Jo and her Count

Josephine Baker took up with a former stonemason from Sicily, Guiseppe Abatino, who was passing himself off as Count Pepito de Abatino, a claim that did not deceive Baker, who already knew his cousin Zito as a non-aristocratic habitué of Montmartre dives. The relationship would provide stability in her life over the next nine years as Abatino became her lover and business manager. Though reported as being her husband the pair never married. Together, they opened a nightclub, Chez Joséphine, on December 14, 1926, while Baker was still performing at the Folies Bergère. To regularize the situation, she avoided the tedious process of getting her former marriages straightened out by simply declaring to the press in the summer of 1927 that she and Abatino had slipped away and gotten married. He died of cancer at the age of 38.

Source: Ader Normann, Photographer; geni.com