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40 Fascinating Facts About the Fabulous Josephine Baker

Khalid Elhassan July 2, 2019 24 min

Josephine Baker - Josephine Baker - Chanter L'amour

25. She Was Managed by a Fake Count

‘Count’ Giuseppe di Abatino and Josephine Baker. Spiegel

Early in her French career, Josephine Baker met a Sicilian named Giuseppe Pepito Abatino, who introduced himself as a count. In reality, he was no aristocrat, but a former stonemason. Nonetheless, he convinced her to let him manage her, and he succeeded in transforming her stage and public persona. Baker throve with Abatino handling the bookings and business side of things, and eventually, star and manager became lovers. They would have married, were it not for the fact that Baker was still married to her second husband, Willie Baker.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.