8. She Was Kicked Out of the US
The Stork Club incident ended up getting Josephine Baker kicked out of the US. She berated newspaper and gossip columnist Walter Winchell, and old acquaintance and one who had been in the Stork Club at the time, for not defending her. An infuriated Winchell retaliated by accusing Baker of being a communist sympathizer – a serious charge in the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War’s Red Scare and the McCarthyite hysteria. As a result, Baker’s work visa was terminated, and she had to leave the US. She was not allowed back into America for another decade.