VALAIDA'S SNOW JOB: WAS SHE REALLY IN A NAZI WAR CAMP?

Valaida Snow spent most of her peak years abroad! Like so many other African American entertainers forced to leave the country in order to make a living, that's where she found herself at the outset of WWII. To be exact, the year was 1938 and Miss Snow was in Paris, France.  So was Adelaide Hall, who decided to cut short a very lucrative engagement in order to get back home to her husband and home in London.  Band leader Benny Carter didn't have to be told twice and left a seven month engagement to quickly sail home in April.  By 1939, Alberta Hunter and Coleman Hawkins barely made it out in time.  Henry Crowder, a musician who'd been in Paris since the 20's decided to stay put and was eventually imprisoned in a Nazi prison camp.  So were a few others.  Even though Valaida Snow and her new man, Earl Jones, ended up paying the price for not paying attention to the warnings, they were NOT among them!

They were all over the place throughout Scandinavia but the concerts were opening to mostly negative reviews and were not being well attended. Something was wrong with Valaida and the audiences were picking up on it.  They were living in Copenhagen when Germany invaded Denmark on April 9, 1940.  Obviously trapped without proper fare home, they were also doing drugs.  Valaida had been addicted to morphine now for several years.

She still managed to work consistently, but was under observation by the Copenhagen constabulary for buying drugs with the intention to export.  The were also being watched by the American Embassy, which alerted the local police about Valaida and Earl's efforts to borrow money to obtain morphine instead of borrowing money to get HOME! 

When Valaida kept an August engagement outside of Copenhagen, Earl decided to stay behind and was promptly taken into custody by the police.  They found him without means of support and quickly put him on the American Legion, a refugee ship sailing home to New York.  Valaida heard about it and refused to break her engagement to sail home with him, thus finding herself strung out and truly stranded, indeed!  Somehow, she still managed to continually work but found some new friends along the way.  Once again, she steadily regained her title as queen of the tabloids!

One such new friend was Gerhard Flagstad, a local pharmacist who wrote prescriptions for Oxycodone, a morphine derivative dispensed as Eukodal.  He said he did it because her other doctor stopped doing it and he did it without charge!  There were discrepancies in the paperwork and Valaida was suspected of tampering with the dosages.  And then there was the dancer who was found near death in Valaida's hotel room!  She later died in the hospital from an overdose; some say suicide.  Valaida was arrested but not charged despite the evidence that stolen goods were found in her possession for the second time!  What she planned to do with 120 knives, forks, spoons and crystal ware was anybody's guess?

She spent 10 weeks in custody!  It was now 1941, the United States had entered the war and Valaida Snow was a black woman now commonly known as a drug addict and thief in war-torn Denmark.  She was first taken to a late 19th-century Gothic prison, then out of concern for her health, transferred to the city hospital where she remained under medical care for a month.  She was then taken back to the same prison for another five weeks and then taken to the city of Goteborg, where she spent five nights in jail reading Gone With The Wind! 

There, she waited until local officials arranged a place for her on the S.S. Gripsholm, a Swedish-American liner used as a refugee ship to carry Americans back home under an agreement of safe passage with Germany and its Axis allies.  Twelve days later, on June 9, 1942, the ship docked safely in New Jersey and Valaida was home after six years abroad.

She made her way to Harlem, checked into the Hotel Theresa, and immediately went to the press where she mentioned a slight "polite imprisonment" by the Germans. The press stated that Valaida was in good spirits just like her old self.  They said she was streamlined and that remarked about her "unwrinkled face."  In the time that Valaida had been away, new female musicians with a new attitude were on the horizon.  New stars like Hazel Scott, Dorothy Donegan and Ernestine "Tiny" Davis from the International Sweethearts of Rhythm were making big waves.  But it was the singers who were really holding sway.  Billie and Ella were now major stars!  Lena was the new media darling in the black press and Dinah and Sarah were just starting out!  Valaida was from the old school of entertaining; her roots were in Vaudeville.  She hadn't changed her act in years and would basically never do so!  Her style was from another era and her recordings were not popular in the States.  She needed a gimmick and she found one!

As the public was just beginning to become aware of Adolf Hitler's Nazi death camps, Valaida Snow redoubled back to the black press with stories of atrocities and the vicious beatings she received from "the Germans."  The very same newspaper that offered a glowing description of Snow's arrival from Goteberg now offered a new and very different story.  Previously, they noted her "unwrinkled face" her streamlined shape and her "good spirits" saying that she was just like her "old self."  Now, the spin went a little something like this ......

"She came down the gangplank a wraith of her former self...her eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, the bone shone in her gaunt face" they reported.  According to the papers, Snow was now only a 76 lb. shadow of her former self.  She reported that she'd been contained for eight sordid months and told stories of starvation and beatings and running into "another casualty" named Josephine Baker!  Never mind that she failed to name the camp!  Never mind that Baker had been in a convalescent center in Morocco at the exact same time!  But the public didn't know that then!

Bookings went through the roof!  And the story got more sensational from city to city.  The mainstream press picked it up.  The public ate it up!  Thanks to Valaida, the legend grew into an undisputable truth.  It seems everyone wants to know what really happened to Valaida Snow without shoveling through the slosh to get to a clear path.  To me, it really doesn't matter what Valaida told the press because it wasn't true!  Valaida was just doing Valaida and she was BRILLIANT AT IT!  She created a myth and a legend around herself that very few people still bother to research at all. Yes, she was in jail but it was of her own doing and the Nazi's had nothing to do with it!

Mark Miller's High Hat, Trumpet and Rhythm: The Life and Music of Valaida Snow has the reputation of being scrupulously researched beyond the cut and paste and error of writers, historians and bloggers who don't do their research.  My name is Corey and I stand by this blog post!  This is the last in a series of four posts as it pertains to the legend of Valaida Snow.  The forecast is now in the clearing!

 

 

Comments

[way2ec]

Nice job Corey. I like the way you tell it like it WAS, and thereby connect her and us to the like it IS now. And throughout the entire process, you don't pass judgement.

[Brandon]

So she lied? Hmm....I still like to think she was imprisoned by the Germans...

[N]

Hello,

I'm extremely fascinated by Valaida Snow's story. So much in fact that I've decided to write a paper about her life. I was wondering if you knew definitively that she lied about being imprisoned for 18 months in a concentration camp. If so, how have you come across this information? I would hate to go down a road only to find out that you're right.

Thank you.

[Corey]

Thank you, "N" for your comment! Please refer back to the last ending paragraph of the blog post when I mentioned Mark Miller's book! Also, please see the other posts in the Valaida Snow series on this blog. I strongly suggest that you read the book as the author notates his own research. IF you do your OWN research, and YOU come up with something different then by all means I STAND TO BE CORRECTED and so does MARK MILLER!

[Bruce Sellers]

Pretty good research and good reading! I must mention that Valaida's brothers name is actually Avaitor. Also, there was another sister Hattie, and two other brother's. One named Sylvester who died his first year of life, and a half brother Joseph A. Bush, who lived in D.C. the birth place of Valaida's mother. Yes, Valaida was in a concentration camp in Denmark, and YES, she was ill-treated by prison officials. I have her prison records and a few letters that describes her treatment while she was there. All this was written in her own hand-writing and prior to her release. Just wanted to put the concerns to rest. Posted by a cousin: Bruce Sellers

[Corey]

Thank you Mr. Sellers for your comment and for putting the concerns to rest! It was always my goal to treat Ms. Snow with the respect that she deserves, so thank you for the compliment as well.

It's not everyday that I hear from the relatives of the subjects I write about on this blog. I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind writing back and telling us how you are related to Ms. Snow, and when was it that you became aware that such a legend of entertainment was a family member? What exactly did your family members think of Mark Miller's book? Did he interview any of you for the book?

I'm looking forward to hearing back from you, and THANK YOU once again for taking the time to respond to this blog post!

C.

[Jahlaune]

Fasinating read.I know very little about her someone gave me a CD and I didnt care for her music but her story is fasinating!

[Bruce Sellers]

Thank you Corey for your response. Valaida and I are related through her mother's side of the family. Her mother, Etta and my GGrand-father were sister and brother. I became aware of Valaida when researching my geneology back in the mid-1970's. I asked my Great-Aunt (Valaida's first cousin) about her. My mother remembers Lavada Snow-Carter, more so than Valaida, because Valaida was seldom in D.C.
No one knew of a book by Mark Miller, and personally I doubt that very many writers of Valaida Snow has put forth the effort to find out about any of Valaida's family, I don't think that they feel that it's essential to their efforts. But I try to correct any information, that I am familiar with, that is mis-stated or off-base. Valaida deserves that much. I continue to research Valaida in hopes of locating any desendents from her son, if any.
Corey you are doing a great job and performing a valuable service with your site!