Josephine Baker

by Jean-Claude Baker

  “I believe she was happy about the baby,” says Luis’s wife, Michele. “But she and I didn’t talk very much. At that time, I was shy, and she intimidated me. Then she went to Paris, and I never saw her again.

  “We had invited her to our wedding, and though she couldn’t come, she sent us a telegram saying her thoughts were with us, and she would pay for the wedding lunch. But since she died two weeks later, we ended up paying for it.”

  The press gala on April 2 was a triumph; in the wings, she whispered to Jean-Claude Dauzonne, “J’ai gagné. I have won.”

  Le Figaro agreed. “For the second time in fifty years, Josephine Baker has conquered Paris which one night in 1925 seduced her forever.”

  Six days later came the official premiere, attended by Princess Grace, assorted Rothschilds, le tout Paris, with a few exceptions. The faithful Joseph Bessone was missing. “She invited me to the premiere,” he said. I said, ‘I don’t like to witness things that pain me, Josephine. You are going to leave your skin at Bobino, do not count on me to witness it.’ In Paris, they killed her.”

  Backstage on opening night, she herself said the same thing to Jean Clement. “Those amplifiers are killing me, I’m going to die, because there is too much noise, my head hurts. Why do they do that? I have a good voice, I don’t need all that noise.”

  The “noise” had been added not to augment Josephine’s voice but to supplement the orchestra. A company called Festival had done a studio recording of the show—just audio, not video—and the tape was played every night in the theater. Besides fattening the band’s sound, it provided a more reliable beat for the dancers. (With applause added, that sound track was released after Josephine’s death. “We didn’t want to film the show before the opening,” says Jean-Claude Dauzonne. “So much was already on Josephine’s shoulders.”

  In addition to her unhappiness with the clamor of the music, Josephine told Jean Clement, she was suffering because “my children are not nice with me.”

  Clement tried to tease her out of her mood. “Remember when Mistinguett said to you, ‘Why do you want to adopt all those children?’

  “And you said, ‘I have to be an example,’ and Miss said, ‘You’re crazy. Talk about examples, Christ came to save the world and they crucified him!’

  “Josephine was not laughing.”

  Until the show began. Then everything changed. That opening night, I had sent her a telegram: PETITE MAMAN, I KNOW YOU WILL BE A BIG SUCCESS, AND YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN MY HEART. I PRAY FOR YOU. LOVE, JEAN-CLAUDE. She didn’t need my prayers, she couldn’t do anything wrong, she was continually stopped by waves of applause. “In her gypsy number, ‘Donnez-Moi la Main,’ Dauzonne says, “she went down into the audience, and there in the front row was Arletty, the actress who, after the war, had been censured for falling in love with a German. She was blind now, dressed all in white, and the famous pink follow-spot lighted both women as Josephine took Arletty’s hand. ‘How beautiful you are, Madame, all of France admires you.’ ”

  Hippocrates wrote it: “Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.”

  “People were crying,” says my friend Robert Boutin. “Next to me, Carlo Ponti turned to Sophia Loren and said, ‘Regarde bien ça, you won’t see it twice in a lifetime.’ ”

  There were thirty-four songs, and fifteen scenes from Josephine’s life as she chose to remember it. It started like a fairy tale—“Once upon a time”—and proceeded to touch on Africa, Louisiana [sic], New York, France, the war, the Wailing Wall in Israel; there was even a skit in which she made fun of her bad time at Les Milandes. Dancers dressed as furniture movers came to haul away everything—including the pink sofa on which Josephine lay, showing off her beautiful legs—and soon nothing was left onstage but the star, singing “Au Revoir but Not Adieu.”

  At the end of the show, Jean-Claude Brialy came on to read a telegram from Giscard d’Estaing. The president sent Josephine fond wishes IN THE NAME OF A GRATEFUL FRANCE WHOSE HEART HAS SO OFTEN BEATEN WITH YOURS.

  “She got a standing ovation of more than thirty minutes,” says Robert Boutin. “People were screaming, ‘You are the most beautiful, we love you, Josephine,’ and finally, her voice strangled with emotion, she spoke. ‘I had prepared something to say, but I can only tell you I love you and I know you love me.’ ”

  Thierry Le Luron, then the most brilliant political satirist in France, told me he had gone to the theater that night out of respect for a national monument. “I went there thinking, well, I’m going to applaud the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe, it will certainly be a little boring. In reality, it was sublime, people did not want to leave the theater, it was the crowning of Josephine’s career.”

  At the Bristol Hotel, Mr. Bodson gave the opening-night party, and Princess Grace helped Josephine cut the many-tiered cake celebrating her fifty years as queen of the French music hall. She was wearing a cream-colored silk dress by Nina Ricci, a matching turban with a veil. During supper, the president of the city council presented her with the Grande Médaille de Vermeil de la Ville de Paris.

  “She refused to go home early,” Marie says. “She told me, ‘I will stay until my last guest is gone.’ ”

  It was 4 A.M. before she left the Bristol, and next morning, she was still euphoric. She phoned Marie and asked her to come to the theater that night. For the first time, Marie refused. “Tonight,” she said, “I will sleep.”

  The second-night performance, which can be a letdown, was another triumph. After the show, the elated Josephine demanded that Dauzonne take her to Chez Michou.

  “I want to see Bobby, that black American boy who imitates me,” she said. Dauzonne refused—“Josephine, in two or three days, you can ask whatever you want of me”—and she was still sulking as he drove her home.

  “When I put her in the elevator of her building,” he told me, “I pushed the third-floor button and kissed her good-night. Her last words to me were, ‘Oh, you young people act like old men, you are no fun.’ ”

  Thursday, April 10, Marie Spiers: “Josephine always called me very early. That morning, I was happy not to receive her call. Thank God she is resting, I thought, and went to my boutique. Around 2:30 P.M., I phoned her apartment. Pepito’s niece, Lélia, was working for her, and she answered. ‘Madame is sleeping.’ I said, ‘What? She is still sleeping? Go wake her up.’ Lélia left, came back, and said, ‘I can’t wake her, and she’s snoring.’ I called the doctor, and then hurried to Josephine’s apartment.”

  Behind closed doors, the drama played out. “The doctor told me it was very bad,” Marie says. In the bedroom, Josephine lay on her left side, one hand to her head, the plastic shower cap she had been wearing still in place. Her glasses had fallen to the floor. The bed was littered with newspapers, their front pages extolling her latest comeback. She had been reading these love letters when she collapsed.

  “When I arrived at her place, I knew what had happened,” says Jean-Claude Dauzonne. “It was the same way I had found my mother; she’d had a brain hemorrhage. Dr. Thiroloix chose the Salpêtrière hospital because it had the best emergency room in Paris, and we called an ambulance. Then I left to go to the theater; we told the radio and TV that Josephine had been hospitalized for exhaustion.”

  “The ambulance attendants asked me to remove Josephine’s ring,” Marie says. “It was the one with Pepito’s crest, she had never taken it off since he gave it to her. The driver ran all the red lights, with the police helping us. Jean-Claude Brialy and André Levasseur were in the ambulance, but Brialy wouldn’t sign Josephine into Salpêtrière, he said, ‘Marie, you put this in your name.’ So I signed, accepting responsibility for Josephine’s bills.”

  Stellina Bouillon: “I was in my aunt Margaret’s house, on Easter vacation from my school in England, and I had a dream that my mother was very bad, and I started crying and said, ‘She is going to die, she needs you.’ And Auntie said, ‘Okay, if we don’t have news by midday, I’ll go to Paris.
’ ”

  Luis Bouillon: “With my Fiat coupe 124, I drove Aunt Margaret to the airport. On our way there, she asked me to stop by the Banco di Roma. I stayed in the car while she went inside.”

  Later, having arrived in Paris, Margaret realized she didn’t even know where Josephine was. She went by taxi from hospital to hospital until she came to Salpêtrière. “I could see,” she told me, “that Tumpy could not make it.” The doctors conferred—if they operated, there was a 70 percent chance that Josephine would be permanently impaired—and Margaret made the decision. “Don’t you touch my sister.” (Later she told Florence Dixon, “If she had lived and been unable to talk or walk, she would have lost her mind.”)

  Marie Spiers and Margaret kept vigil through the night. Once, Margaret said, squeezing Josephine’s hand, she thought she felt Josephine squeeze back.

  At 5:30 A.M., on Saturday, April 12, Josephine died.

  “She gave a few little sighs, then one long one, and it was over,” Marie says. “I think deep in me, I was expecting it. What she had been doing was beyond her strength.”

  For two days, she had lain unconscious. Princess Grace knelt beside the bed, praying, as a priest gave Josephine the last rites. “She claimed many religions,” says Jean-Claude Dauzonne, “but she had told us she was a Catholic. And that she did not want to be photographed dead.”

  The fiction she had created lived on. Her death certificate said she was the daughter of Arthur Baker.

  Margaret and Marie had dressed her in the clothes she’d worn to the opening-night party at the Bristol. “We wanted her to go to Paradise the same vision we had seen after the premiere,” says Alexandre. “In death, she had a great serenity, she seemed like she was sleeping.”

  “I chose the most gorgeous coffin in Paris,” says Jean-Claude Dauzonne, “lined in pink, of course, since she always asked for a pink gel over her spotlight. Before we closed the lid, Margaret said, ‘How beautiful you are, Sister,’ and she began to sing a spiritual.”

  Margaret had not telephoned her brother Richard. “My father’s French was still bad,” says Guylaine, “and he and my mother were listening to the radio, and the announcer said, ‘Josephine’s light burned out this morning,’ and my mother said, ‘My God, Richard, your sister just died.’ He was destroyed.”

  Jean-Claude Bouillon: “I had come home very late, it was 6 A.M., and Marianne was sitting on a low wall outside the villa, and I knew immediately that something weird was going on. The sun was rising, the light coming up, and she said, ‘You know about Mother?’

  “And she made a gesture with her arms meaning, it’s all over. I went up to her, she was crying, and I was looking at the sky, and I did not understand.

  “It was not until the next day that I realized my mother was dead. I had been drinking while she was dying at the Salpêtrière. For years afterward, I felt guilty. At the same time, we always believed she was immortal, Mother, she had survived so many things. But that moment I’ll remember all my life, Marianne telling me of Mother’s death, with a sign of her arms, in the dawn.”

  Brahim Bouillon: “She was always going away, and so she was just away again. I only realized later that this time she was dead. At the villa, our first reaction was, Are we going to be separated? Is Daddy coming back? Since the person who had brought us together had disappeared, we were wondering what would become of us. Rumors started that Princess Grace would take Stellina, that our father would come back and divide the family.”

  Me, as soon as I could get on a plane, I flew from America to Paris, and went to my apartment. Mara and Jari joined me there, and I tried to comfort them, but we were numb, we didn’t understand she was gone. For us, she was still somewhere in the world, getting ready to go onstage, or making a speech about brotherhood.

  I didn’t want to go to the Salpêtrière and see her lying in a wooden box, and I was bitter toward those I thought had killed her, the frivolous jet-set delinquents who had dragged her around so they could be photographed with her. My brother Jean-Claude shared my feelings. “With age,” he says, “people become infantile again, she wanted once more to be the twenty-year-old Josephine. That is why she let those people charm her.”

  But Jean-Claude and I both knew we could not entirely blame “those people.” Josephine had been their avid accomplice. “For the past year,” Margaret said, “her whole talk was of Paris, where she wanted to be.”

  Before leaving my apartment, Jari gave me a ticket for the funeral at the Madeleine. A ticket for a funeral? I was thunderstruck.

  When I arrived at the magnificent many-pillared church on the morning of April 15, no one asked for my ticket. In fact, there were no crowds, the church was quite empty. The showman in me was disturbed by the poor turnout.

  I sat in one of the front pews reserved for family, and a priest came up and said, “My son, she told me on her deathbed how good you were to her.” Oh my God, I thought, on her deathbed, she talked about me?

  The service began, with no more than twenty or so mourners in the vast domed space, but when the priest began to speak, everything became clear. He was eulogizing some other lady, one Madame Fougère. I was at the wrong funeral. I sat there fighting the urge to grin. “Maman,” I thought, “even now you are teasing me.”

  Meanwhile, Josephine rode for the last time through the city. The procession started from the hospital, stopped in front of Bobino (its marquee lighted in her honor, her name blazing in the gray day), then wound its way to the church. The skies matched the somber mood of the people thronging the sidewalks and massed on the broad steps of the Madeleine; in pictures it looks as though flocks of birds had settled there.

  Thousands of mourners turned out. Only three thousand could be seated in the church. Madame Fougère’s actual son and friends having departed, another crowd filed in. There were Margaret with Jari and Mara (they were the only two of Josephine’s children to come to Paris), and then suddenly, kissing each other, Alain Delon, Sophia Loren. It’s not a funeral, it’s an opening, with stars and photographers. I have a vision of Josephine, arms raised, palms up, calling out, “How do you like me?” and I say to myself, “Well, here she is!”

  “If she had died before Bobino,” said Jean-Claude Dauzonne, “it would have made three lines in the papers; as it was, her funeral was almost a national event.”

  Princess Grace arrived, and General de Boissieu representing the Legion of Honor. I saw Michel Guy, the minister of culture, and General Vallin. Madame Derval, the widow of Paul Derval, was there with Michel Gyarmathy.

  Jo Bouillon, whom I had not yet met, appeared to be a man in pain. Arriving from Buenos Aires, he had spoken briefly to the press. “Too many memories come back,” he said, “the past grips my heart.”

  All around us, there was an unchurchlike din. We could hear buzzing from the gallery, whispering on the main floor, and the sounds of flashbulbs popping as pallbearers carried the heavy ebony coffin up the aisle. The thing was like a Rolls-Royce, and again I had to fight the nervous impulse to break down and laugh hysterically. What a show, I thought; wherever she is, she must be laughing too.

  As the press frenzy grew, Canon Thorel addressed the crowd. “Brothers and sisters, don’t forget you are in the house of God.” He gave the photographers five minutes more, then the church was still.

  In front of the altar on a purple cushion were Josephine’s military decorations, and everywhere flags of the army of France, and flowers. A heart of red roses said “From Daddy and the children,” and there was a bouquet in the shape of a Star of David, but none of us knew who had sent it. Afterward, people who had not been able to get into the church came to pray for her, and each took a flower as a souvenir.

  During the homily, the canon said Paris had suffered a blow to the heart with Josephine’s passing. True, she had been a great sinner, “but aren’t we all?”

  At the end, we followed the coffin out of church, our steps echoing on the stone floor. Behind us, we heard sweet silvery notes rising from
a harp. One last time, Pierre Spiers was playing for Josephine “J’ai Deux Amours.” The sound mixed with sobbing, sublime and unreal.

  We emerged into a sea, a crush, of people. It was the first time I had ever understood why Josephine enjoyed crowds. In spite of the fear that you’re going to be crushed, you’re drunk with excitement. “All her life, Josephine looked for love,” said Lydia Jones, watching the scene on television. “Even on the steps of the Madeleine, she was still looking for love.”

  “After a blinding sun, it was a total darkness,” says Jean-Claude Dauzonne. “We reimbursed Marie Spiers, we paid for the hospital, the funeral. I wanted Josephine one last time to come down the great steps of Paris, the steps of the Madeleine. It almost did not happen. We had to pull the priests’ ears. At first they did not want to welcome her because of her ‘past.’ But Mr. Bodson was very generous to the church, and I told them, ‘Think of the publicity it will give you.’ Then they relented.”

  Unlike me, Princess Grace had found the events of the day unseemly. From the beginning, she had thought the funeral should be held in Monaco, so a compromise had been reached: there would be one funeral in Paris, another—more dignified—in Monaco. (To me, it’s always seemed as though the princess kidnapped Josephine’s body.)

  Josephine’s body was dispatched to Monte Carlo, to the Athanee, a funeral parlor. At home in Roquebrune, Marianne seemed to have aged overnight, changing from wild girl to composed young woman. She kissed me and said, “How strange life is, Maman is gone, but we get back two brothers and our father.” (Moïse was once again welcome, as was I.)

  Falling into my arms, Stellina cried. Jo Bouillon still wasn’t sure who I was, but Stellina introduced us. “He is our brother from Berlin. He had a fight with mother a year ago, but she loved him.”

  “I left with ten children bearing my name in the family book,” he said. “I come back, there are twelve, and they tell me you are the thirteenth, so please feel at home.” (He had just been informed by Marie Spiers that Josephine had registered Noël and Stellina as Bouillons.)