Author: DG1937

On 5th January 1958 Mona’s first husband, Michael Carle was driving back to Hamburg from a business meeting in Travemunde, it was a fifty-two mile journey he never completed. His car skidded on ice, overturned and hit a tree. He was taken to a nearby hospital but died there.

Many sources on the internet will tell you that Mona was heartbroken and more or less stopped performing following his death. Citing an article by Angela Cobbinah of 11th October 2018, Wikipedia has this to say:

Baptiste was married to Michael Carle, whom she had met in London; after his death in a car accident in 1958 when their son Marcel was aged five, she retired.

This is a classic example of taking things you read on the internet with a bucket load of salt and one day we must get round to amending Mona’s Wikipedia entry as this is not the only complete falsehood in it. You can read the truth in our book What About the Princess? The Life and Times of Mona Baptiste – Mona had already started divorce proceedings against Carle and did not even attend his funeral.

And, as to giving up work, we already knew that wasn’t true but we were recently contacted out of the blue by Udo Hinz, a Researcher of the Jazz-History of the German university-Town of Göttingen with an additional fragment of evidence.

Udo told us that Mona performed in Gottingen for a week in April 1958 a little over three months after her husband’s death – so much for giving up performing and becoming a virtual recluse!

Udo tells us that the Kupferkanne was a small venue, a dance hall with a capacity of around 100 patrons. She appeared nightly (‘jeden abend’) and presumably the free entry (‘eintritt freil’) meant the club owners expected to do good business at the bar.

There must be much more evidence tucked away in the archives of local newspapers in Germany and, perhaps, one day, more scraps will emerge.

And of course, Mona had many strings to her bow. Even a cursory glance at IMdB (the International Movie Database) will show that Mona continued to appear in films and on TV shows throughout the ’60s. ’70s and ’80s. The moral of this story is treat anything you read about Mona on the internet with extreme caution and buy the book instead!

While Mona was living at No.6 Hellerstrasse, a neighbour was Gisela Griffel. Gisela was three years older than Mona (20^th May 1923 as opposed to 21^st June 1926) but their career paths had many similarities and they had appeared together in the film ‘Spiel Mit Dem Gluck’. But Gisela gave up showbusiness to support her husband, Paul L’Arronge, in making a success of his business, the L’Arronge, an upmarket coffee shop. L’Arronge was soon the place to be seen in Hamburg and there is no doubt that Mona would have been a frequent visitor.

We don’t have any images of Mona at L’Arronge but there can be little doubt that she would have attended events like the one pictured below (Gisela is at the back surveying the scene from above).

After taking the UK by storm, Mona soon spread her wings and found even greater success on the continent. Long before the Beatles, Hamburg was a favoured destination for many British artists and Mona was one of them. She was signed up for a number of personal appearances by the German impresario Oskar Liebermann and in 1952 her success as an artist in Germany led Mona to make her home in Hamburg where she took an apartment at 6 Hallerstrasse. She lived here from 1952 for several years, only returning to England because she wanted her son, Marcel, to be educated there.

This was (and still is) an upmarket part of the city. The road is much busier than it would have been in Mona’s day and now faces onto an ugly block of municipal housing but the house itself is much as it was when Mona lived here. A plaque in front of No.8 confirms that 6-8 are indeed original and date from 1886/7.

Have you ever stood at a stage door hoping to get a glimpse of your favourite star or, better still, their autograph? Clearly, at the end of 1949 (or perhaps very early in 1950) someone waited for Mona to emerge and he (or she) was rewarded with a signature.

This page, taken from an autograph book, demonstrates that at least one fan thought Mona’s signature was worth waiting for.

On the reverse of this page is the signature of film star Richard Todd who was at the height of his power in 1949/50. It was about this time that he appeared in the stage show The Hasty Heart in London and on Broadway and he starred in the 1949 film version of the show. He was nominated for an Oscar as Best Actor for his portrayal of the character Lachie. The following year Todd appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Stage Fright alongside stars like Marlene Dietrich, Jane Wyman and Alistair Sim.

Todd went on to enjoy a long and successful career including a role in the 1962 film The Longest Day. During World War Two, Todd had been an officer in the 7th Battalion (LI) The Parachute Regiment and it was this Battalion that made contact with Major Howard at the Orne Bridge now called Pegasus Bridge – Todd was the officer who made contact. In the film Todd played Major Howard and the meeting between Howard and Todd was one of the scenes in the film.

Having wished the unknown fan ‘good luck for 1950’, Mona herself went from strength to strength in that year with numerous radio and TV appearances as well as stage shows but it wasn’t until 1953 that she followed Todd onto the silver screen. You can read more Mona’s multi-faceted career in What About The Princess? The Life and Times of Mona Baptiste.

We knew we wanted to write about the life and times of Mona Baptiste but as we found out more about her life the anecdotes and material piled up. One little story particular caught our attention.

Mona was touring as vocalist with Cab Kaye’s band. As was often the case in those days it could be difficult for black musicians to find accommodation when they were on tour (the difficulty of finding accommodation was not unique to musicians of course). Checking into a hotel in Nottingham, Mona became aware that her needs were being overlooked, black women may sympathise with the feeling of invisibility that Mona must have experienced. She felt the need to give Cab a nudge ‘what about the Princess?’ she asked.

And there we had it, the perfect title for our book!