For hundreds of years, women have been pressured to wield power behind closed doors, serving as the “woman behind the man” rather than being the front-facing leader themselves. Now, as women across the world fight to control of their own lives, a similar struggle is playing out onstage at Studio 54, where A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical opened November 11.
Born and raised in the Storyville district of New Orleans (a legally delineated red light district where all forms of avarice were available to a young man with cash to burn), Armstrong (played by Tony winner James Monroe Iglehart in the new musical) has gone down in the annals of American history as one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time.
Less remembered have been Armstrong's wives—four brilliant, clever, creative women who, in many ways, guided Armstrong’s ascent. Now on Broadway, the four women playing those wives are just as formidable, as a recent roundtable interview showed.
“We're not given enough credit for what we really do and how we organize,” shares Darlesia Cearcy, the Broadway vet stepping into the spotlight as Armstrong’s final wife, Lucille Wilson. “I was lucky with Lucille, there's a sizable amount of information for her, and her exquisite taste was acknowledged in her lifetime. That isn’t the case for everyone at this table.”
While A Wonderful World is ostensibly Armstrong’s life story, it sets itself apart from many other bio-musicals in how it handles the four Mrs. Armstrong’s. Rather than washing over the more difficult parts of his history, the show embraces the complications as it celebrates the impact each woman had on popular culture through Armstrong.
Hundreds of books, documentaries, and deep dives have been assembled examining the creative output of Armstrong and his impact on popular culture, many gloss over or wholly omit the presence of his wives, and their direct influence. While his second and fourth wives, Lil Hardin and Lucille Wilson, have significant amounts of scholarship due to their own work in the entertainment industry, Armstrong's first and third wives, Daisy Parker and Alpha Smith, are often ignored or treated as footnotes.
But from what we do know of his four wives, Armstrong seemed incapable of settling down with a passive woman. It was clear that, above all, he was attracted to independence. With every marriage, Armstrong would adopt the strength of his partner, using their energy as his fuel while navigating the ladder of success. Whereas Armstrong was able to harness the industrious spirit of his wives to rise, his first wife, Daisy Parker, did not have the same opportunity.
Dionne Figgins, who plays Daisy with piercing intensity, grapples with her struggle for survival every night. “Daisy is the wife that we know the least about. There are no pictures of her,” says Figgins. A sex worker in the Storyville district, Parker was wooed by Armstrong: initially one of her clients, he courted her extensively, convincing her to lower her well-honed defenses. Of all his wives, Parker seems to have understood a truth about Armstrong that he endeavored to obscure for the rest of his life: The road wasn't just his venue, it was his escape.
When Armstrong unceremoniously abandoned Parker following the racially motivated murder of his bandmate on a Mississippi Riverboat, Parker refused to break her vow, even as everyone in Armstrong's circle looked down on her. Of course, that Armstrong came from the very same community as Parker was conveniently ignored by those belittling her.
Says Figgins: “We spend a lot of time in the show, with people saying a lot of negative things about her: She's a sex worker, she’s violent. But she’s also a woman who is essentially independent in that time period. What could she have been if someone had invested in her?”
Armstrong eventually divorced Daisy for his second wife, the vibrantly talented (and considerably higher class) pianist Lillian Hardin. But Daisy never stopped calling herself Mrs. Armstrong. “She spent the remainder of her life chasing after him, because he was her opportunity to have something more for herself,” Figgins pauses, gathering her emotions before pressing on. “I think it's really easy to cast off this part of Louis, but I think that it's also the reason why he became who he became. The survival instinct that they got in that community was what made it possible for him to face all the adversity that he faced later in life. For him to turn away from her and say, ‘Oh no, I'm not from that place anymore’... You know, a lot of people forget that Louis was from Storyville. His mom was a prostitute. He married a prostitute. They were women operating legal businesses. He was clearly attracted to independence. But he cut ties the second he had the chance.”
The conflict between men wanting strong, independent women, yet being frustrated when those traits don’t dissipate under their control within the relationship, is present between Armstrong and all four of his wives. The dynamic is most vividly portrayed on stage, however, in his second marriage.
“Lil is like so many women that we see, the matriarchs in our own families—who are disciplined and hardworking and consistent and kind of the backbone of what makes everything work, but who are often the people that we then forget about,” shares Jennie Harney-Fleming, who plays Lillian Hardin.
Without Lillian, it is possible that Armstrong would have never broken out from King Oliver's band, where he was limited as second cornetist. It was Lillian who created the trademark Armstrong image, who brought him from the cornet to the trumpet, and who managed his business affairs through his rise to the top of the music industry.
“It didn't surprise me that she was responsible for so much when it came to the shaping of the artist that we came to know as Louis Armstrong," Harney-Fleming smiles. "She has such a resemblance with my grandmother and my ancestors, the people that I've looked up to all my life as role models of grace and dignity and poise, but who weren’t fully seen by the men around them.”
After years of pouring herself into her husband's career, Armstrong bolted for California when pressed to consider Lillian's needs for a change. His quasi-midlife crisis led to an affair, a divorce, and marriage to the seven-years-younger Alpha Smith; a devoted fan of Armstrong's, her scrapbooks chronicling his rise to fame are still prized sources for the Armstrong estate.
This is a familiar series of beats for anyone accustomed with the behavior of powerful 20th-century male artists; artist relishes the adoration of the crowd, and comes to resent his spouse's need for a present and engaged partner. As the years go on, the artist is forced to face that he is aging in an industry that is always looking for something new around the corner. The artist leaves his spouse, and runs into the arms of a younger fan who strokes his ego and energizes him.
Once Smith had Armstrong enthralled, however, it was she who subtly took the reigns of control. Kim Exum, who plays Smith with coquettish aplomb, has done a remarkable job reconstructing Smith's journey to independence just outside of Armstrong's view. A domestic worker, Alpha was forced to sue Armstrong in order for him to make good on his promise to marry her. Information on her life outside of her and Armstrong’s court case is thin. “She was so scrappy, and smarter than anyone thinks,” Exum extolls.
While Smith played the role of gentle young wife to Armstrong, it would be foolish to mistake that softness for ignorance. “She saw what she wanted, and she did what she had to do to make it happen. I think that's something that all of the women have in common: They have a surefire vision for what it is they want. But unfortunately, they lived in a time where that vision could only be manifested through a man."
Through Armstrong, Smith made her way to Hollywood and broke out of poverty: "Louis was a means to achieving that vision,” says Exum. When Armstrong no longer provided Smith with the tenderness she wanted, she left, making her the only one of Armstrong's wives to sever the tie herself. To add salt to the wound, she left him for Cliff Leeman, a white drummer who had played in Armstrong's own band. So much for her supposed role as Armstrong's easily controlled trophy wife.
Then in Lucille Wilson, his fourth wife, Armstrong butted up against the second wave of American feminism, and the enfranchisement of woman to operate financially independent of men. A dancer at Harlem's Cotton Club, Lucille loved Louis fiercely, but she refused to abandon her self reliance once married. She purchased their marital home outright, maintained her name on the deed, and took over Armstrong's finances, strong arming her way through Armstrong's mob connections to undo the web of secrecy that had been spun around Armstrong's personal dealings.
"Lucille had been around the world, but not around the block," Cearcy states, smirking. "She knows how to set boundaries, and hold him to them. By this point in history, she's able to hold him accountable, and after Alpha, he knows she can walk away..."
"Louis'd better pull up!" Exum exclaims, laughing as the quartet discuss a pivotal scene in act two where Lucille inspires Armstrong to make a choice, rather than running from a challenge. "Lucille is operating from this grounded form of womanhood that he can't shake. The older a woman gets, the harder she is to manipulate. She's this unshakeable force, and it is so satisfying to see Louis learn to stand his ground from her example."
From Daisy Parker's industrious ambition, to Lil Hardin's poise under pressure, to Alpha Smith's taste for the finer things in life, to Lucille Wilson's unflinching dignity, Armstrong's chameleon-like shifts throughout his life cannot be understood without a deep examination of the woman who inspired it.
“He needed all of us,” Cearcy adds, cocking her head to the side. “Men have patterns of need. Daisy got him on his feet. Lil turned him into a refined artist. Alpha pushed him to grow. And Lucille kept him from straying from the path.”
Thankfully, A Wonderful World is offering these women the playing time they deserve, culminating in a soul stirring quartet rendition of "St. James Infirmary" that summoned a cathartic outpouring of emotion from the audience.
“There were a lot of sacrifices that were made by all of these women to make it possible for us to listen to this music,” Figgins states. “They’re overdue their flowers.”
Jennie Harney-Fleming, Darlesia Cearcy, Dionne Figgins, and Kim Exum
Kim Exum
Kim Exum
Darlesia Cearcy
Darlesia Cearcy
Jennie Harney-Fleming
Jennie Harney-Fleming
Dionne Figgins
Dionne Figgins
Darlesia Cearcy, Kim Exum, Jennie Harney-Fleming, and Dionne Figgins
