder’s main ingredient is saltpeter (potassium nitrate), the name transferred to the hospital, La Salpêtrière.
The building was completed in 1680, and 5,000 of the city’s poor—mostly women—were forced to stay in the hospital. In 1684, a women’s prison and juvenile detention home were added. For many years after that, the facility served as more of a detention center than as a hospital. Eventually, the hospital had four sections: detention for juveniles whom the city hoped to rehabilitate, a place for prostitutes, a women’s jail, and a large accommodation for women deemed insane.
Over time, the hospital developed a reputation for providing humane treatment of people with mental illness, and its researchers made great strides in the study of multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. In 1964, La Salpêtrière merged with another hospital, La Pitié, and today is known as Pitié-Salpêtrière. With a capacity for over 2,000 patients, the hospital provides more than 70 services.
Since she was a decorated war hero, Joséphine received a full military funeral. Pallbearers carried the heavy black coffin up the aisle to the spot where Joséphine’s military decorations rested on a purple pillow in front of the altar. The 24 flags of the French Army adorned the massive auditorium, and Jo and the children had placed a huge heart of red roses near the casket. After a few remarks by the priest, the family followed the coffin outside as a harpist played “J’
ai Deux Amours” for the last time.
Princess Grace felt the Paris funeral had not been respectful enough with all of the media presence, so Joséphine’s family agreed to hold a more somber one in Monaco after her body arrived there. The princess took charge of this ceremony, and the press was not allowed entry. The coffin lay inside the sanctuary, an honor usually reserved for royalty. Then it was moved to a mausoleum where it remained for six months until a space could be found for interment in the crowded Monacan cemetery.
Princess Grace attending the burial she had arranged for Joséphine Baker in the Monaco Cemetery. © René Maestri/Sygma/Corbis
Both fans and critics have pondered how Joséphine reached universal stardom as well as convinced so many people to come to her financial aid over and over again. She began as a poor little girl who escaped life in the slums of St. Louis to dance in some of the first black musicals performed in America. From there she traveled to France, where she won the hearts of Parisians with her spontaneous dancing and clowning around. She answered the call of her adopted country by serving in France’s military during World War II. When the conflict ended, she sought out a man who could be a father to the Rainbow Tribe, 12 children she adopted, all from different ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. She continued her roles on the stage, traveling throughout Europe, to South America, and eventually back to the United States, where she joined in the civil rights movement. She became homeless only to be befriended by Princess Grace of Monaco and ended her career once again on the Paris stage, beloved by the thousands who flocked to see her.
The Many Faces of Josephine Baker Page 13