Bricktop

Dated, stylistically, reminded me of the Lauren Bacall book I read as a teenager. Bricktop apparently had a je ne sais quoi that resulted in her great success as a caberet singer and night club owner—the book is a veritable list of who’s who. But this didn’t translate well through the book. I have no idea what she was like or why people (according to her) adored her so much. She kept questionable company as well…. Lots of people we now know of as nazi and nazi sympathizers…but she seemed to try to live by a simple credo: if you treat me well I’ll treat you well…but these people are not good for the world…. So I’m confused after reading the book.… (meer)

Her wikipedia, and a book review:

"Born Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith in a small town in West Virginia, Bricktop moved to Chicago as a little girl. She recalls her early days peeking under saloon doors and longing to be able to sing in the backrooms; going on the road at sixteen (it was while playing a saloon in Harlem that she was dubbed "Bricktop" because of her red hair); working for heavyweight champion Jack Johnson at the Caf‚ Champ in Chicago; and the offer to go to Paris, where she arrived in 1924 at LeGrand Duc, "a room so tiny it felt crowed with six pairs of elbows leaning on the bar." Early one morning Cole Porter heard her sing one of his songs and began bringing his friends to hear Bricktop. Soon she was the queen of the nightclub scene of Paris.

Bricktop recounts her remarkable life the 20s and 30s when everybody who was anybody went to Bricktop's; getting out of Paris just before the Germans came in (with the help of Lady Mendl and the Duchess of Windsor)' her unsuccessful attempts to recreate Bricktop's in New York; her years in Mexico City; her conversion to Catholicism; and Bricktop's in Rome where she watched the marriage of Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner break up and unwittingly presided over the first appearances together in public of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. From Sophie Tucker to Jascha Heifetz, from Jelly Roll Morton to Jimmy Walker, from Tallulah Bankhead, Gloria Swanson and Shirley MacLaine to Paul Robeson and Edward G. Robinson, her story is filled with anecdotes about the people she knew and her outspoken opinions of them all, be it F. Scott Fitzgerald ("It was impossible not to like him. He was a little boy in a man's body. He hadn't grown up and he didn't intend to."), Ernest Hemingway ("I never took to him. He just wanted to bring people down.") or Martin Luther King, Jr. ("He was one of the most calm, collected together persons I have ever met in my life.""

… (meer)