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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

5. Her Platonic Marriage to Artist Robert Brady

Baker, who was married and divorced four times, developed a close friendship with American artist Robert Brady. Late in life, after divorcing her fourth husband Jo Bouillon, she sought companionship and friendship on a more platonic level. Brady felt the same, so in September of 1973, during a trip to Acapulco, Mexico, the duo entered an empty church, and exchanged marriage vows. No clergy were present, and it was not a legally binding marriage. She told few people about it, fearing ridicule from the press, but it was an important bond that Baker and Brady maintained for the rest of her life.

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.