The Many Faces of Josephine Baker

by Peggy Caravantes

  Undeterred, Josephine followed the show’s progress and learned that Shuffle Along had opened in New York City. They were not on Broadway but in an old, dilapidated vaudeville theater called 63rd Street Music Hall. Still wanting a job in that show, Josephine decided to follow them to New York. She left her husband, Willie Baker, to whom she never returned, and, with the few dollars she had saved, bought a one-way train ticket for the 90-mile trip to the big city.

  The only person Josephine knew in New York City was Wilsa Caldwell, the casual friend she had met at her father-in-law’s restaurant. Wilsa danced in the Shuffle Along chorus line, and Josephine decided to look for her at the theater since she did not know her friend’s home address. Josephine slept two nights on benches in Central Park until she located the 63rd Street Music Hall. Eventually she found Wilsa, who told her the show had been so successful in New York that the producers were gathering a separate troupe to perform the show on the road. She encouraged Josephine to try out for that show. Recalling the remark at her previous audition that she was too dark-skinned, Josephine covered her face and body with light powder before she went onstage to audition for Al Mayer, another of the show’s producers. Mayer wasn’t aware of his partners’ earlier rejection of Josephine, so he hired her for the road show chorus line at a salary of $30 per week. He apparently also didn’t know that she was still not 16, the minimum age for a chorus girl.

  The show opened in Chicago, and Josephine once again found herself at the end of the chorus line—in the comic position. She took advantage of the opportunities in this role and tripped over her own feet, crossed her eyes, stuck her tongue in her cheek, and folded her knees together in a froglike position.

  Despite acting the clown, she managed to maintain the rhythm of the music. The audience loved her, but the rest of the chorus hated her because she detracted from their performance. They were the stars, not Josephine. To get even, they tripped her as she came onstage. She turned the stumble into another comic act. Some of the girls moved all of her possessions out of their shared dressing room and dumped them in the hall. She did not let this stop her—she changed costumes in the restroom.

  In 1925 Josephine Baker hams it up for the king of French fashion, Paul Poirot, who later designed many of her clothes.

  © Underwood & Underwood/Corbis

  The New York version of the show closed in July 1922, and Sissle and Blake decided to take the original cast on the road. However, they had heard that one of the dancers in the previous road show was popular. They learned that it was Josephine and invited her to join the regular troupe. The cast left New York on July 15 and headed to Boston and other major United States cities—including St. Louis. When Josephine heard that the show would visit her old hometown, she tried to write a note to her mother, but she had difficulty spelling even simple words because she had seldom attended school.

  When they arrived in St. Louis, Josephine visited her family in their basement room in the old neighborhood. She was shocked by the conditions in which they lived. “I had grown used to electricity and a bathroom, and here I was with a kerosene lamp, a bucket and dipper, and a communal washtub. There were dirty dishes under the bed…. I was ashamed of my own mother.” Just a short time before, Josephine would have accepted the situation as normal.

  Happy to see their sister, Richard, Margaret, and Willie Mae begged her to tell them stories about life in show business. Josephine was saddened to discover that 11-year-old Willie Mae had lost sight in one eye when a dog clawed her. Josephine wanted a better life for her younger sister and promised to send $50 a month for Willie Mae’s clothing and education. She told her brother and sisters that she would come back to see them at Christmas, but she didn’t. In fact, 14 years passed before Josephine saw her family again. Each year, though, she continued to send more and more money for the family.

  Meanwhile, because of the success of Shuffle Along, Sissle and Blake created a new show, In Bamville, into which they wrote a special part for Josephine. The show opened in March 1924 at the Lyceum Theater in Rochester, New York, with a huge cast, lavish sets, and even three live horses in a simulated race. By the time it opened in New York City in September, the producers had changed the name to The Chocolate Dandies and Josephine was receiving $125 a week, a tremendous amount of money at that time. However, the show was not popular because it didn’t have the unique black flavor of their previous play. White audiences expected stereotyped performances from blacks—plantation life, the Mississippi River, levees, bright-colored clothing, and turbans. Josephine’s comic actions and silly faces didn’t go with her costume—a clinging silk dress with a skirt slit up to the thighs, a sash, and a big bow.

  The play got poor reviews, and its closing was inevitable. At the same time the show declined, Josephine received an invitation to appear at the Plantation Theater Restaurant in Harlem, a nightclub that was the birthplace of many stars’ careers. The restaurant impressed Josephine with its elegant, brightly lit décor, starched tablecloths, and French-speaking waiters clad in tuxedos. Featured in the show that started after the theaters closed at midnight was singer Ethel Waters.

  Ethel and Josephine roomed together, and the young woman strove to imitate the singer in every way. After she listened to Ethel singing her signature song “Dinah” several nights in a row, Josephine decided she wanted to become a singer as well as a dancer. She especially wanted to get out of the comic routine, so she started daily practices to change her high, thin, unclear singing voice to one more like Ethel’s lower, husky tones. While she practiced, she memorized all of Ethel Waters’s songs.

  One day, Ethel developed laryngitis. Josephine went to see the director. She knocked on his door and told him, “I can sing all [of Ethel’s] numbers.” He nodded his willingness to listen. Josephine started singing but found “it was not easy to perform in an office in front of a man who stares at you as if you’re some sort of bug.” Nonetheless she convinced him she knew the songs and could perform them. He was impressed enough to allow her to go onstage in the star’s stead.

  That night the audience loved Josephine’s act, and for the first time she received flowers from a male admirer. In her dressing room after the show, she discovered a vase of violets on the dressing table. One of the chorus girls told her that the flowers were a way of expressing appreciation for a wonderful performance. Josephine wondered who had sent them, but she was unable to read the card because she was illiterate.

  ETHEL WATERS

  Born October 31, 1896, Ethel Waters rose from a poverty-stricken childhood to become one of the most popular blues and jazz singers of the 1920s. Her autobiography, His Eye is on the Sparrow: An Autobiography, details her early struggles before she achieved fame. With a rich voice that spanned two octaves and an innate talent for acting, she was able to scale the barriers that had previously kept black performers out of white theaters.

  After touring in vaudeville shows as a singer and a dancer, Ethel moved to New York, where she sang “Dinah” at the Plantation Club with such success that Columbia Records signed her to a recording contract. A few years later, she acted in the first of many films and also became the first black performer to star in a sponsored coast-to-coast radio show. Her last years were spent touring with evangelist Billy Graham. She died from a heart condition in Chatsworth, California, on September 2, 1977, at the age of 80.

  While they were on the road together, Clara Smith had tried to teach Josephine to improve her reading and writing. The young girl had learned only how to decipher the printed page. She could not read the handwritten note attached to the flowers. Some of the other chorus girls ridiculed her and called her stupid. Finally, the girl who had explained the significance of the flowers also read the card to her. It was signed by Henry, and the message said that he would meet her at the stage door after the show.

  Later that night she was surprised to learn that Henry was a white young man with blue eyes and freckles. Because restaurants would not admit or serve black patrons, he
took her to a bar in Greenwich Village, where artists of all kinds met. Throughout the evening, Henry praised Josephine. With his compliments ringing in her ears, she looked forward to singing the next night. However, Ethel had heard how much the audience liked her replacement, and she made a quick recovery. Josephine never sang again at the Plantation Club.

  Though Josephine was disappointed, she accepted that Ethel Waters was the club’s star and that she would get no more opportunities to sing there. But her admirer Henry attended all of Josephine’s chorus line performances and continued to send her flowers.

  Thinking Henry was interested in her romantically, Josephine asked to meet his parents. He agreed. On the night they had scheduled the introductions, Henry appeared with a parrot in a cage as a gift for Josephine. He was alone, though, because his parents did not want to meet her. Accepting that Henry would never marry her, Josephine began to think about what she wanted to do next.

  In the meantime and unbeknownst to Josephine, Caroline Dudley Reagan, an American socialite in her thirties, planned to put together an all-black revue to perform in Paris, where segregation was not an issue. After seeing eight girls dance the Charleston at the Douglas, a small theater in a black neighborhood, Caroline felt as if a magnet were drawing her to produce a show with such astounding artists. Caroline, who was white, loved the fluid performances of the black dancers and wanted to take them to Paris to amaze audiences there. As the seed for her revue sprouted and grew, she decided that she wanted a fresh show, not a rendition of an old play like The Chocolate Dandies.

  With her dream fully formed, Caroline Reagan sought financial backers for the new show. She convinced Rolf de Maré, a wealthy, Swedish-born patron of the arts, to finance getting the cast members. He agreed to pay for her to go to New York City and to hire up to 30 performers, whose transportation to France he would also support. Caroline arrived in New York City and began selecting the cast. At the Plantation Club, she invited Ethel Waters to become the show’s female singer, but Ethel’s demand for $500 per week exceeded the socialite’s budget, and she withdrew the offer. Next, Caroline invited Josephine to be part of the revue’s chorus line at $150 a week. Josephine was torn about what to do. She knew little about Paris and was unsure about traveling to a strange country across the ocean. Although she had heard that black people were accepted everywhere in France, she didn’t know if that was true. Questions swirled through her mind. What if she didn’t like it? How would she get home?

  Caroline Reagan said: “Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. Think it over. I’ll be back.” By the time she returned, Josephine had heard about the attempt to get Ethel Waters for the show’s singer and asked if she could have the part offered to the star. Not knowing the leggy dancer had developed a nice voice, Caroline refused, telling her she needed her for a comic act. When she raised the offer to $250 a week, Josephine accepted.

  Even after she accepted the job in Paris, Josephine changed her mind over and over. Years later, she reminisced, “I can only recall one single day of fear in my life. One day which lasted only one hour, maybe one minute … when fear grasped my brain, my heart, my guts with such force that everything seemed to come apart. It was September 15, 1925.” Several friends encouraged Josephine to take the opportunity offered her. Despite her fears, she followed their advice; and when the Berengaria sailed out of the New York harbor on that September date, bound for France, 19-year-old Josephine was among the 25 cast members headed to Paris.

  3

  Joséphine Charms Paris

  ON THEIR WAY TO FRANCE, JOSEPHINE and the rest of the black cast traveled in steerage, the worst accommodations on the Berengaria. The huge passenger ship was segregated because it was owned by an American company. The separation between blacks and whites became even more obvious when the captain feared a German mine, left over from World War I, was in the ship’s path. The crew scrambled to get life belts on all passengers and to direct them to lifeboats. When they realized there were not enough boats, the crew informed the steerage passengers that they would leave the ship last. The cast, including Josephine, huddled in fear as sounds of pulleys moving lifeboats into place mingled with those of screaming children. Fortunately, there was no mine, and the ship continued on its course.

  During the voyage Caroline Reagan organized a rehearsal for their French show. Josephine’s role was to dance the Charleston, but she refused because she wanted to sing.

  Caroline Reagan decided to let the stubborn young woman prove herself one way or the other. For hours Josephine practiced “Brown Eyes, Why Are You So Blue?” with the cast’s musical director, Claude Hopkins. Their time together in rehearsal turned into a romantic interlude for the two, despite the fact that Claude’s wife, Mabel, was also on the ship. The other chorus girls resented what Josephine was doing to the unsuspecting wife, and some of them even threatened to throw Josephine overboard.

  THE CHARLESTON

  The Charleston expressed the uninhibited enthusiasm and spirit of the young people of the 1920s. The dance became popular after being performed in a black Broadway musical called Runnin’ Wild. The steps involved using both swaying arms and fast movement of the feet. Because it could be danced alone, in couples, or as part of a group, it appealed to almost all Americans, especially the rebellious young women of the 1920s known as flappers.

  The origin of the dance can be traced to slaves who had brought their tribal customs and rhythmic music with them from Africa. Many of the enslaved people settled off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, hence the dance’s name. When African Americans finally achieved freedom from slavery, many moved north to Chicago and New York to get jobs. They took their syncopated music to those cities, where over time it evolved into ragtime, blues, and eventually jazz. No other dance form affected an entire generation the way the Charleston influenced the 1920s.

  On the night of the performance, when Josephine went onstage wearing a bright red dress that Caroline had bought her, she felt confident. She had no idea she would face a problem projecting her voice in the huge room with poor acoustics. As she sang, she couldn’t seem to find the beat, and the orchestra completely drowned her out. Her voice cracked and she produced three off-key notes in quick succession. At the end of the song, the audience was silent. Josephine had flopped as a performer for the first time as. She vented her rage, embarrassment, and frustration at Caroline, claiming the socialite had set her up for failure. Josephine shouted at her, “You’re fixin’ t’kill me! I’m finished! I’m leavin’ tomorrow.” After reminding the angry young woman that they were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Caroline recommended Josephine forget about singing and instead concentrate on perfecting her dancing and comic skills.

  By the next morning Josephine had calmed down, but the experience had increased her sense of insecurity. She was subdued and scared when she knocked on Caroline’s door to ask her, “Miz Dudley, why you choose me? Why you want me to come?”

  The Berengaria docked in France on September 22, 1925, and the cast boarded a train for the 100-mile trip to Paris. At lunchtime, Josephine and the others were astounded to discover they could sit anywhere they wanted in the dining car. One of the cast members had previously been to Europe, and he assured them that it was always that way in France. To people accustomed to segregation in America, this was welcome news.

  Josephine arrived in Paris wearing black-and-white checkered gardening overalls and a hat decorated with poppies, sunflowers, and daisies. Before many weeks passed, she would be among the most fashionably dressed in the city. As the cast members made their way to their hotel, the invigorating sights and sounds of Paris called to Josephine, but there was no time to explore. The cast had only 10 days to get their show ready for the opening performance.

  Rehearsals began at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. For several days the cast practiced for long, exhausting hours, but the show did not come together. André Daven, the owner of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, became more and more wo
rried as the days went by without improvement. The Revue Nègre was not what he had expected. There was too much tap dancing and too much noise. Maud de Forrest, the female lead singer, chose gospel songs and spirituals that did not fit the show. Daven also found the costumes ridiculous: high-button green shoes with red laces and hats decorated in fruit and flowers. He needed to redesign the entire show.

  When Daven’s attempts at improvement also failed, he sought help from Jacques Charles, a talented choreographer from the Moulin Rouge. Charles visited one of the rehearsals and saw possibilities in the Revue because it reminded him of shows he had seen in Harlem, New York. Charles, who could not speak English, used an interpreter to tell the cast: “You must let me shape this show or you’ll have to go back on the boat. I want total obedience. This will be your only chance.”

  The sets were wrong too, but there was no time to change them so Charles focused on employing the natural rhythm of black entertainers to improve the show. He decided to feature Josephine dancing the Charleston. Even her uninhibited performance did not satisfy him, so he designed a new dance for her that he called the danse sauvage, or the “wild dance.” The dance required Josephine to appear topless wearing only a satin bikini bottom covered in pink flamingo feathers. Around her ankles and wrists she would wear the same pink feathers. Her partner Joe Alex would wear a feather-covered loincloth along with the ankle and wrist decorations.