"Let's Go To Bricktop's" (CpB #1)

Zelda Fitzgerald said it and then they were there.






The photograph precedes the scene in Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS where the revelers go to a dance hall. Thanks to one of my personal coaches, that film is well-blogged on this site. Thanks to a google search for reviews of Scott Fitzgerald's TENDER IS THE NIGHT, I accidentally discovered information about the dance hall and why it featured numerous black actors in party mode.
For the Roaring Twenties' flashback scenes, Woody Allen did such a magnificent job of dovetailing fact with fiction I almost referred to the film as WoodNight in Paris but that title is exclusive property of the Lewis Carroll School of Logic.

Bricktop's was named for its owner who, like Woody Allen, was born a redhead. Unlike the film director, she was born poor and black in the rural south.

God bless history for proving that to not be a terminal condition.


The aforementioned accidental discovery* led me to Bricktop's full name: Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Virginia Louisa Smith.

"Bricktop made her Paris debut in 1924 as a dancer at a gangsters’ club where Langston Hughes waited tables."

Two years later, she owned her own club...

Two minutes after discovering Bricktop, this virtual traveler visited a Paris Review website, from whence comes all the blockquoted–though not necessarily verbatim–information. (The plaque photo is from a current restaurant chain.)
But first, let's turn the Bricktop clock back one year when, evidently, the gangsters' club was floundering

Until another American arrived: F. Scott Fitzgerald—Bricktop described him in her memoirs as “a little boy in a man’s body”—who insisted that she drive him home from the club every night.

My Scott&Zelda-fied brain insists on believing Scott was upstaged by Zelda on the dance floor but the lead dancer–Bricktop–provided a way for him to get out the door. However, my brain might reasonably approximate the truth by believing Mr. Fitzgerald introduced Mr. Cole Porter to Miss Ada Smith.

It was Porter who insisted that she name [her club] Bricktop’s, knowing it was the lady herself people would come to see...Porter told Bricktop that she had “talking feet and talking legs.”

In the Roaring Twenties, The Charleston might not have become THE CHARLESTON had not Bricktop taught Cole Porter & other American expatriates how to do it. Not only but also

Before she knew it, the girl from Alderson [West Virginia] found herself teaching the Duke and Duchess of Windsor...and Aga Khan...He once asked her “How does it feel to have royalty kiss this little freckled hand of yours?” Bricktop replied “I don’t feeling anything. Royalty? They’re only people.”

At that time, Aga Khan–the Persian ruler–may have been wealthier than the Rockefellers.
It floors me to know Bricktop was also an educator. I may go to my grave believing Josephine Baker, the most famous black American dancer to ever set foot in France, had occasion to seek Bricktop's counsel before presenting a new exotic choreography to the public.

What else happened at Bricktop's?

Fred Astaire practiced the routines he would later bring to Broadway on the club’s floor...Jasha Heifitz would borrow a violin from the band and begin to play, and, later on, two newcomers, a temperamental Gypsy guitarist and a jazz violinist, also entertained nightly: Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli.

Before the Name-Dropping police knock on my door, I will close this post with three photographs of Ms. Bricktop. Only the "youngest" of these photos is from the Paris Review website.

To Be Continued
After reading her book

Blogger's Notes
* This was the "accidental discovery" that introduced me to Bricktop.
The code,CbP, links a sequence of posts related to Ms. Bricktop.
Part of the reason she is not named in (CbP #1) is due to hyperlinks therein for Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. To have also referenced God or Godette in the same post would have been redundant.