Angelina Jolie. Mia Farrow. Josephine Baker. This Mother’s Day we salute these three famous, devoted mothers and the husbands they loved. Unfortunately, the husbands were married to other women, but who’s counting? This is the terminally hip 21st Century, not some black and white antediluvian world of fidelity, loyalty and conditional love based on character.These three ladies make Madonna look like a cloistered nun when it comes to reinvention.
Angelina just a few short years ago was a vampire goth queen. She sported around her delicate neck a vial of blood belonging to her hillbilly Oscar winner husband. She morosely admitted to stints in drug rehab and psychiatric clinics. That same year found her at the Academy Awards slipping her brother the tongue. Her mental acuity was analyzed by Freudians & fast-fix tabloids, ad nauseum.
Then motherhood and the UN came calling. Our favorite bad girl morphed into an instant glam Mother Teresa.
She now tirelessly wanders the globe gleefully adopting beautiful Third World children AND as the UN’s goodwill ambassador for an agency that currently assists 20 million refugees in 120 countries. This sensuous, secular saint is passionate about education for Africa’s children as the antidote to AIDS & grinding poverty AND about shlepping Brad Pitt everywhere. Soon she’ll add her formerly married co-star’s baby to her Rainbow Tribe. They vow to adopt another dozen kids from orphanages around the world.
Gorgeous show biz stars creating “Rainbow Tribes” of ethnically diverse kids is nothing new. Hollywood pundits say Angelina must be channeling the dead Josephine Baker, a sexy, courageous black entertainer who fled 1920’s racism in the US. She landed in Paris and gained international fame as “the girl who danced through Europe dressed only in bananas.” The “Black Venus” took Paris by storm, dancing the Charleston almost naked at the Folies Bergere.
Like Angelina, the sepia sex goddess also ran off with a married man and the world got pissed for a couple of seconds. Josephine’s liaison was with the adulterous future King Gustavus VI of Sweden. Though she sighed: “He was the cream and I was his coffee, and when you poured us together, it was something!”, he returned to his future Queen after a night of waltzing and shtupping.
But what the brilliant star did with the rest of her life really WOWED a cynical world.
During World War II, with Hitler riddling Europe with hate and intolerance, she risked her life and joined the French Resistance. As a celebrity, she could easily cross borders with crucial secrets written on her music sheets in invisible ink.
The Gestapo decided to murder her because she was married to a Jewish businessman at the time. At gunpoint, Hermann Goering made her eat poisoned fish. She survived, barely.
After the war, she was awarded the Legion of Honor by the French government. She then began adopting 12 ethnically diverse kids while on world tours. She called them her “Rainbow Tribe”, wanting to show the world that “children of different ethnicities and religions could love and live as brothers and sisters.”
ANGELINA, YOU’VE GOT YOUR WORK CUT OUT FOR YOU.
For us, Josephine Baker will always be the Top Banana of Rainbow Tribes.
Hot on her heels is actress Mia Farrow, Frank Sinatra’s ex and Woody Allen’s muse until he sucked face with her pubescent Korean daughter, Soon Yi.
Prophetically, Mia’s birth name is Maria of Lourdes. This secular saint’s Rainbow Tribe of 14 kids (many disabled) also started with an adulterous affair. Married maestro Andre Previn ran off with the elfish former convent school girl and within months she was carrying twin extramarital blessings. His bitter songwriter wife got her revenge. The ex-missus wrote a #1 hit: “Beware of Young Girls”.
Like Angelina, Mia is a special representative of the United Nations Children’s Fund and UNICEF. The devout Mother Mia also regularly visits Africa to do battle for the health and safety of kids.
The misery of one cheated on wife versus the happiness and well-being of millions of children?
We can’t afford to be so petty.
Happy Mother’s Day!
(c) 2006, Sistarrs International
