← Back to the front page

40 Fascinating Facts About the Fabulous Josephine Baker

Khalid Elhassan July 2, 2019 24 min

Josephine Baker - Josephine Baker - Chanter L'amour

24. Men Fought A Duel Over Her

In 1928, while staying in Budapest, Josephine was ogled by a Hungarian calvary captain named Andrew Czolovoydi, who then made advances towards her. That did not sit well with Josephine’s manager and on-and-off lover, “Count” Pepito di Abatino. So he challenged the Hungarian officer to a sword duel. The challenge was accepted, and the duo went at each other with swords in a cemetery, while Josephine watched from atop a tombstone. She stopped the fight, however, when her manager took a shoulder wound. Honor thus satisfied, the two men shook hands and quashed their beef.

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.