Latest / Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood / 162. Josephine Baker - Death of a Showgirl - Part III

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162. Josephine Baker - Death of a Showgirl - Part III · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
0:04
Speaker 1: The history podcast That's not your history class with me
0:08
Speaker 1: your host Katie Charlewood, history Harlotte and reader of books.
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Speaker 1: So a comment on threads today made me cry, like,
0:17
Speaker 1: not in a bad way, well kind of in a
0:18
Speaker 1: bad way, because I don't like to feel human emotions.
0:21
Speaker 1: If I can help it. I'm doing very well at
0:23
Speaker 1: closing myself off to the world. But I made this
0:28
Speaker 1: joke right about how I'll get like dms from like
0:31
Speaker 1: people on like Facebook or whatever, and it goes along
0:34
Speaker 1: the lines of I've searched everywhere for your podcast, help
0:36
Speaker 1: me find your podcast. I've looked everywhere. I've searched and searched,
0:40
Speaker 1: and nowhere across land and sea could have found it.
0:44
Speaker 1: And so I'll always ask them, like what apps, Like
0:46
Speaker 1: what podcasting apps are you looking at? Because like I'm
0:49
Speaker 1: on the major ones, so like is it a distribution issue?
0:53
Speaker 1: Like what do I need to fix here? Like it's
0:54
Speaker 1: something wrong that I'm not searchable, because like, if you
0:57
Speaker 1: can't find me, something's wrong. And so I'll ask them
1:01
Speaker 1: and they'll respond with something like Facebook, oh, which, as
1:07
Speaker 1: I'm sure those of you listening, no is not a
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Speaker 1: podcasting app. So I made that little like joke and
1:15
Speaker 1: someone commented, I think it was like Chicano in Paris.
1:19
Speaker 1: They said that they found I found your podcast and
1:23
Speaker 1: scrolled through it, and when I saw you did an
1:25
Speaker 1: entire episode on the Zoot Riots and then listened to it,
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Speaker 1: I was hooked and felt seen and had to let
1:34
Speaker 1: you know that what you do fucking matters and thank you. Bye. See.
1:38
Speaker 1: I'm kind of emotional now right. I'm not good at
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Speaker 1: taking compliments, even though I joke about how I survive
1:44
Speaker 1: on caffeine in compliments and potatoes. But I'm just you know,
1:52
Speaker 1: a wonderbread mayonnaise sandwich over here, you know a little
1:57
Speaker 1: bit of seasoning. But I'm I'm a historian. I'm a sociologist.
2:03
Speaker 1: I'm a here, friendly neighborhood social scientist. But I specialize
2:08
Speaker 1: in you know, misinformation, propaganda, disinformation, sensationalism, and history. I
2:15
Speaker 1: talk about the stuff that gets overlooked and hidden. And
2:19
Speaker 1: there are so many facets and parts of history which
2:23
Speaker 1: are so often misrepresented and dismissed. And so I try
2:30
Speaker 1: and tell a full story. I try and give full context,
2:33
Speaker 1: and I'll always work hard at doing that, and this
2:35
Speaker 1: is probably the most serious most of you have ever
2:38
Speaker 1: heard me be. But I'll always try. And when a
2:44
Speaker 1: person of a particular group that you have discussed that
2:46
Speaker 1: it's not your group, tells you that you're here doing
2:51
Speaker 1: something right, it matters, and it means something to me.
2:55
Speaker 1: And I I'm glad that I'm doing something right and
3:00
Speaker 1: year in my kitchen rambling into my microphone. But I
3:05
Speaker 1: know what you're thinking. You're thinking, KERRYE, quit your jibbl
3:08
Speaker 1: jabba in fact me, in fact you, I will. But
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Speaker 1: we don't have to get our source on today because
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Speaker 1: again the sources are in the very first episode and
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Speaker 1: there's just so many. So time for a catch up
3:21
Speaker 1: for episode whatever it is, Josephine Baker Part three, Death
3:27
Speaker 1: of a Showgirl. I usual doing comfortably good. Then let's begin.
3:34
Speaker 1: Guess we have to catch up on Josephine Baker and
3:37
Speaker 1: in Hell. Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, to a black
3:41
Speaker 1: mother and quite probably slash possibly slash most likely white father.
3:45
Speaker 1: She grew up in poverty and resented by her mother,
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Speaker 1: and she escaped her home life by marrying two men
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Speaker 1: named Willy All. Before the age of fifteen, she fled
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Speaker 1: to New York, became a chorus girl, moved to Powers,
3:56
Speaker 1: became a sensation, a movie starting actress or less performer,
3:59
Speaker 1: and wrote her memoirs at the age of twenty one.
4:01
Speaker 1: She had affairs with men, women, and a stone Mason
4:04
Speaker 1: slash pretend count who got shot on the shoulder during
4:07
Speaker 1: a duel for Josephine's affection. She gets a divorce, her
4:11
Speaker 1: lover dies, She gets remarried and obtains French citizenship and
4:15
Speaker 1: a new agent. She joins the Free French movement and
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Speaker 1: becomes a member of the French Resistance. When the Nazis
4:20
Speaker 1: occupy France, show Girl turns by says people from Nazis
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Speaker 1: and gets divorced again. She fights segregation and almost dies
4:28
Speaker 1: from surgery, and auctions off anuy to support people in need.
4:30
Speaker 1: And that's what you missed on Glee. Oh okay. So
4:37
Speaker 1: France has been liberated post Second World War and Josephine Baker,
4:42
Speaker 1: for her efforts in the resistance, receives the cres de Girl,
4:47
Speaker 1: the Rose de la Resistance, and she was made a
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Speaker 1: Chevalier of the Legions Donna Bachan Dugau. And while the
4:55
Speaker 1: relationship had flourished under wartime pressures, Josephine and Jacques ab
5:01
Speaker 1: Te went their separate ways, but love was never too
5:05
Speaker 1: far out of reach for Josephine because she reconnected with
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Speaker 1: orchestra leader Jean Billion. He was smart, I mean like
5:13
Speaker 1: he went to a music conservatory and he was like
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Speaker 1: chill and quiet, insensible, and he had a good business
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Speaker 1: head on him, which is like something she needs in
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Speaker 1: her life, because Josephine Baker was a diva. Like she
5:28
Speaker 1: was a diva and she was creative and all of
5:31
Speaker 1: the chaos that came with that. So Billion had accompanied
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Speaker 1: her on some of her early wartime shows, and Josephine
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Speaker 1: she was a darling of France and she wanted to
5:44
Speaker 1: use her celebrity to fight racism, but first by doing
5:50
Speaker 1: a few things at home, one of which was buying
5:53
Speaker 1: and renovating the Chateau Lemela, the abode he had been
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Speaker 1: living in when Paris was occupied, because she planned to
6:01
Speaker 1: raise a family there, like not just any family. She
6:06
Speaker 1: wanted to have a multicultural, multi racial, multi religious family,
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Speaker 1: something that she referred to as like the brotherhood. She
6:15
Speaker 1: thought that humankind was a brotherhood that we should all
6:19
Speaker 1: be a part of, Like it's very idealistic. It's very idealistic,
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Speaker 1: but this is something she believed was possible, and she
6:27
Speaker 1: thought that she could display this and bring it into
6:31
Speaker 1: fruition and it would make people realize that, you know,
6:36
Speaker 1: race is a social construct in that religion need not
6:39
Speaker 1: divide us and all that jazz. So while that's been renovated,
6:46
Speaker 1: like while her estate is being sorted, you know, she's
6:51
Speaker 1: touring North Africa performing for troops who were still stationed there.
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Speaker 1: And while she's there, I don't know what it is
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Speaker 1: with Josephine and North Africa, but every time she goes there,
7:02
Speaker 1: she has severe intestinal issues, so she has to have
7:10
Speaker 1: surgery again. Like in the last episode, you know, she
7:14
Speaker 1: said that she had been cut open so many times
7:16
Speaker 1: they may as well have put in a zippa. And
7:20
Speaker 1: when she's feeling, you know, a little bit more recuperated,
7:23
Speaker 1: like after surgery, Josephine marries jo Billion on the third
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Speaker 1: of June nineteen forty seven. What just so happened to
7:32
Speaker 1: be her forty first birthday. There's hope for me yet, lads,
7:37
Speaker 1: there's hope for me yet. Maybe someone will want to
7:40
Speaker 1: marry me, Maybe someone will want access to both the
7:43
Speaker 1: UK and Europe because I got that yell sorry instead
7:51
Speaker 1: of a regular honeymoon. Joe and Josephine performing Mexico with
7:55
Speaker 1: his orchestra, and this is broadcast on the radio, like
8:01
Speaker 1: this was a big deal at the time, like it was.
8:05
Speaker 1: And they are so popular that they get invited to
8:07
Speaker 1: perform at the Majestic Theater in Boston and and this
8:12
Speaker 1: this tanks actually, like she doesn't have I'm gonna say,
8:17
Speaker 1: a great amount of luck in the US, like for
8:21
Speaker 1: all most of reasons, but one main one. If you
8:26
Speaker 1: guessed racism, you guessed right. So like when she is
8:30
Speaker 1: invited to speak at the all black UNI in Nashville,
8:33
Speaker 1: so Fisk University, she discusses her experiences without prejudice when
8:38
Speaker 1: she traveled and how she had racial equality in France,
8:44
Speaker 1: so like, legally she had racial equality in France. But
8:47
Speaker 1: let's not pretend there wasn't like microaggressions going on, because
8:51
Speaker 1: you know, you know, we all know what happened at
8:54
Speaker 1: the parade, you know, with the other soldiers. She just
8:57
Speaker 1: happened to be France's darling. And we would be remiss
9:02
Speaker 1: to say if the fact that she was a light
9:04
Speaker 1: skinned black woman, like if colorism didn't come into it,
9:08
Speaker 1: you know, and I think that plays a part in it. Like, now,
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Speaker 1: I wouldn't be the utmost authority on colorism, and I
9:15
Speaker 1: don't think any white person can be. But it would
9:19
Speaker 1: be ignorant if we didn't think that played a part
9:22
Speaker 1: in it. So Josephine, she talks about how black people
9:26
Speaker 1: have talent, but it's ignored by white people in America. Sorry.
9:30
Speaker 1: At the time, what did I do that? Did I
9:34
Speaker 1: do that? Did I do that? So this was the
9:38
Speaker 1: start of her public speaking career, and she goes to
9:43
Speaker 1: return to France, but before she does, she invites her
9:47
Speaker 1: family to come back with her to escape, you know,
9:50
Speaker 1: racial prejudice in the United States. Not like that's a
9:55
Speaker 1: thing that could be happening now. Sorry. So her mother, Carrie,
10:01
Speaker 1: she had remarried again and her latest husband did not
10:05
Speaker 1: want to emigrate, like he flat out refused. But Carrie,
10:10
Speaker 1: who was you know, much older now, she decided to say,
10:15
Speaker 1: fuck that for a game of soldiers, Like, I'm sorry,
10:18
Speaker 1: if your husband doesn't want to go to Paris with you,
10:21
Speaker 1: I feel like that's a hymn problem, okay, And so
10:24
Speaker 1: she says fuck this for gem of Soldiers and she's
10:28
Speaker 1: going right, and Carrie McDonald never returned to the USSA
10:35
Speaker 1: like that was her done. And so she goes over.
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Speaker 1: But then so do like her children, So Josephine's siblings,
10:44
Speaker 1: and so they move over to so they move over
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Speaker 1: to the dilemma and they're doing the estate and they
10:51
Speaker 1: and like it's a big estate. There's stuff on it,
10:52
Speaker 1: there's I think she gives one of her brothers like
10:55
Speaker 1: a petro station, a gas station type thing, and so
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Speaker 1: they're like they're earning keep, but they're they're there, you know.
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Speaker 1: And Josephine this is her way of caring for her family,
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Speaker 1: Like this is what she's trying to do, Like she's
11:12
Speaker 1: got the means to do so at this point. And
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Speaker 1: I think for her this was a way of healing
11:18
Speaker 1: old ones, you know, the way that she was raised,
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Speaker 1: everything that she was brought up with. And not to
11:24
Speaker 1: excuse the behavior or how she was treated at the time,
11:28
Speaker 1: but when you think about the way that society was
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Speaker 1: and the environment that she was growing up in and
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Speaker 1: the way that Carrie was treated too, like this is
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Speaker 1: not exactly the most unprecedented of events, Like it's not
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Speaker 1: surprising that such an environment is created and a time
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Speaker 1: of huge prejudice and an atmosphere of like fear and terror.
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Speaker 1: So this is her way I think of just like
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Speaker 1: bridging that gap and trying to smooth things over and
12:06
Speaker 1: have that piece in her life. And so she and
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Speaker 1: her fourth husband they opened up a cabaret club you know,
12:14
Speaker 1: called Club des Champs de Lise oh Shawsalise oh Shawsalise
12:25
Speaker 1: oh Soles, Soula, Bluis AMEDI wam nude you two scavoo
12:31
Speaker 1: vulet oh Chan's de lise. It is a catchy song.
12:35
Speaker 1: I regret nothing, Okay, So the Chaons de lisee so yeah,
12:41
Speaker 1: the Club Deschamps Dese and all of these celebrities of
12:45
Speaker 1: the era, they come to the opening like it was
12:49
Speaker 1: it was kind of a big deal. So like you
12:53
Speaker 1: have all of these like big just stars or blues
12:56
Speaker 1: rhythm everybody, everybody, the who's who of arts and performing
13:02
Speaker 1: like everybody's there, and so this is sort of running
13:07
Speaker 1: along as well as you know, the building of the estate.
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Speaker 1: And she's also recording, like like records, like she is
13:15
Speaker 1: recording music, she's singing, and her voice like it matured
13:20
Speaker 1: so beautifully over the years, and I love the fact
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Speaker 1: that we can still listen now, like we can listen
13:29
Speaker 1: to an LP of Josephine Baker like she was alive
13:34
Speaker 1: a century ago and we can hear her voice. And
13:40
Speaker 1: when you talk about modern technology and how technology is
13:42
Speaker 1: like you know, as dangerous parts. But when you can
13:46
Speaker 1: actually like hold on to moments like this and you
13:51
Speaker 1: can listen to someone who was so important, there's just
13:57
Speaker 1: there's also something. This is very pretend of me, but
14:00
Speaker 1: I love that crackle, like that sound when you put
14:04
Speaker 1: that record on, it kind of goes like before it
14:06
Speaker 1: starts like I love that crackly noise, and I like
14:10
Speaker 1: an LP, and I like that they're re releasing LPs now,
14:13
Speaker 1: like that artists are doing it, but like release three guys,
14:17
Speaker 1: Like three is fight like Mummy Bear, Daddy Bear, Baby Bear,
14:21
Speaker 1: Like you got three is fight like everyone is gonna
14:24
Speaker 1: have their baby Bear's porade, you know one that's just
14:26
Speaker 1: right and that's all you need. I say that as
14:29
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't own a record player anymore, but I
14:32
Speaker 1: still have a drawer full of Cap Bush, Lpe's and
14:35
Speaker 1: David Bowie and some rolling Stones and a few other things.
14:41
Speaker 1: That's not the point, Okay, I like them so Josephine.
14:47
Speaker 1: So she's doing this and she's doing all that stuff,
14:49
Speaker 1: but she is still determined to have a family, and
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Speaker 1: she even gets a blessing from Pope Pius the twelfth.
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Speaker 1: Like I'm not sure what her religion was at the time.
15:02
Speaker 1: I know that she does convert to Catholicism at one point,
15:06
Speaker 1: but like what her religion was previously, I'm not entirely sure.
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Speaker 1: But being in France, which is a predominantly Catholic country,
15:15
Speaker 1: at least it was, it does seem likely that that
15:18
Speaker 1: would be that would be the religion to choose, because France,
15:23
Speaker 1: as we know, used to be like super Catholic, like
15:26
Speaker 1: incredibly Catholic, lest we forget the impotence trials. So she's
15:34
Speaker 1: looking for a blessing. She gets a blessing from the
15:36
Speaker 1: Pope because every little helps, I guess. Meanwhile, she is
15:40
Speaker 1: a huge, huge international star, and like I said earlier,
15:46
Speaker 1: she wants to use her celebrity to fight racism and inequality.
15:52
Speaker 1: Like she's supposed to be doing this big Grand Us tour,
15:57
Speaker 1: and she has it in her contracts that she will
16:00
Speaker 1: not play to segregated audiences anywhere POC people of color
16:06
Speaker 1: were denied entry. She refused to play, right, and she
16:11
Speaker 1: is rejected by thirty nine establishments all across like New York,
16:17
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, Miami, like all of these you know, big venues. Oh,
16:24
Speaker 1: like in France. In France she was a decorated war hero.
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Speaker 1: Like in the US, she can't walk through the front door.
16:34
Speaker 1: And as well, like she's turning down buckets and buckets
16:38
Speaker 1: and ducats, right, she is turning down so much money
16:42
Speaker 1: because she will only play because she demands to perform
16:47
Speaker 1: to integrated crowds. And like she could have easily turned
16:52
Speaker 1: around and gone no, no, I will perform to this
16:54
Speaker 1: black crowd and perform to this white crowd, and then
16:56
Speaker 1: you will give me the money and that will be
16:58
Speaker 1: the thing that I do. But no, no, no, no,
17:00
Speaker 1: because she has a moral compass, right, she has a
17:04
Speaker 1: code of ethics. She has what some people call a
17:07
Speaker 1: fucking backbone. Okay, And like it's so weird to see
17:11
Speaker 1: today even the amount of people that are willing to
17:15
Speaker 1: take you know, a handful of cash instead of I
17:20
Speaker 1: don't know, having ethics, having basic empathy for other people
17:27
Speaker 1: and standing up for what's right. But anyway, I digress,
17:33
Speaker 1: Oh sidebar, Actually if you're listening to this time of recording.
17:37
Speaker 1: It's recently been announced that Bad Bunny is going to
17:40
Speaker 1: be playing the Super Bowl halftime show. Now as someone
17:44
Speaker 1: who doesn't really listen to new music or support the sports,
17:49
Speaker 1: I mean, I support people doing the sports, but I'm
17:51
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't have an American football team
17:54
Speaker 1: to support. I will ask one of my American friends
17:57
Speaker 1: to just tell me who to support, like that's gonna be.
18:00
Speaker 1: That's gonna be the thing. Considering I follow the Boston
18:04
Speaker 1: Celtics now. That is my basketball team because because comedian
18:10
Speaker 1: actor Florida man Ben Reynard told me to, and that
18:14
Speaker 1: is now my team. Okay, so if anyone has any issues,
18:17
Speaker 1: they can blame him. Oh but please don't, please don't
18:20
Speaker 1: annoy Ben. Why are you making it follow this? I
18:25
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know, but that's that's it. The
18:29
Speaker 1: Boston Celtics are my basketball team because of a comedian.
18:35
Speaker 1: I can't be trusted, really, But so what I think
18:39
Speaker 1: is hilarious is I really want, I really want, more
18:44
Speaker 1: than anything else in the world, for Bad Bunny to
18:49
Speaker 1: perform the halftime show completely Espanol, right, I want it
18:55
Speaker 1: completely in Spanish? I don't speak Spanish. I don't really
18:58
Speaker 1: understand Spanish, and by that I mean I don't under
19:00
Speaker 1: stand it at all, but I can appreciate it. And
19:03
Speaker 1: let me tell you, I would watch that and share
19:06
Speaker 1: that with everybody I have ever met in my entire life,
19:11
Speaker 1: because I like being a petty bitch. Anyway, back to
19:17
Speaker 1: Joseph Phaeton. So she meets this club owner in Cuba
19:23
Speaker 1: and he also has a club in Miami, and he
19:25
Speaker 1: ends up winning a legal battle to allow an integrated
19:29
Speaker 1: crowd at the Copa City Club. Coppa Coppa City Club,
19:34
Speaker 1: Coppa City Club. Coppa sounds better, I'm gonna say Copa.
19:37
Speaker 1: So it had never ever in the history of its
19:40
Speaker 1: existence had a black guest before. So this was fucking massive,
19:47
Speaker 1: like James and the Giant Peach, right massive, or the
19:51
Speaker 1: peach of James and the Giant Peach, I should say.
19:55
Speaker 1: And so like she is selling out night after night
19:59
Speaker 1: to this just like an integrated crowd, like because people
20:02
Speaker 1: just want to see her perform. And so she starts touring.
20:06
Speaker 1: She does like a month long stint in New York
20:08
Speaker 1: performing at night and then fighting for civil rights during
20:12
Speaker 1: the day. And like she is incredibly vocal about the
20:17
Speaker 1: execution of Willie McGee. So, Willie McGee was a thirty
20:22
Speaker 1: five year old black World War Two veteran who was
20:26
Speaker 1: falsely accused of the rape of a white woman and
20:29
Speaker 1: was sentenced to death. Considering the way that rape trials
20:35
Speaker 1: and sexual assault trials go in the all of the countries, now,
20:40
Speaker 1: the fact that someone was sentenced to death over it
20:44
Speaker 1: kind of feels a little bit. But it might have been,
20:48
Speaker 1: I don't know, prejudiced in some way. So there are
20:52
Speaker 1: appeals after appeals. But eventually Willie McGee was executed in
20:57
Speaker 1: Mississippi in nineteen fifty one, and Josephine Baker is not
21:03
Speaker 1: only very loud about this, but she forks up the
21:08
Speaker 1: cash she pays for him to have a proper burial.
21:13
Speaker 1: When she's on tour in San Francisco, she hears that
21:17
Speaker 1: there are no black bus drivers or like any drivers
21:21
Speaker 1: of color at all, right, and so she shows up
21:25
Speaker 1: at the depot, like at the bus depot, and she
21:29
Speaker 1: starts like just hounding, hounding the guy right to the
21:33
Speaker 1: guy that runs it. And she's just like, how come
21:37
Speaker 1: so many black men were qualified to drive trucks in
21:39
Speaker 1: the army and yet somehow not one of them is
21:44
Speaker 1: qualified to drive a bus in San Francisco. Like he
21:49
Speaker 1: gets this, dude, he just gets snippy with her, like
21:55
Speaker 1: like he's just just a racist arse, you know, and
22:00
Speaker 1: she responds with, monsieur, you are a nasty little man.
22:07
Speaker 1: And you know what, gentle listeners, delicious friends, I bet
22:11
Speaker 1: he was a nasty little man. So nasty little man.
22:19
Speaker 1: So not only is she like on the ground doing
22:22
Speaker 1: this like boots on the ground, she's also meeting with
22:26
Speaker 1: huge corporations to try and get them to hire more
22:30
Speaker 1: black workers. Because when there's times of mass unemployment, it's
22:35
Speaker 1: always sort of minorities of the country that tend to
22:41
Speaker 1: be left at the bottom of the ladder, because, like
22:44
Speaker 1: when an entire nation is built on you know, the
22:49
Speaker 1: bones and blood of people of color, whether it be indigenous, black, Asian,
22:58
Speaker 1: you know, and you know, the oppressive force of that nation,
23:02
Speaker 1: the ruling class, if you will, are white people. When
23:06
Speaker 1: times get tough, the people that are going to get
23:09
Speaker 1: aid and help first are going to be white people. Right.
23:16
Speaker 1: That's it. It's a place of privilege. And some people
23:19
Speaker 1: might be thinking, I don't have privilege. I lived like
23:21
Speaker 1: this or I had that listen, for every opportunity a
23:25
Speaker 1: white person gets, it is going to be thrice is hard,
23:31
Speaker 1: is complicated with more barriers and obstacles for a person
23:35
Speaker 1: of color, And to not say that is it's ignorance
23:41
Speaker 1: at that point, it's ignorance. So like, one of my
23:46
Speaker 1: favorite things Josephine Baker ever does right is she performs
23:51
Speaker 1: a citizens arrest against some dude. He's like harling these
23:56
Speaker 1: like racial slurs at her, and she's like, not today, sir,
24:01
Speaker 1: not today, And so she performs as citizens arrest. So
24:12
Speaker 1: the N Double ACP declares May the twentieth, nineteen fifty
24:17
Speaker 1: one as Josephine Baker Day. She is the N doubleacp's
24:23
Speaker 1: Woman of the Year. And she has a parade in Harlem,
24:26
Speaker 1: New York. She's riding in a cavalcade and she's in
24:30
Speaker 1: this cream convertible. She's in a cavalcade and it's like
24:35
Speaker 1: a mortar care I think they call it in the US.
24:38
Speaker 1: And so she's in this cream convertible traveling down Seventh
24:42
Speaker 1: Avenue and around one hundred thousand people show up to watch.
24:48
Speaker 1: So she has this big parade, after which she has
24:52
Speaker 1: a cocktail party thrown in her honor by the New
24:56
Speaker 1: York City Mayor Vincent and Pillitteri. And after that she
25:01
Speaker 1: attends a ball. So there's a ball. So she's got
25:05
Speaker 1: a parade, a cocktail party, and a ball, and so
25:09
Speaker 1: she's got these three separate events, and so she wears
25:12
Speaker 1: three different Christian do Your outfits throughout this day for
25:18
Speaker 1: those of you who don't know Christian Do Youa's sister
25:22
Speaker 1: was a member of the French Resistance. So because Josephine
25:29
Speaker 1: Baker and she's wearing these beautiful, old, catolic, gorgeous French
25:33
Speaker 1: designer gowns. She ends up being named the best Dressed
25:38
Speaker 1: women in the US, so the best dressed women of
25:42
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one. And so she's like wearing these gorgeous
25:48
Speaker 1: outfits on tour. She's wearing all of these French designers.
25:52
Speaker 1: She's showing off these beautiful, amazing, very classy, classy designs,
25:59
Speaker 1: a lott of the designers that Jackie Kennedy loved, actually,
26:03
Speaker 1: because she was really a big fan of like French
26:05
Speaker 1: tailoring and design. And there's this whole like pushed towards
26:09
Speaker 1: femininity and everything at this point with like the New
26:12
Speaker 1: Look and all that stuff, and so there's this re
26:16
Speaker 1: emergence of this style and it's something like we even
26:20
Speaker 1: reference today. So anyway, she's at the Copa City Club
26:25
Speaker 1: in Miami. She's in the Roxy New York, but she
26:29
Speaker 1: ends up having to cancel all of her shows in
26:33
Speaker 1: Atlanta because of Jim Crow. So at this time, there
26:38
Speaker 1: was this law in Georgia and it said that a
26:41
Speaker 1: hotel could lose its license if it let a black
26:44
Speaker 1: person stay there. So because she had no where to stay,
26:49
Speaker 1: she couldn't perform because like, she's not going to go
26:52
Speaker 1: sleep in, you know, a truck, like she's in her forties.
26:56
Speaker 1: And also she's Josephine fucking Baker. Okay, she's not doing that.
27:01
Speaker 1: So because of this law, she just has to cancel
27:03
Speaker 1: all her Atlanta shows because Atlanta es in Georgia, which
27:08
Speaker 1: leads me to another story of discrimination. So she goes
27:13
Speaker 1: to a dining establishment, the Stock Club in New York
27:17
Speaker 1: City with some friends. So she's just after her performance,
27:22
Speaker 1: she's been at the Rock Sage. She's tired, she's starving.
27:26
Speaker 1: She can eat a horse. She may have eaten a
27:29
Speaker 1: horse at one point, who's to say. But she's hungry,
27:33
Speaker 1: so she orders crab steak and French wine. Now all
27:39
Speaker 1: of her friends they are served, but after an hour,
27:44
Speaker 1: none of her foot had arrived. When she inquired, you know,
27:50
Speaker 1: she's like, Hi, where's my foot? And the waiting staff
27:55
Speaker 1: said that they had ran out of crab and ran
27:57
Speaker 1: out of steak, even though she can see them delivering
28:02
Speaker 1: crap and steak to other tables that came in after her.
28:08
Speaker 1: So they also say that they are still looking for
28:12
Speaker 1: that bottle of French wine. Unsurprisingly, she calls bullshit. And
28:18
Speaker 1: here's the thing. The Store Club had an unwritten policy
28:22
Speaker 1: of discouraging people of color, basically down them out right,
28:30
Speaker 1: and Josephine she was not going to be quiet about this,
28:35
Speaker 1: and so she gets the NAACP involved, who are also
28:40
Speaker 1: not quiet about it, which then leads to the Academy
28:44
Speaker 1: being involved. Like they write a letter going, well, it
28:48
Speaker 1: looks like you're not going to get any members of
28:50
Speaker 1: the Academy coming to the Store Club. You're racist, dick.
28:55
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm paraphrasing, but that's the vibe, right, It's like,
28:59
Speaker 1: see how you do? Now? What this does is this
29:03
Speaker 1: absolutely tarmishes the Stork Club's reputation and within a few
29:06
Speaker 1: years this bustling, thriving business just has to shut down,
29:12
Speaker 1: like it just loses from here. So she's out here
29:17
Speaker 1: calling it like un American, Like you're un American because
29:20
Speaker 1: you're not serving you know. It's a whole thing, and
29:25
Speaker 1: like the papers run with it. It's it destroys the
29:28
Speaker 1: completely destroys the Stork Club. But like, here's the thing.
29:33
Speaker 1: When she goes to dine, right, there's a journalist that
29:37
Speaker 1: she knows professionally. There are acquaintances, Walter Winchell. So he's
29:43
Speaker 1: at another table and she greets him before she sits down.
29:47
Speaker 1: So this journalist was popular and powerful, and he was
29:51
Speaker 1: also a regular at the Stork Club. Now he claims
29:55
Speaker 1: that he left before she ordered, and that he had
29:59
Speaker 1: never seen any kind of discrimination at the Stork Club
30:04
Speaker 1: at any of the points that he was there, in
30:07
Speaker 1: the entirety of all the times that he had been
30:10
Speaker 1: winding down at the Stork Club. Josephine calls him out
30:16
Speaker 1: by name, and so he retaliates. He mocks her wartime
30:21
Speaker 1: achievements and worst of all, accused her of being a
30:25
Speaker 1: communist and a fascist like this is during the Red Scare. Okay,
30:30
Speaker 1: he knew what he was doing and being the prominent
30:35
Speaker 1: journalist that he was, there is no way he wouldn't
30:39
Speaker 1: have known the effect it was going to have, right,
30:42
Speaker 1: It is such a dangerous, dangerous card to play, and
30:49
Speaker 1: it was bullshit anyway, but he did it. And even
30:53
Speaker 1: if he wasn't there at the time, and he hadn't
30:55
Speaker 1: seen this particular incident, if he hadn't noticed as journalist,
31:01
Speaker 1: if he hadn't noticed that not one black person had
31:05
Speaker 1: been properly served at the store club in all of
31:10
Speaker 1: the years he had been frequenting it, like you'd have
31:13
Speaker 1: to be as observant as a brick, Like the whole
31:16
Speaker 1: point of being a journalist is that you observe the
31:18
Speaker 1: world around you and you procure the information from it,
31:20
Speaker 1: you make sense of everything around you. But clearly that happening,
31:25
Speaker 1: and like to her shows, they start getting canceled because
31:29
Speaker 1: of this accusation and Walter winchell because this this is
31:33
Speaker 1: a peer show, right, this is a poor show in
31:36
Speaker 1: his part, because he deliberately tries to destroy a women's career,
31:41
Speaker 1: a black women's career, no less, not only ruined her
31:44
Speaker 1: career and her livelihood with absolute bollocks, or because he
31:49
Speaker 1: was too blind to notice that there was never a
31:51
Speaker 1: black person with a full plate after plays that he
31:55
Speaker 1: dined at on a regular basis. Right, So because he
31:59
Speaker 1: did that, because he was seen as like stooping and
32:03
Speaker 1: dropping down and punching down and being an absolute shit bag.
32:08
Speaker 1: Right because of this, like the respect for him in
32:13
Speaker 1: the journalistic community, in society and all of that just drops,
32:18
Speaker 1: like his stock plummets effectively, and he is he is,
32:23
Speaker 1: he is no longer respected effectively. So this bullshit it
32:31
Speaker 1: sets off a chain reaction for Josephine Baker. Her shows
32:36
Speaker 1: her canceled, her visa is canceled, and like she's got
32:41
Speaker 1: no citizenship, so she's screwed because she needs her visa
32:45
Speaker 1: because she's got French citizenship. Right, so she loses all
32:51
Speaker 1: access to the US for over a decade. Right. She
32:57
Speaker 1: she deals with this, and then she's like she's still touring.
32:59
Speaker 1: She's no, no, I'm good at the show must go on.
33:03
Speaker 1: And so she goes to Cuba, where she faces more
33:05
Speaker 1: discrimination for being black and an alleged communist. Allegedly, police
33:14
Speaker 1: raided her rooms, tried to get her to admit that
33:16
Speaker 1: she worked for Moscow, and they stopped some of her
33:20
Speaker 1: shows from going ahead, Like, they literally stop her from
33:24
Speaker 1: performing at the larger venue that she was supposed to
33:27
Speaker 1: be like gigging at, So she ends up performing in
33:31
Speaker 1: a small venue and this is packed every single nick
33:35
Speaker 1: because of course it is, because she's josephin fucking Baker.
33:40
Speaker 1: So her picture the police have her picture on a
33:44
Speaker 1: wall with like wanted communists, and she's on an FBI
33:51
Speaker 1: watch list, Like the Justice Department is like, prove that
33:55
Speaker 1: you're like so pro America, and she's like, why, why
34:02
Speaker 1: do you deserve that?
34:04
Speaker 2: So she's still to hearing, she's still kicking about, and
34:09
Speaker 2: she goes to South America, more specifically Argentina, which is
34:15
Speaker 2: run by the dictator Juan di Mingo Puron, who was
34:19
Speaker 2: the husband of Eva Puron, how you may know as
34:23
Speaker 2: Evita now Joseph Eton.
34:26
Speaker 1: At the time, she was unaware that the Purons had
34:29
Speaker 1: embezzled money from the poor, or that Argentina was a
34:32
Speaker 1: safe haven for Nazi war criminals. And in fairness, this
34:36
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly like out information. This wasn't known at the time,
34:43
Speaker 1: So she felt an affinity for Eva Puron. She saw
34:48
Speaker 1: her as a kindred spirit, the same sort of rags
34:51
Speaker 1: to riches and using her power for good and because
34:57
Speaker 1: Eva Peron died young, and so Josephine reached out to
35:02
Speaker 1: Juan Peron to pay her respects and the like. Like
35:04
Speaker 1: she I mean, she was always kind of reasonable about death,
35:09
Speaker 1: but she saw how it affected other people. And so
35:14
Speaker 1: she goes because she thinks she's dealing with like a
35:16
Speaker 1: grieving man when he has grieving. We know what he
35:19
Speaker 1: did to if he do his body, it is, I'm unpleasant.
35:26
Speaker 1: Unpleasant is the word I'm going to use. So Josephine
35:30
Speaker 1: Baker gets manipulated here because she doesn't know how awful
35:34
Speaker 1: it is. And Juan Peron took advantage of her passion
35:37
Speaker 1: and her naivete because she thinks she can do some good,
35:41
Speaker 1: like like Eva Peron was doing. She wants to build
35:44
Speaker 1: on that and help the Argentinian people and so like
35:49
Speaker 1: he gets photos of them together and like talking to workers,
35:55
Speaker 1: and it sort of goes the fifties very viral, and
36:02
Speaker 1: the NAACP starts distancing themselves from her because photos with
36:08
Speaker 1: a dictator, like a fascist dictator talking to workers, it's
36:12
Speaker 1: not doesn't have the best optics, you know. But like
36:17
Speaker 1: she was unaware of this at the time, and so
36:22
Speaker 1: Juan he arranges for her to go on this tour
36:24
Speaker 1: of these hospitals because he knows she's a humanitarian, and
36:27
Speaker 1: so she visits a few. Now he says that they're
36:30
Speaker 1: all done to like this very specific standard, and they
36:33
Speaker 1: have this like great level of care. But only two
36:37
Speaker 1: of the hospitals, like when she goes like seeing them,
36:41
Speaker 1: only two have been fixed up. And so when she
36:45
Speaker 1: goes off on this hospital tour, she sees exactly how
36:49
Speaker 1: the weak, ill, and infirm are being treated. And it's
36:55
Speaker 1: at this point that she realized that she's been hoodwinked,
37:00
Speaker 1: and so she's like done, She's done with Juan Peron
37:03
Speaker 1: and all of us bullshit, and she decides to go
37:08
Speaker 1: back to her shadow, le Milan, and she decides that
37:13
Speaker 1: now is the time to start her Rainbow tribe. Josephine
37:17
Speaker 1: Baker is out there collecting children like beanie babies or
37:21
Speaker 1: the booboos. Okay, so I'm being sassy about it, but
37:25
Speaker 1: her goal was to raise a family of children in
37:30
Speaker 1: brotherhood and universalism, right. She wanted a group of children
37:35
Speaker 1: of different races, religions, et cetera to grow up without
37:42
Speaker 1: prejudice and to be treated equally like, yeah, okay, I
37:49
Speaker 1: understand that a collection of children different races religion is
37:54
Speaker 1: sounding a little bit like the casting call from a
37:56
Speaker 1: gap ad. But she's doing this because she she genuinely
38:00
Speaker 1: thinks that if she can show this to the world,
38:04
Speaker 1: this brotherhood of universalism, that it will make the world
38:08
Speaker 1: see sense, you know. And the first place she goes
38:14
Speaker 1: is Japan with the intention of returning home with a
38:17
Speaker 1: Japanese child. So she goes to a home run by
38:20
Speaker 1: a friend to collect a two year old Japanese boy
38:23
Speaker 1: named Tioya whose name would be changed to Jano in France.
38:30
Speaker 1: So this was an adoption that her and her husband,
38:33
Speaker 1: Joe Billon, had agreed to do together. So she went
38:37
Speaker 1: to Japan. She went to collect this child, and it's
38:40
Speaker 1: at this home that she sees a one and a
38:43
Speaker 1: half year old Korean boy, a Kio, and she decides
38:49
Speaker 1: she wants to bring him home as well. Needless to say,
38:54
Speaker 1: her husband was a wee bit surprised when she came
38:56
Speaker 1: home with two infants instead of one. And for some
39:01
Speaker 1: people two children would be more than enough, myself included,
39:07
Speaker 1: but Josephine Baker, like Lande Lynnette, was not most people.
39:14
Speaker 1: Later she brought home a blonde boy from Finland named Yari.
39:20
Speaker 1: Then she went to Bogota in Colombia, and allegedly is
39:27
Speaker 1: when she was there, when she was traveling, touring and such,
39:32
Speaker 1: a mother of like eight children asks Josephine to adopt
39:37
Speaker 1: her youngest boy, Gustavio, so that he could have a
39:41
Speaker 1: better life. And so Josephine she takes Gastavio and in
39:46
Speaker 1: return buys the family a house, and she promises to
39:49
Speaker 1: bring Gastavio back and visit them, but instead of that,
39:54
Speaker 1: she changes his name to Louise and doesn't tell him
39:58
Speaker 1: of his origins in Bogota until he's much much older. Now,
40:03
Speaker 1: this is a bit of a sticky wicket, right, But
40:06
Speaker 1: when it comes to Josephine Baker, I don't think it's
40:09
Speaker 1: ill intent. I think there's an assumption that what she's
40:15
Speaker 1: doing is the right thing. And she might have said, oh,
40:19
Speaker 1: bring him back, and had the intention of doing that.
40:22
Speaker 1: But then her I'm going to say, chaotic lifestyle may
40:26
Speaker 1: have just gotten in the way of that, you know,
40:30
Speaker 1: and it may have been an intention that just never
40:35
Speaker 1: came to pass. So Josephine and her husband je Boileon
40:40
Speaker 1: then adopt two more children, this time out of the
40:44
Speaker 1: French welfare system, Jean Claude and a ten month old
40:49
Speaker 1: Jewish boy called Moisch. At this point, Josephine was planning
40:53
Speaker 1: to focus all of her efforts on her estate and
40:57
Speaker 1: her family, her little Rainbow tribe, because like her estate
41:02
Speaker 1: at this point is receiving over three hundred thousand visitors
41:06
Speaker 1: a year, so you could say it was fairly popular.
41:11
Speaker 1: And so because she's planning to focus on this, she
41:15
Speaker 1: decides that she's going to do one final performance, her
41:19
Speaker 1: finale before she retired, you know, for the fans. Josephine
41:30
Speaker 1: Baker has her finale, her final performance at the Olympia
41:34
Speaker 1: Theater in Paris, and it is so popular that all
41:39
Speaker 1: of these other venues, many of them in France that
41:42
Speaker 1: she had previously performed in, they wanted her to do
41:46
Speaker 1: a final performance there as well. So, like all major acts,
41:53
Speaker 1: her goodbye show became a goodbye tour. Well on tour.
41:59
Speaker 1: In Alga, she adopted the only two survivors on an
42:04
Speaker 1: air raid in a small village, Mary Anne and Brahim
42:09
Speaker 1: now Brahim, his name would later be changed to Brian.
42:15
Speaker 2: So she just.
42:17
Speaker 1: Showed up with these kids, right, and when she lands home,
42:22
Speaker 1: her husband, Jean Bon, he was loved because okay, the
42:29
Speaker 1: family was already massive. And then she adopts two more
42:35
Speaker 1: children without consulting him. And you know, she wasn't exactly
42:41
Speaker 1: great with money, right, and so he's already he's already
42:45
Speaker 1: trying to, like money manage this situation. And remember she's
42:49
Speaker 1: sinking all this money into the estate and she's spending
42:51
Speaker 1: money on these tours and it's just yeah, it's after
42:56
Speaker 1: this that she's on tour in the Cordivo where she
43:01
Speaker 1: adopts a baby boy named Coffee, and this leads to
43:07
Speaker 1: a huge fight between Josephine and the husband. Like it's
43:12
Speaker 1: bad and it's so bad that she tells him to leave,
43:17
Speaker 1: and he does, but like they don't divorce right away,
43:22
Speaker 1: but she tells him to go and he goes. Now,
43:28
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker was not the most organized or disciplined parent.
43:36
Speaker 1: Like she liked being the fun parent, Like that's what
43:38
Speaker 1: she was good at. And I think she didn't quite
43:44
Speaker 1: realize like what being a parent entails. Like she has
43:50
Speaker 1: this idea and it's a very optimistic, idealistic idea, but
43:57
Speaker 1: the reality of that was a little less at the
44:00
Speaker 1: forefront of her mind. The practicalities of parenthood was not
44:05
Speaker 1: something that she had a great grasp of, Like she
44:09
Speaker 1: didn't discipline them, like that was not a thing she did.
44:13
Speaker 1: And then she would like leave for weeks at a
44:16
Speaker 1: time to like go gigging and perform like they had nanni's,
44:21
Speaker 1: Like they weren't left alone, like a bunch of toddlers
44:24
Speaker 1: were running through an a state, but like they had
44:28
Speaker 1: nannies and caretakers and all that jazz. But she was
44:34
Speaker 1: not the most present of parents. She'd go away, go perform,
44:41
Speaker 1: and come back, share them with gifts, and then leave again.
44:47
Speaker 1: Like it gets to the point because this is such
44:51
Speaker 1: a common cycle that the children they don't call her mama,
44:56
Speaker 1: Like they don't call her mama, they call her cadau,
45:02
Speaker 1: which is French for present or gift, not a mama,
45:07
Speaker 1: a mama, No, it's the elacado. Yeah. So this is
45:14
Speaker 1: just how Josephine lives her life. And when she's on
45:18
Speaker 1: tour in South America, she hears the news that her mother,
45:22
Speaker 1: Carrie has passed away. Nikaren MacDonald, she had become like
45:28
Speaker 1: a sort of attraction of the Chateau Le Miland estate. Like,
45:34
Speaker 1: so she would sit under a tree in a rocking chair,
45:37
Speaker 1: and she'd be in this white dress, and she would
45:41
Speaker 1: greet people like she would speak to them if they
45:43
Speaker 1: spoke English, and she would chat to them. And she
45:47
Speaker 1: was just this sort of like the wise old woman
45:50
Speaker 1: under a tree. Like it's such it's such a powerful image,
45:55
Speaker 1: so it's not surprising that people would take an interest
45:59
Speaker 1: in her. Now, Josephine's siblings they worked on the estate,
46:05
Speaker 1: like I was saying before, about the sort of the petrol,
46:07
Speaker 1: the gas station and things, and so of course they
46:11
Speaker 1: went to their mother's funeral. Josephine did not so like
46:17
Speaker 1: she had this very pragmatic view of death, and she's
46:21
Speaker 1: like everybody dies sometime, and so she didn't really see
46:25
Speaker 1: the point in returning, and especially returning for a dead person.
46:31
Speaker 1: That being said, with one person now being out of
46:35
Speaker 1: her life, she decided to add another person into it.
46:40
Speaker 1: While on tour in Venezuela, she added another member to
46:44
Speaker 1: her Rainbow tribe. So this story goes that there is
46:51
Speaker 1: a tribal chief in Venezuela and she adopts his grandson Mara,
46:58
Speaker 1: which is okay, another child to support. So Mara comes
47:04
Speaker 1: and joins the Rainbow Tribe over in the chateau, and
47:08
Speaker 1: Josephine goes on tour again. And when she's touring, like
47:14
Speaker 1: and it's around about Christmas time, a member of her
47:18
Speaker 1: crew finds a baby abandoned in a bin, like in
47:23
Speaker 1: the trash. Now I've heard two versions of this story.
47:28
Speaker 1: One is that the baby is in a bassinet and
47:30
Speaker 1: it's sort of just like surrounded by like rubbish, and
47:35
Speaker 1: the other is that like it was found just in
47:39
Speaker 1: in the trash. So this baby boy who's discovered like,
47:45
Speaker 1: they name him Noel, and this infant was another addition
47:52
Speaker 1: to the Rainbow Tribe. It was at this point that
47:57
Speaker 1: Jeau Boyon divorced Josephine Baker in ninety sixty one, and
48:02
Speaker 1: he moved to Argentina to open up a restaurant. So
48:08
Speaker 1: now Josephine had ten boys in one girl, her daughter
48:14
Speaker 1: Marie Anne. Like she said that she wanted a sister,
48:18
Speaker 1: and as luck would have it, a Moroccan friend of
48:22
Speaker 1: Josephine's would abandon Stilena in France at birth, and Stelena
48:28
Speaker 1: would be the second daughter and twelfth child of the
48:32
Speaker 1: Rainbow tribe. So like in this period of time sort
48:40
Speaker 1: of the mid twentieth century, inter country adoption wasn't the
48:48
Speaker 1: most regulated on a global level, and Josephine's fame it
48:53
Speaker 1: certainly helped most of her children. They were adopted by
48:59
Speaker 1: her an her husband under the French Family Code of
49:03
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, and so even though they divorced, Like
49:09
Speaker 1: he was also written as the adopted father of like Stelena,
49:14
Speaker 1: So even though they were separated, he like continued being
49:18
Speaker 1: that sort of father figure, even though he was I
49:21
Speaker 1: don't know, a restauranteur and Argentina of all places. So
49:28
Speaker 1: each child of the Rainbow tribe was assigned a religion
49:32
Speaker 1: in accordance to their heritage. So Janno, who was from Japan,
49:40
Speaker 1: he was Burhist, Weish was Jewish, Mary Anne was Catholic.
49:46
Speaker 1: Brian slash Brian was Muslim, Yari was Protestant, Coffee was Animist,
49:53
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. So those two ways you
49:57
Speaker 1: can take this. One is that she's just as signing
50:00
Speaker 1: these religions to each of the children, just so they
50:03
Speaker 1: have a different one each right, And the other is
50:06
Speaker 1: that she's trying to ensure they still have a connection
50:10
Speaker 1: to their heritage by giving them a religion and to
50:17
Speaker 1: like also show that you can have different religions, and
50:20
Speaker 1: grew up in harmony. AnyWho. Josephine Baker, like everything else
50:28
Speaker 1: in her life, the kids, she put them on display
50:33
Speaker 1: because she said, and I quote, there was no point
50:39
Speaker 1: in adopting children of every color to be kept away
50:41
Speaker 1: from everyone else. They must be made visible so that
50:45
Speaker 1: people can see that it is in fact possible that
50:48
Speaker 1: children from different races raised together as siblings have no animosity.
50:54
Speaker 1: That racial hate is not natural, it is an invention
50:59
Speaker 1: by mankind direct quote. So they all love the chateau
51:06
Speaker 1: in Milande, which has now opened as a tourist attraction, okay,
51:11
Speaker 1: and people are coming to see her rainbow tribe. So
51:16
Speaker 1: the chateau it has thirty nine rooms, one hundred members
51:20
Speaker 1: of staff. The estate has a bakery, a jazz club,
51:25
Speaker 1: a museum, and a mini golf course. Now I'm not
51:30
Speaker 1: sure if it's a mini golf course or just a
51:34
Speaker 1: mini golf course. That was unclear. So it's got all
51:40
Speaker 1: that and her children and her menagerie. Yeah, she's still
51:48
Speaker 1: got all her animals. Right. The kids fucking hated it, right.
51:53
Speaker 1: At one point a monkey steals a baby. That was
51:59
Speaker 1: a thing that happened. A monkey came in and stole
52:02
Speaker 1: a baby out of her crib. I feel like I
52:07
Speaker 1: shouldn't have to explain to anyone that that is not
52:10
Speaker 1: a safe environment. And she is continuing this right, she's
52:18
Speaker 1: pushing this whole idea to show brotherhood. You know, she's
52:25
Speaker 1: sinking into debt doing so. Meanwhile, she's asked to join
52:31
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixty three March on Washington. She was
52:38
Speaker 1: initially denied a visa because of the whole accused of communism,
52:42
Speaker 1: then photographed with a fascist dictator in Argentina thing. However,
52:48
Speaker 1: Attorney General Robert Kennedy overrules it, and so she gets
52:54
Speaker 1: her visa and she shows up in her full French
52:58
Speaker 1: military uniform. She is the only female speaker, and she
53:03
Speaker 1: is the warm up speaker for doctor Martin Luther King Junior.
53:09
Speaker 1: And she says, I have walked in the palaces of
53:13
Speaker 1: kings and queens, and into the houses of presidents and
53:17
Speaker 1: much more, but I could not walk into a hotel
53:20
Speaker 1: in America and buy a cup of coffee. She also
53:27
Speaker 1: said that the world was behind the movement that she
53:29
Speaker 1: had been following for thirty years. She gives this idealistic
53:35
Speaker 1: and emotional speech, and she really thought that she could
53:40
Speaker 1: make the world see race was just a social construct
53:44
Speaker 1: with her racially inclusive family, and she thought she could
53:50
Speaker 1: just and she wanted to dial it up to eleven.
53:54
Speaker 1: And so she has this idea to turn her estate
53:58
Speaker 1: into a college of brothers. This is the part where
54:02
Speaker 1: I remind you that all your faves are problematic. All
54:06
Speaker 1: your faves are problematic. No person is perfect, and some
54:09
Speaker 1: people do shitty things sometimes. So Yari the Finnish boy,
54:16
Speaker 1: when he's like fourteen fifteen, Josephine Baker sends him to
54:22
Speaker 1: Argentina to live with Jean Boion. She sends him away
54:27
Speaker 1: because Yari is gay and she's worried that it's going
54:32
Speaker 1: to spread. Like, I understand that it's the sixties, but
54:39
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker was a bisexual woman. She said it was
54:43
Speaker 1: only natural, you know, Like did she think that somebody
54:47
Speaker 1: just turned her a little bit gay? No, Like, you
54:51
Speaker 1: don't catch homosexuality. Well, I mean you can if you
54:54
Speaker 1: do it right, but no, So he is a away
55:01
Speaker 1: and that's a shitty thing to do. Meanwhile, she has
55:07
Speaker 1: put all this money into her Chateole Milan, and she's broke,
55:14
Speaker 1: like she has sunk economy. Everything is gone. She can't
55:18
Speaker 1: afford to pay the workers' wages at you know, the estate,
55:22
Speaker 1: and so they just start stealing from her and things
55:25
Speaker 1: get so bad that she is peeling gold leaf tiles
55:29
Speaker 1: off of the walls and giving them to the bank
55:32
Speaker 1: is collateral. Now she's doing shows in Carnegie Hall to
55:37
Speaker 1: raise money for like civil rights charities and for her
55:40
Speaker 1: Rainbow Tribe, and none of this works. Like in nineteen
55:45
Speaker 1: sixty four, like there's a press conference like begging for help,
55:49
Speaker 1: and Richard Baldeaux appears on TV to ask for donations
55:55
Speaker 1: for Josephine. Now this this is a bit controverty, because
56:01
Speaker 1: you know, the logical thing to do would be to
56:05
Speaker 1: sell the entire estate, downsize and move somewhere more manageable.
56:10
Speaker 1: But again, this is a sunk economy. So Josephine's so
56:13
Speaker 1: invested in it that she doesn't want to let go.
56:17
Speaker 1: And because she really believes that this College of Brotherhood
56:21
Speaker 1: is going to change the world, She's getting donations from
56:25
Speaker 1: Jaja Agabor, Brigi Bardeaux, Paul the Sixth, but it's not enough,
56:32
Speaker 1: and so she's performing again, and she's performing at the
56:36
Speaker 1: same rate that she was when she was in her twenties,
56:38
Speaker 1: Like she is constantly going and because she is working
56:42
Speaker 1: herself to the bone, she has her first heart attack
56:48
Speaker 1: and she ends up being in the hospital for two months.
56:53
Speaker 1: And when she gets home, like, she doesn't have workers,
56:55
Speaker 1: doesn't have nanny's and she just can't look after her kids,
57:00
Speaker 1: so they get sent to boarding school, which costs more money.
57:06
Speaker 1: And so again she's performing again, even though she's you know,
57:10
Speaker 1: recovering from a heart attack, and she's still trying to
57:15
Speaker 1: outrun her debts. And so in sixty five, she goes
57:22
Speaker 1: to King Hassan, the second of Morocco, and she begs
57:24
Speaker 1: him for help, and he gives her money to stop
57:28
Speaker 1: the foreclosure on the chateau, and he gives like an
57:34
Speaker 1: annual an annual amount, an allowance of like twenty grand
57:38
Speaker 1: a year for the kids. And Fidel Castro, right, he
57:45
Speaker 1: takes pity on this whole situation, and so he pays
57:50
Speaker 1: for her and all of her children to go on
57:53
Speaker 1: holiday to Cuba, and so this kind of calms things
57:57
Speaker 1: down for a while. But then, of course, her intestinal
58:02
Speaker 1: issues like the scarre tissue, the infections they wear their
58:06
Speaker 1: ugly head, and so more operations, more time in hospital,
58:11
Speaker 1: and she she just can't afford anything, but she's so
58:17
Speaker 1: determined to have this college of brotherhood. And again, all
58:20
Speaker 1: of these friends, like I said, Jashigabar pret our door,
58:23
Speaker 1: they are just like a couple of thousand year but
58:25
Speaker 1: here and she's just making lots of really bad decisions,
58:31
Speaker 1: Like she's not the most financially conscious of people. So
58:38
Speaker 1: like she's given like a gig in a club and
58:42
Speaker 1: she's going there and she's working, and that money was
58:45
Speaker 1: supposed to go towards like reasonable logical things. But then
58:50
Speaker 1: JFK is shot and so she goes to the funeral.
58:55
Speaker 1: She flies over, she brings the kids and they're all
58:58
Speaker 1: dressed and new design er outfits. Right, like the flight
59:04
Speaker 1: and the clothing. Right, it was more than what she
59:11
Speaker 1: earned in a year, Like she spent so much money. Right. Finally,
59:18
Speaker 1: after all of the like robbing Peter to pay Paul,
59:22
Speaker 1: she has served an eviction notice in September nineteen sixty eight,
59:29
Speaker 1: and so they end up having to leave the whole
59:32
Speaker 1: estate and move into this like two bed apartment. And
59:36
Speaker 1: so she's there with all of like the younger kids,
59:38
Speaker 1: so there's like nine ish maybe ten of them altogether.
59:42
Speaker 1: You know, Yari's over in Argentina, another one is somewhere else,
59:48
Speaker 1: and so, you know, all her stuff gets auctioned off,
59:52
Speaker 1: and the date that is set for her to vacate
59:57
Speaker 1: the chateau estate was the fifteenth March. So it gets
1:00:01
Speaker 1: sold and she's told, you're gonna be out with the
1:00:03
Speaker 1: fifteenth of March, and she's like, okay, But Josephine Baker,
1:00:09
Speaker 1: like myself, is a petty bitch because she's told, oh,
1:00:15
Speaker 1: it's the fifteenth of March, and then she finds out
1:00:18
Speaker 1: that the people who bought it would to move in earlier,
1:00:23
Speaker 1: and so she decides that she's not gonna let them
1:00:27
Speaker 1: in yet. She's like, no, it is still mine until
1:00:30
Speaker 1: the fifteenth of March. So she goes back to Le
1:00:35
Speaker 1: Milan the shadow Lea Milan, barricades herself in the kitchen
1:00:41
Speaker 1: and pauses for photos and gives newspaper interviews. Right now,
1:00:50
Speaker 1: consider this, she was once one of the richest women
1:00:55
Speaker 1: in the world and the richest black women in the world.
1:00:59
Speaker 1: Right she was just living the high life, and now
1:01:06
Speaker 1: she's like homeless okay. And so like they're interviewing her
1:01:11
Speaker 1: and they're asking me these questions, and she's like, everything's fine.
1:01:15
Speaker 1: I could live in a tent. I can live anywhere.
1:01:18
Speaker 1: And so the new owners they are so mad, they're
1:01:22
Speaker 1: like really impatient. They want to get into the shadow,
1:01:25
Speaker 1: and she's like, no, not until March fifteenth. And she's
1:01:29
Speaker 1: really digging her heels in, right, and so in a
1:01:34
Speaker 1: move of what I can only describe as sheer stupidity
1:01:37
Speaker 1: on the new owner's part, they send eight men, eight
1:01:44
Speaker 1: men to effectively storm the house and forcefully remove her
1:01:53
Speaker 1: from it. Right, let's just picture this. You have eight
1:01:58
Speaker 1: grown ass men dragging an elderly black woman outside of
1:02:05
Speaker 1: her home in the rain, like, and she's in her negligee, right,
1:02:12
Speaker 1: She's in her her night dress, she's got a shower cap,
1:02:17
Speaker 1: and she's holding a kitten wrapped in a blanket that
1:02:20
Speaker 1: she found on the property because she wasn't gonna leave
1:02:22
Speaker 1: the kitten behind because it's Josephine fucking Baker. Okay. So, like,
1:02:30
Speaker 1: she is there for seven hours on the front steps.
1:02:36
Speaker 1: She is there for seven hours, and this is when
1:02:40
Speaker 1: she has another heart attack, right as she is there
1:02:45
Speaker 1: in the rain in her neglige and a shower cap
1:02:49
Speaker 1: and holding a kitten. Now, I know some of you
1:02:52
Speaker 1: might be thinking, is a bonnet that she's wearing. Well,
1:02:55
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker was bald at this point, like she didn't
1:02:58
Speaker 1: have hair, so I don't know if she would be
1:03:02
Speaker 1: wearing a bonnet. Like everywhere I read it was like
1:03:05
Speaker 1: a shower cap, So it could have been a bonnet
1:03:08
Speaker 1: and somebody just didn't realize what it was, So that
1:03:12
Speaker 1: is open to interpretation. But like so she would wear
1:03:16
Speaker 1: wigs and head pieces and everything when she'd perform at
1:03:18
Speaker 1: this point, it is to do with all like the
1:03:20
Speaker 1: stuff she put through her hair when she was younger,
1:03:23
Speaker 1: and it just kind of like destroyed it. So as
1:03:28
Speaker 1: she is thrown out in the rain, she screams, if
1:03:33
Speaker 1: I die tonight, I want to be buried in the
1:03:36
Speaker 1: pink night gown of my agony. Now I love the
1:03:42
Speaker 1: fact that it's a pink neglige. It's just again drama,
1:03:46
Speaker 1: Dave a drama. So there are reporters and everything around
1:03:50
Speaker 1: because again this is Josephine Baker, it's a big deal.
1:03:53
Speaker 1: And so she ends up back in the hospital again.
1:03:57
Speaker 1: I can remember what I said about optics earlier, throwing
1:04:00
Speaker 1: an elderly black woman, you know, with eight grown as men,
1:04:06
Speaker 1: throwing an elderly black woman out into the rain in
1:04:10
Speaker 1: her ninety while holding a kitten, Like that's not a
1:04:15
Speaker 1: good look for anybody like that is Just wait a
1:04:17
Speaker 1: couple of days, guys, like March fifteenth, you have a date.
1:04:22
Speaker 1: Why are you storming the gates? Like there was no
1:04:25
Speaker 1: reason to. You can hold off a few days. And
1:04:29
Speaker 1: of course this makes the news, right, this is a
1:04:32
Speaker 1: huge deal. And because it gets like shared all over
1:04:36
Speaker 1: the world, Fidel Castro sends her a box of fruit.
1:04:42
Speaker 1: I mean sure, Fidel sure, So he gives her a
1:04:47
Speaker 1: box of fruit. And Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco,
1:04:52
Speaker 1: who like Josiphin Baker, had befriended at a Red Cross
1:04:56
Speaker 1: event in Monaco, right, Grace Kelly gives her a house
1:05:05
Speaker 1: when she finds out that they're homeless. She gifts Josephine
1:05:10
Speaker 1: and her family a huge villa on the coast of
1:05:13
Speaker 1: Monte Cristo. And it's got like if you who have
1:05:16
Speaker 1: like the Grimaldi castle, you know where Princess Grace of
1:05:21
Speaker 1: Monaco is living, like and Josephine Once she's you know,
1:05:26
Speaker 1: healed up a little bit, she goes back to performing.
1:05:29
Speaker 1: So she's trying to raise money to reviews, and she
1:05:33
Speaker 1: has this new show and on the opening night of
1:05:36
Speaker 1: her show, like it's in this club called like Shay Josephine.
1:05:40
Speaker 1: Well it's not called Shay Josephine. They nickname it Shaye
1:05:42
Speaker 1: Josephine just because she's performing there. And so you've got
1:05:48
Speaker 1: people that are like coming to this review. You've got
1:05:52
Speaker 1: Prince Renier and Grace Kelly. You have Jackie Kennedy, O Nassis,
1:05:59
Speaker 1: You've got Sophie In, Mick Jagger, Laza Manelli, Diana Ross,
1:06:06
Speaker 1: Shirley Bassey. Right, You've got all of these people, and
1:06:12
Speaker 1: it's like a huge deal. It's a very big moment.
1:06:15
Speaker 1: Like she doesn't realize the impact she had and how
1:06:18
Speaker 1: popular she was, Like she didn't know how much she
1:06:23
Speaker 1: was loved, respected and adored. Meanwhile, she's got this villa
1:06:27
Speaker 1: and Monaco and like her teenage kids are being teenagers
1:06:30
Speaker 1: and she never really got the chance to be a
1:06:35
Speaker 1: proper parent to them. Like again, she liked to be
1:06:37
Speaker 1: the fun parent, not the strict one, and here she
1:06:41
Speaker 1: was having to be both. Like she loved doing the
1:06:44
Speaker 1: fun stuff with her kids and not like the nitty
1:06:46
Speaker 1: gritty stuff. And because she like needs money and she
1:06:51
Speaker 1: needs to perform it, I think performing for her was
1:06:54
Speaker 1: always a driving force, and so she didn't really have
1:06:59
Speaker 1: the opportunity to stay at home and try and mend
1:07:01
Speaker 1: those relationships with her kids. So in nineteen seventy two,
1:07:09
Speaker 1: she's invented to perform at the Carnegie Hall again, and
1:07:13
Speaker 1: so it's like a Unisef night or the proceeds are
1:07:15
Speaker 1: going to Unief and it's a celebration of fifty years
1:07:21
Speaker 1: since she first appeared in Shuffle Along. So she's sixty
1:07:28
Speaker 1: seven years old and she's on stage in this i'm
1:07:32
Speaker 1: gonna call it bedazzled like net stocking outfit and a
1:07:38
Speaker 1: four foot tall headdress full of orange feathers. Like you
1:07:44
Speaker 1: can still see the pictures online. It's gorgeous. So she
1:07:51
Speaker 1: goes back to Monaco and she's got like a regular heartbeat.
1:07:55
Speaker 1: She's stressed, and her daughter Mary Anne's right away she's gone,
1:08:01
Speaker 1: and so this adds to her stress. And her doctors
1:08:04
Speaker 1: are like, you need to rest because you're sixty seven
1:08:07
Speaker 1: years old, and she's like, no, no, I have a
1:08:11
Speaker 1: contract in Copenhagen. I've got stuff to do and don't
1:08:14
Speaker 1: have time to be sick. And she was worried that
1:08:20
Speaker 1: all of our health issues were gonna cause her tours
1:08:23
Speaker 1: and shows to be canceled. Like she's sixty seven, she's
1:08:27
Speaker 1: working twelve hour days. Like that's that's wild, you know.
1:08:32
Speaker 1: So she flies back to the US for a tour.
1:08:36
Speaker 1: It's like seventeen cities, and she's like doing like so
1:08:41
Speaker 1: many cities, and then she's a break and then does
1:08:42
Speaker 1: so many more. And so in the middle of this,
1:08:47
Speaker 1: like the Prime Minister of Israel flies her over for
1:08:54
Speaker 1: the twenty five year Freedom anniversary. Now this is a
1:08:59
Speaker 1: period of time in which we are still presented with
1:09:02
Speaker 1: the idea that the separation in Palestine was a harmonious
1:09:10
Speaker 1: one and this was a place of respect and care
1:09:14
Speaker 1: and refuge. So she was working with Jewish refugees during
1:09:19
Speaker 1: the Second World War, and so on her mind she
1:09:22
Speaker 1: would have seen this as like a very good and
1:09:24
Speaker 1: bright and accepting thing to do. And so she flies there,
1:09:28
Speaker 1: she does her bit, and so when she returns, she's
1:09:32
Speaker 1: a day late getting back and her manager has to
1:09:38
Speaker 1: refund a sold out crowd because she didn't show up
1:09:40
Speaker 1: because she was a daily and so he's like, I've
1:09:44
Speaker 1: got to take it out your pay because you know,
1:09:47
Speaker 1: you are the reason you are daily. And so she quits.
1:09:51
Speaker 1: She just quits her tour, and so, yeah, things are
1:09:56
Speaker 1: not going well for her. She's in debt, she's wasting money.
1:10:00
Speaker 1: She's struggling as well because she's ill and with her age,
1:10:05
Speaker 1: like she's not remembering like the lyrics to her songs
1:10:09
Speaker 1: or anything anymore, and like she's very exhausted because she's
1:10:14
Speaker 1: sixty seven, and so she's trying to perform, and like
1:10:20
Speaker 1: people are very gentle and considerate with her because they're like,
1:10:26
Speaker 1: you know, she's sixty seven and she's struggling. Then the
1:10:33
Speaker 1: Monoccan Red Cross decide that they're gonna put on like
1:10:37
Speaker 1: this big celebration that year for their gala, and they
1:10:40
Speaker 1: called it Josephine, a televised tribute to her life, starring
1:10:45
Speaker 1: her and younger dancers dressed as her. And on the
1:10:50
Speaker 1: opening night, this is madness. Right on the opening night,
1:10:55
Speaker 1: she sang thirty four songs in fifteen scenes. She gets
1:11:01
Speaker 1: a thirty minute ovation, and then she's out to dinner
1:11:07
Speaker 1: for like a big dinner with like two hundred and
1:11:09
Speaker 1: fifty people at the Bristol to honor her, and there
1:11:13
Speaker 1: is a seven layer cake. It's very tall, and Princess
1:11:18
Speaker 1: Grace of Monaco helps her cut it. And so after
1:11:24
Speaker 1: like her second performance, like in Josephine starring Josephine, so
1:11:32
Speaker 1: her and her like co stars, they're all like really
1:11:34
Speaker 1: much younger, and they go across the street to eat
1:11:37
Speaker 1: one of her favorite foods, spaghetti. I love the story,
1:11:42
Speaker 1: and she wants to like continue and go dancing, and
1:11:45
Speaker 1: like all of her younger co stars are like, I
1:11:46
Speaker 1: am tired, and she's like, you young people are no
1:11:50
Speaker 1: fun anymore. So four days after this big show, okay,
1:11:56
Speaker 1: so it's like the day after like the second show,
1:11:59
Speaker 1: but a big show. It's the fourth day after that.
1:12:03
Speaker 1: So she was having a typical day. She had little
1:12:05
Speaker 1: afternoon nap and so her friend is you know, she
1:12:08
Speaker 1: goes in and she wakes her up because she's supposed
1:12:11
Speaker 1: to have an interview with a journalist. Her friend goes
1:12:14
Speaker 1: in tries to wake her up, but she's not waking up.
1:12:18
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker had had a stroke and was now in
1:12:21
Speaker 1: a coma, so she is rushed to the emergency room
1:12:26
Speaker 1: of PTI Sapinine Hospital, and so she's there and her
1:12:32
Speaker 1: family show up, and so does Princess Grace of Monaco.
1:12:35
Speaker 1: So they all rush there, and the doctors tell them
1:12:39
Speaker 1: that there is a seventy percent chance that if they operate,
1:12:43
Speaker 1: that Josephine Baker is going to be severely physically impaired,
1:12:48
Speaker 1: and so they all agree that there's going to be
1:12:51
Speaker 1: no operation because it is the last thing she wanted, like,
1:12:57
Speaker 1: she hated the idea of the idea of living like that.
1:13:02
Speaker 1: And so on the twelfth of April nineteen seventy five,
1:13:08
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker passed away at the age of sixty eight.
1:13:13
Speaker 1: And when her friend found her, initially, when she found
1:13:17
Speaker 1: her in the bed, unresponsive, she was surrounded by reviews
1:13:23
Speaker 1: of her lady's show, and these were rave reviews, and
1:13:27
Speaker 1: the show, Josephine, there were just amazing, just five star,
1:13:35
Speaker 1: ten out of ten, all of these amazing reviews about
1:13:38
Speaker 1: her performance in her show. And so she had been
1:13:42
Speaker 1: reading these reviews and they're like all around her, and
1:13:46
Speaker 1: she was being celebrated. And so the last memory that
1:13:52
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker would have had was of the world celebrating
1:13:55
Speaker 1: her back when she was twenty one. She had said
1:14:03
Speaker 1: that I shall dance all my life. I was born
1:14:08
Speaker 1: to dance, just for that. To live is to dance.
1:14:16
Speaker 1: And so she has a full Catholic funeral at Leglise
1:14:21
Speaker 1: de la Madeleine. And this is like a big public funeral,
1:14:26
Speaker 1: and it is it is paid for by Prince Rainier
1:14:31
Speaker 1: and Princess Grace of Monaco. It's a full military funeral. Right,
1:14:37
Speaker 1: she gets a full military funeral, and over twenty thousand
1:14:42
Speaker 1: people come. Right, she is the only American born woman
1:14:47
Speaker 1: to receive full French military honors at her funeral. And
1:14:53
Speaker 1: so after that, like Princess Grace, she has this like
1:15:00
Speaker 1: a private, quiet funeral at legl Sanchars back in Monaco,
1:15:06
Speaker 1: and she is interred at the Cemeterire des Monico. And
1:15:10
Speaker 1: so ends the story of Josephine Baker. And that is
1:15:16
Speaker 1: the death of a showgirl. If you liked this series
1:15:21
Speaker 1: on Josephine Baker played writ in review five stars. If
1:15:23
Speaker 1: you didn't like it, shut your mouth. You don't have
1:15:26
Speaker 1: to say anything. Don't worry about it. I am so
1:15:30
Speaker 1: glad that I got to tell this story as full
1:15:35
Speaker 1: as I could. And I know this is probably part
1:15:37
Speaker 1: that I still managed to miss because she did so much.
1:15:41
Speaker 1: Like she did so much, and listen, all your favors
1:15:47
Speaker 1: are problematic, and some people do the wrong thing for
1:15:52
Speaker 1: what they believe are the right reasons. Happens all the time.
1:15:56
Speaker 1: But she was such an inspiration and crossed borders when
1:16:02
Speaker 1: others wouldn't or couldn't, and stood up when it was
1:16:06
Speaker 1: time to stand. Like it's so funny. I think of
1:16:11
Speaker 1: like that line in Hamilton, like if you stand for nothing,
1:16:13
Speaker 1: what will you follow for? And like she risked her
1:16:18
Speaker 1: life in so many occasions trying to do the right thing.
1:16:24
Speaker 1: And yeah, she was a diva and dramatic and just
1:16:29
Speaker 1: very much all of the muchness and I fucking love
1:16:33
Speaker 1: her for it. And like, I really want to go
1:16:36
Speaker 1: see the Josephine show in Paris. I don't care if
1:16:39
Speaker 1: it's all in French, I don't care. I'll go watch it.
1:16:42
Speaker 1: I don't care. But yes, so ends the story of
1:16:46
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker, or does it? Thank you for listening, And
1:16:49
Speaker 1: I guess it's recommendation time for watching. Apart from coming
1:16:54
Speaker 1: to see my show in London, come see me perform,
1:16:57
Speaker 1: I say, perform, talk about history in the top the
1:17:01
Speaker 1: shows a little bit too much cleavage for watching. If
1:17:05
Speaker 1: you get a chance to see Jess Thunder the Blessed
1:17:09
Speaker 1: Queen Miss Exotic twenty twenty five, you should go see her.
1:17:13
Speaker 1: She's fab for listening. For listening, I'm gonna recommend Scam
1:17:19
Speaker 1: Goddess because you know me, I love a scam, I
1:17:22
Speaker 1: love a hockster, I love tricks and love absorbing that information.
1:17:25
Speaker 1: I don't love them, I love hearing about them because
1:17:29
Speaker 1: I don't know. I got problems I don't know anyway.
1:17:32
Speaker 1: And for reading, and because you know, I'll let my
1:17:35
Speaker 1: cozy mysteries, I'm going with Deep Fried Trouble, the Eugena
1:17:42
Speaker 1: Patterson Mysteries. And with that, I am going to wish
1:17:46
Speaker 1: you good night. Adios. Au revoir of Wes Them my friends,
1:17:52
Speaker 1: Bye bye