Foil, Fiction, and Fantasm: ‘Josephine Baker’ in Princesse Tam Tam

The fact that the indigenous female does not write but is written about parallels the production of Baker’s autobiographical writings, composed in collaboration with Marcel Sauvage, André Rivollet, and Jo Bouillon.¹ It also reflects on the figure of the illiterate primitive. Yet Baker did write letters, one of which, from the preface to Paul Colin’s Le Tumulte noir, is reproduced in Sauvage’s first memoirs (M, 29). She co-authored the novel My Blood in Your Veins with Pepito Abatino in 1931 and is pictured as writing a letter to her children in the feature film, the Josephine Baker Story (2001).² Other evidence of Baker’s lifelong writing habit is the posthumously published, co-authored autobiography, Joséphine, where Jo Bouillon admits to using notes that Baker had gathered over the years with the intention of writing her autobiography: “The folders bulged with notes, reflections, documents, old programs, press clippings, and three hundred pages of the rough draft of an autobiography begun fifteen years earlier.”³

Princess Tam Tam offers an intriguing writing triangle. The idea of using Alwina as writing material comes to Max de Mirecourt when he is at a loss for inspiration. Coton prompts him to do it. After having complained of how washed out he is, Max regrets that Alwina cannot be found. He thinks about scrubbing her down (décrasser), then educating her. Coton quips: “You’ve got your novel!” Max talks to Alwina—they are initially depicted standing behind a screen—while Coton writes down their conversations. Alwina is never alone with Max since the secretary must be able to overhear their dialogues. In answer to one of her queries, Coton explains that he is “a nigger” (a ghostwriter, un nègre). He does the work in the place of the other. That equation between Coton’s role and Baker’s “identity” reverberates for the viewer on the actual exchange between the three protagonists as an answer to the questions: Who creates? Who does the work? Who owns the work? In this interaction, the metaphoric “nigger” (Coton) uses the real “nigger” (Josephine) to produce the work of art of the white nobleman who stands in for colonial power. They could/should do away with him since Alwina provides the material and Coton does the writing, yet Max is the one who signs the autographs (the author) and is the object of Alwina’s desire. Coton’s later comment, “We could have asked Alwina to come and sign,” is an acknowledgement of her role as co-author of the text. Baker’s personal situation was the opposite, given that Abatino used Baker’s name several times to promote books he had written.⁴

Here, best-selling fiction turns out be the actual transcription of a dialogue with the exotic other. Alwina is literalized into the source of inspiration, and her words are modified to provide the stuff of Max’s new “race novel.” Her “authenticity” suffices for the fiction to ring true enough to sell. Max also pretends to fall in love with her, seducing her doubly: he steals from her the genuineness of her reactions, and he turns these emotions into profitable material, a commerce that stands in for the exploitation of the colonies by the Empire.

1. Here is the list of the memoirs and autobiographies: Les Mémoires de Joséphine Baker, recueillis et adaptés par Marcel Sauvage avec 30 dessins inédits de Paul Colin (Paris: Kra éditeur, 1927); Les Voyages et aventures de Joséphine Baker par Marcel Sauvage (Paris: Editions Marcel Sheur, 1931), Préface de Fernand Divoire, avec photos et dessins; André Rivollet, Joséphine Baker: Une vie de toutes les couleurs (Grenoble: B. Arthaud, 1935); Les Mémoires de Joséphine Baker, recueillis et adaptés par Marcel Sauvage (Paris: Correa 1949); Jacques Abtey, La Guerre secrète de Joséphine Baker (Paris: Siboney, 1948). Josephine Baker, Jo Bouillon and Piet Worms, La Tribu arc-en-ciel (Paris: Opera Mundi, 1957). [↩]
2. It may be the 1968 testament letter referred to by Bonini in La Véritable Joséphine Baker (Paris: Pygmalion, 2000), p. 279. [↩]
3. Josephine Baker and Jo Bouillon, Joséphine (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1976), p. xii. [↩]
4. Collaborative autobiography always poses the vexed question of authorship. See Philippe Lejeune, Je est un autre: L’autobiographie de la littérature aux médias (Paris: Seuil, 1980). [↩]