Royalty, did you know? – Princess Grace of Monaco was Joséphine Baker’s fairy godmother
At the end of the month, Joséphine Baker will enter the Pantheon. But his remains remain in the marine cemetery of Monaco, in this Principality where Princess Grace had been her fairy godmother and that of her 12 children.
She rests forever in the marine cemetery of Monaco. In this Principality where Princess Grace herself had taken in her with her 12 children, when she was in ruins. If Joséphine Baker will do well, as planned, her entry into the Pantheon on November 30, 2021, it is through a “cenotaph (that is to say an empty tomb) marked by a plaque, as for Aimé Césaire and other personalities “, underlined”Nice morning“, last summer.
A read: Joséphine Baker, a star and a powerful at the Pantheon
In the mid-1960s, the former American magazine leader lived in her castle in Milandes, in Périgord, with her “rainbow tribe”, as she called it, orphans and orphans born in Japan, in Colombia, Finland, France, Algeria, Ivory Coast, Venezuela and Morocco which it adopted. But, too generous, she squandered her fortune and can no longer meet the expenses. His home, first auctioned in 1964, was saved thanks to an appeal launched on television by Brigitte Bardot, then at the height of her glory. Four years later, the castle is sold and it is another actress, Grace Kelly, who comes to her aid. On the street with her adopted sons and daughters, Joséphine Baker finds refuge in Roquebrune Cap Martin, the former muse of Hitchcock who became the wife of Prince Rainier III of Monaco, installing her “for life”, with her children, in a villa overlooking the Mediterranean, close to the Rock. It will also allow him to go back on stage – to be able to repay his debts, inviting him to perform at the Red Cross gala in 1974.
Grace Kelly admired the courage of Josephine Baker in New York
The following year, with renewed success, Joséphine Baker began a series of performances at the Bobino theater in Paris. A dinner follows the premiere of this show. “And we saw this supper where, in front of the fiftieth birthday cake of Joséphine, born in 1925, they were hand in hand, Joséphine and Grace, the little black girl born at the lowest social level in a poor neighborhood of Saint-Louis and the little white girl born into a wealthy family in Philadelphia, ”said journalist Jacqueline Cartier in“ France Soir ”, as historian Jean des Cars reported in an article about Joséphine Baker appeared in “Le Figaro Magazine” on November 5.
A read: Royalty, did you know? Why is Monaco’s main family forever linked to the Cannes Film Festival?
Victim of a stroke, Joséphine Baker died a few days later, on April 12, 1975, at the age of 68, in the Parisian hospital of Pitié-Salpêtrière. Coming to his bedside, Princess Grace “prays at the same time as the chaplain, who recites the prayer for the dying,” says Jean des Cars. Then, citing Jacqueline Cartier again in “France Soir”, he shares this testimony from the mother of Princesses Caroline and Stéphanie and Prince Albert: “I didn’t have the opportunity to tell him but the first time I I saw her at the Stork Club in New York where they refused to serve her because she was black. I didn’t know at the time who Josephine Baker was. But I admired the scandal it caused and which had a very important echo in the press the next day. I was so shy… I remember asking myself the question: “In his place, would I have had this courage?”.
Any reproduction prohibited