Controversies
In 1951, Josephine Baker made charges of racism against the Stork Club after she ordered a steak and was apparently still waiting for it an hour later. Actress Grace Kelly, who was at the club at the time, rushed over to Baker, took her by the arm and stormed out with her entire party. Kelly never returned.
The controversy grew when Baker accused Walter Winchell of being in the Cub Room at the time and not coming to her aid. Winchell was at the club and had, he said, greeted Baker and one of her friends as the two went to use the Stork Club's pay phone. He said he was not aware of there being any problem, and left for a late screening of the film The Desert Fox. The next morning, Winchell's rumored failure to assist Baker was big news, and he received countless telephone calls. Mrs. Rico, who was part of the Baker party with her husband, said that Baker's steak was waiting for her at the table after she returned from her phone call, but the entertainer chose to make a stormy exit from the Stork anyhow. News accounts show conflicting statements from the Ricos. Baker also filed suit against Winchell over the matter, but the suit was dismissed in 1955.
Along with that of Billingsley and the Stork Club, Walter Winchell's name was further tarnished by the incident. After leaving the Stork, the Baker party made contact with WMCA's Barry Gray, where the story was told as part of Gray's radio talk show. One of those who phoned Gray's program was television personality and columnist Ed Sullivan, a professional rival of Winchell's whose "home base" was the El Morocco nightclub. Sullivan's on-air remarks dealt mainly with Winchell's alleged part in the event, saying, "What Winchell has done is an insult to the United States and American newspaper men."
A New York police investigation of the matter followed the complaint made by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It found that the Stork Club did not discriminate against Josephine Baker. The NAACP went on to say that the results of the police investigation did not provide enough evidence for the organization to pursue the incident further in criminal court.
Because of Billingsley's long-standing friendship with Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) head J. Edgar Hoover, rumors persisted that the Stork Club was bugged. During his work on the Stork Club book, author and New York Times reporter Ralph Blumenthal was contacted by Jean-Claude Baker, one of Josephine Baker's sons. Having read a Blumenthal-written story about Leonard Bernstein's FBI file, he indicated that he had read his mother's FBI file and by comparing the file to the tapes, said he thought the Stork Club incident was overblown.
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