by Phil Keith
Even with the false claims, the open letter had the desired effect. The publication caused a sensation in Paris, with most French citizens applauding Eugene Bullard while many white American expatriates steamed in silent fury. The whole episode exposed an ugly truth about Americans and Parisian club society. It’s also mildly astonishing to note that in his letter, of 1923, Gene was already looking ahead and seeing the “German threat of tomorrow.”
Another similar confrontation was resolved without explanations in the press. This incident occurred in mid-1923: of an evening, Bullard was having dinner with his old friend the Dixie Kid, visiting from England. They were dining at the Olympia, a dance hall in the Montmartre section of the city. The two black boxers would be the last people anyone should insult, but a group of white American sailors were not aware of this. There was a shoving match, but before it could escalate, the vastly outnumbered duo of the Sparrow and the Kid decided to vacate the hall by racing up the stairs to the exit. Unsatisfied with this outcome to the fracas, the sailors set off in pursuit. At the top of the stairs, Bullard turned, seized the first sailor below him, and tossed the hapless seaman onto his mates. The two friends waded into the scrum of arms and legs and, according to Opal Cooper, “cleaned out the whole bunch.” This TKO does not appear on either man’s career boxing record.
In the United States, most Americans were quite content with black musicians entertaining them on stage and in the clubs, but they were not fine with African Americans walking off the stage, mingling with the patrons, sitting down to dine with them or, heaven forbid, dating or fraternizing with them. In France such behavior was accepted, perfectly normal, and quite expected.
Many visiting Americans could not abide this sort of behavior and the raw prejudice fueled by alcohol often boiled over and erupted in fights. Brawls, in fact, became all too common. Bullard reported that there were many times when rowdy Americans were kicked out of his clubs for antagonizing black band members. Typically, the offenders wandered across the street to another club, where the disruptions started all over again.
With Prohibition having become the law of the land in the United States in 1919, even more thirsty Americans were flocking to Paris to drink themselves silly. They represented so much revenue to some Parisian hotel, restaurant, and bar owners that some of them even began a “whites only” policy.
The French newspapers were full of columns about “savage Americans” and their bad behavior. The situation finally came to a resolution when the government began cracking down on those establishments that were exercising reverse prejudice. Licenses were suspended or revoked. Hours of operation were curtailed for those establishments with a prejudicial bent. These financial measures did the trick.
Word spread rapidly concerning the egalitarian-minded French and African Americans were even more persuaded to seek opportunities in France. The exodus of black entertainers and athletes became a flood and Paris, as well as many other cities in France, took advantage of some of the finest talent of that era.
This was a bit of a Golden Age for Eugene Bullard, too. Having the very best connections to many aspects of French society, as well as fluency in the language, made him an invaluable resource. He could translate, make introductions, and set people up with the right contacts. In addition, he offered himself up as a private masseuse and personal trainer.
Bullard was spending time with a large slice of Parisian high society and the entertainment elite. Life was blossoming for him, with a garden apartment, money in his pockets, fabulous friends, great contacts, professional fulfillment, and as much fun as he could pack into his busy life.
It was a heady time for Eugene Bullard, grand impresario of a nightclub he had brought to life with his own hard work and gutsy determination. There is little doubt that his romantic life was active, too, especially in a city undergoing its “crazy years” and without the racial barriers to relationships found in the United States. Yet Bullard, approaching thirty years old, had not taken a wife.
That was about to change.
* * *
1 Mitchell came to Paris before the war with the international American stars of dancing, Vernon and Irene Castle. The British-born Vernon flew over three hundred combat missions as a Royal Flying Corps pilot, and died during a training mission in Texas in February 1918. Like Gene, Vernon Castle had a pet monkey, who survived the crash. Devastated by her husband’s death, Irene retired from dancing.
2 Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, European Edition, May 24, 1923, pg. 1.
11
MARCELLE
The story of Eugene Bullard’s only marriage is a convoluted tale—or two tales, maybe even three. The possible scenarios of his romantic relationship with Marcelle Eugenie Henriette Straumann are offered here side by side, and the truth probably lies somewhere in between.
During the 1920s, Bullard had continued to remain close with his prewar friends, the painters Gilbert White and Moise Kisling. These two ran with the “art crowd,” naturally, and they introduced their dashing drummer friend, and war hero, to many of the leading patrons of the day. Among the families to whom Eugene Bullard was introduced was the Straumanns.
As Bullard told it many times, Monsieur Louis Albert Straumann was married to Helene Heloise Charlotte, the Countess Pochinot. The family, according to Gene, was quite wealthy with a grand home in Paris and another on the French southwest coast at Biarritz. They had only one child, Marcelle, a petite and affable young lady of refined taste and appropriate education. Bullard had been a guest several times at the Straumann home, for dinner parties, and he had even taken the bold step of asking Marcelle out to dance at several of the clubs.
“I began to wonder if I was crazy,” Bullard later remarked. “Here I was from a different background and country and even a different color, and yet, it seemed like Marcelle and I just belonged together.”
There had been no objection on the part of Marcelle’s parents, although she was white, he was black, and she was from money, he was not, though seemingly on his way up financially. While it might have seemed unusual for wealthy Caucasian parents to allow their only daughter to date a black jazz drummer and budding nightclub impresario, it would not have been shocking. This was, after all, Paris in the modern age. Eugene Bullard was also well-known, well connected, and a war hero.
Here is the murky part of the story: The only record of a “Louis and Helene Straumann” family in Paris at that time was one of a bourgeois but fairly prosperous couple in the grocery business, who did, indeed, have a daughter named “Marcelle.” They had, however, no known connections to French royalty.1 This Marcelle helped her family out by working as a seamstress for several of their wealthy grocery patrons. The Marcelle of this version had been born in 1901, and at the time she met Bullard she would have been twenty-one, and he twenty-seven. It would have been entirely possible for them to have met, as Bullard suggested, at a dinner party and for them to have gone dancing. This Monsieur and Madame Straumann, as reported by Lloyd, were not exactly thrilled with the color of Gene’s skin but they put that aside for all his other qualities and his excellent connections. They were, after all, ambitious for their daughter.
After seeing one another off and on through 1922, Bullard related that he finally began realizing that when he and Marcelle were apart he felt very lonely. It finally dawned on him that he was, at long last, in love. Much to his amazement, Marcelle shared his feelings. With some trepidation, Bullard made his intentions known to Marcelle’s parents. According to Craig Lloyd, “The Straumanns laughingly assured him that he was not crazy, as he feared; they knew how much Marcelle, their only child, reciprocated his love.”2
The happy couple were married at ten o’clock in the morning on July 17, 1923, at the city hall of the 10th Arrondissement in Paris. The Straumanns threw them a huge party and lunch at the Brasserie Universelle. According to Bullard’s recollection, “The g
uests included nobles, artists, boxers, aviators, sportsmen of all kinds and outstanding people in all walks of life and of all colors and religions.”3 Such were the circles the son of a slave traveled in then.
That affair lasted until the dinner hour at which time hired taxis and private cars, in a grand parade, drove up the hills to Zelli’s where the festivities—and the flow of champagne—started anew and continued until well after midnight. The newlyweds stayed the night in Paris, after which they took off for a two-week honeymoon in Biarritz.
* * *
Upon their return to Paris, Bullard went back to work and Marcelle busied herself with the couple’s apartment at 15 Rue Franklin, new digs that came complete with a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tower. Marcelle was also soon preparing for an addition to the family. On June 6, 1924, daughter Jacqueline arrived.
The christening party rivaled the wedding reception as a major social event. Each of Zelli’s champagne suppliers donated a case of their finest bubbly. A band of musicians led by the jazz violinist Eddie South played all afternoon and evening in the Bullards’ sixth-floor walk-up, though with so many people crowding in, there was not enough space left for dancing. Bullard recalled that the “champagne flowed so freely that the guests were more thoroughly baptized than baby Jacqueline.”
He spent much of his time helping inebriated guests get down the six flights of stairs. He was able to squeeze in three hours of sleep, then arrived at Zelli’s at midnight. Sitting at the drums on the bandstand, he saw several people who had been guests at the baptism party at the club’s jam-packed bar.
In October 1926, Eugene Jr., was born. However, in one of the saddest episodes of Bullard’s life, his little namesake did not live very long, dying of pneumonia at only six months.
He would always feel the pain of his son’s death, but otherwise, life as husband and father was good, and ennobling: “The sweetness of my high-born French wife and my father-in-law strengthened my trust and respect for most white people. Now, to an even greater extent than before I felt a debt of gratitude for all the kindnesses I have received in all parts of the world from people of all colors. My ambition to repay my debt to humanity by holding out a helping hand to people in trouble grew stronger and stronger.”4
The couple’s last child, Lolita, was born in December 1927.
Here, the story divides. For whatever reason, Bullard says very little about his time with Marcelle after Lolita was born. Marcelle plays no major role in his adventures after about 1928 and what occurs in their lives, subsequent to that time, is for the most part speculation.
Apparently, the couple began to drift apart after 1929. Bullard continued to be laser-focused on running his club, and what little time he had left over he tried to spend with his daughters. His peripatetic lifestyle of being up all night and sleeping or working out all day in the gym was totally opposite Marcelle’s normal daily activities of late breakfast, lunches with friends, shopping, and many hours at her favorite pastime, watching horse races at various tracks. It is not even clear that she moved with Bullard in the late twenties when he relocated to yet another apartment at 6 passage de l’Élysée des Beaux Arts, Montmartre. This set of rooms was much closer to a new business venture, Le Grand Duc.
Right about this juncture, Marcelle’s father, Louis, passed away. Her mother had predeceased her father by two years. According to Bullard’s recollections:
The trouble between me and my wife started when her father died and left her his fortune. She wanted me to quit working and give all my time to sharing her life as a Parisian society woman. That would mean taking her to horse races at Auteuil or Longchamps every afternoon during the season; escorting her to parties every night; and spending weeks at a time at fashionable resorts like Biarritz and Cannes or Monte Carlo.
Like most American men who aren’t sissies, I could not stand the idea of being a gigolo even to my wife. So I told her she could lead the full life of a society woman if she liked but to count me out in my working hours, because I was not going to give up earning my living.
So we were seeing so little of each other that we decided to part company. We were Catholic and we were never divorced. About six years later my poor wife died.5
This would mean that, according to Bullard, Marcelle died in 1935. Jacqueline would have been eleven, and Lolita, almost eight.
* * *
Several facts belie this narrative. World War II took a devastating toll on public records in Paris, but among those that did survive, one document, unearthed by Professor Lloyd in the city hall archives of the 10th Arrondissement and dated December 5, 1935, clearly showed: “Divorce of Eugene Bullard and Marcelle Eugenie Henriette Straumann.”6 A second record, also uncovered by Lloyd, from the 20th Arrondissement, and dated February 18, 1990, is titled “Death of Marcelle E. H. Straumann.”7
Why would Bullard make up such an elaborate ruse? One reason may have been to protect his daughters. The tale of separation and death also fit his narrative as war hero, doting father, savior to his children, and emerging “good Catholic.” Did Marcelle leave him because the novelty of wedding a black man and having mixed-race children wore off? That would have been sad and very cruel, but it’s entirely possible.
Whatever the facts may be in regard to Marcelle, Bullard ended up as the primary parent and guardian of his daughters. He loved them totally, and their welfare was always uppermost in his mind. Either via separation, divorce, or possibly “death” (as told to them by their father), their mother basically left their lives sometime in the early 1930s. Did Bullard tell his girls their mother had died to spare them the angst and embarrassment of knowing she abandoned them?
Was infidelity at work? We know with a fair degree of certainty that he became involved with the beautiful and daring spy Cleopatre “Kitty” Terrier, but that wasn’t until the late 1930s, long after Marcelle was out of the picture. There were rumors that Bullard might have been involved romantically with one of his favorite singers/dancers, Ada Louise “Bricktop” Smith (whom we’ll meet in the next chapter). Neither one of them ever mentions this in their memoirs, but we also know that there were times when their friendship frayed dramatically for business reasons and because Bullard (in Bricktop’s opinion) was volatile, especially when drunk. If there was any “spark” between them, it did not last, and neither ever discussed it, not even in writing.
It would also not be uncommon for Bullard to be tempted by the charms and wiles of the many beautiful women who flowed through his clubs over the years. Paris in the 1920s and ’30s was wild with sensual pleasures and “modern” women had far fewer of the discretionary urges of the generation before them. Were there flings? Casual assignations? There had to have been temptations. Bullard was much more “gentleman” than “playboy,” but the allure, to liberated women, of the dark-skinned French war hero, club owner, and jazz musician had to have offered him plenty of opportunities to play around. He says nothing about this in his memoir, but when he was writing his autobiography he was thinking mostly of his legacy, and his children, and it seems quite unlikely that he would have included any salacious material from those days.
Was Marcelle unfaithful? We have no way of knowing. There simply are no records, and she did not keep any sort of diary that we know of and no letters, notes, or documents have yet surfaced. The most we know for certain is that she lived out her relatively long life (1901-1990) shuttling between Paris and her inherited home in Biarritz. There are no records of her ever remarrying or having any more children. She outlived her ex-husband by over a quarter of a century. Was Marcelle the quiet, reclusive inheritor of a large estate and an extravagant lifestyle along the coast at Biarritz? The records are, here again, incomplete but we do know that if she retained any assets she did not pass them on to her children. There is anecdotal evidence from one of Marcelle’s neighbors from her later years in Biarritz that Marcelle assumed that Bullard and her daughters had perished in Wo
rld War II. If she truly believed that, then she was also deprived of knowing the grandchildren who were born in her lifetime. There is no evidence that the girls were in communication with their mother ever again, which seems logical, since their father had told them their mother was dead.
It’s almost hard to believe, though, that she did not know Bullard was alive. There was sporadic press coverage of his activities in Paris as an impresario with high-profile patrons, and it is hard to think that none of it would have reached the newsstands in Biarritz.
In any case, much like the aerial fireworks he and his mates created in the skies over France during the war, the romance and marriage of Gene and Marcelle initially skyrocketed, flourished, then fizzled and fell spectacularly to earth.
* * *
1 There seems to be no “Pochinot” in the Registry of French Royalty or under the banner of the Bourbon dynasty, which ruled France all throughout modern times up until the advent of La République.
2 Craig Lloyd, Eugene Bullard, Black Expatriate in Jazz-Age Paris, (University of Georgia Press, 2000), 89.
3 Bullard, All Blood Runs Red, 133.
4 Ibid.
5 Lloyd, Eugene Bullard, 109.
6 Ibid., 191.
7 Ibid.
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