Frankie killed Albert one night in St. Louis, back in 1899. Songwriters took a few liberties, even changing some names (that’s where “Johnny” comes in). Then Hollywood took more liberties while building multiple films around the song. Unfortunately for Frankie, it was a ballad people kept singing for over a hundred years — a ballad that ultimately killed her.
• “The Story Behind Frankie & Johnny” on Mental Floss
• “A Look Back: Frankie Shot Johnny in St. Lous, but Didn’t Win Her Lawsuit” in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
• “Revising the Ballad Frankie & Johnny” an interview with Cecil Brown on NPR
• “He Done Her Wrong” in the Chicago Tribune
• “Folk Song Inspiration Dies at Pendleton Mental Hospital” in the East Oregonian
• “When Frankie Shot Johnny” on the 33 ⅓ blog
• “Frankie & Her Men: A Study of the Interrelationships of Popular & Folk Tradition” by Bruce Redfern Buckley
• “Frankie Shot Johnny” in Bluesletter No. 61
• “1966-1969” on the Graceland website
• “Frankie and Johnny” on the Elvis History Blog
• Frankie and Johnny starring Elvis Presley
• She Done Him Wrong starring Mae West and Cary Grant
• Frankie and Johnny by John Huston with illustrations by Miguel Covarrubias
• Frankie and Johnny: Race, Gender, and the Work of African American Folklore in 1930s America by Stacy I. Morgan
• “Hear ‘The Most Beautiful Song Ever Written’ and the Real Story of Frankie and Johnny” in Broadway Box
In 1966, Elvis Presley’s career was on a downward spiral, and he was extremely aware of it. Every film he released that year was a flop, and their soundtracks didn’t perform either. For a man who was used to topping the charts, it bruised his ego somethin’ fierce.
After all, for a few years, Elvis was the most famous singer — no wait, the most famous person — in America. He was the guy whose hip-shaking was so sexual that TV censors only allowed him to be filmed from the waist up. He was the beautiful face and voice who sashayed his way into acting; the patriot who put his career on hold at its peak to enlist in the Army; a teen idol with a record-breaking seven No. 1 albums.
But back in ‘66 when things were rough, one of his films was worth a look — although not because the picture got something right. It’s because of what it got wrong — which is basically everything. That movie was Frankie And Johnny.
So...it’s a story-within-a-story, where Elvis plays Johnny, a riverboat entertainer in the 1890s, who is NOT cheating on his girl Frankie — even though she constantly thinks he is. Don’t get it twisted though: Johnny isn’t exactly a great guy. He might not be cheating on his girlfriend, but he’s still cheating. He’s running a gambling scam. To pull it off, he thinks needs a good luck charm — enter the “other woman,” Nellie Bly.
After watching Frankie and Johnny bicker incessantly, the riverboat’s pianist writes a song inspired by them. He calls it...“Frankie And Johnny?” That’s the big hook of the movie. If you haven’t already guessed though, it’s not an original song. It’s a very old murder ballad. Ah, nothing says true love like...a boyfriend killing his girlfriend, right?
The whole movie is totally out of step with the true crime story that inspired the song. The real story features cheating, prostitution, and a lot of adult themes — too adult for an Elvis movie. The real Frankie and Johnny weren’t even riverboat people, but they were in love. They were also Black. In fact, everyone in this story was a person of color — unlike in Elvis’s movie, or pretty much any Hollywood take on it.
We all know Elvis rose to fame by making Black music palatable for white people — and that the film industry profits from whitewashing culture — so, it’s not surprising this happened. But it’s not right, either. And it proved to be extremely damaging to the real Frankie.
I’m Courtney E. Smith and you’re listening to SONGS IN THE KEY OF DEATH. This is the story of Frankie and Johnny, who shot her man only to have Hollywood do her wrong.
Now let’s rewind way back to a fateful night in 1899. Frankie Baker and Albert Britt started fighting because Albert went dancing with another woman. Frankie, a Black woman in her early 20s, was a prostitute. And Albert, a 17-year-old Black boy who was a gifted ragtime piano player, was her pimp. But they were also lovers, so Frankie had a reason to be mad about him stepping out on her.
It’s important to note here that back when old bluesmen first recorded the song, it was titled “Frankie and Albert,” just so you don’t get too confused. There are no Johnnys. That’ll come later.
So then, a bit after midnight on October 15, in her house at 212 Targee Street — Frankie shot Albert. Newspapers said that Frankie went out looking for Albert that night because she knew he was cheating with 18-year-old Alice Pryar (who would become Nellie Bly in the song, over the years).
Frankie couldn’t stand it, that was the official story. When Albert got home, she confronted him over his cheating. The way the song tells it, Frankie said she was going to get Alice for this. Albert had to hold her back. That’s why she killed him. Newspapers took some liberties, the same way songwriters do.
Years later, Frankie told her story to a reporter, and what she had to say didn’t match up with what the papers printed. According to Frankie, she wasn’t worried about Albert’s cheating and never threatened Alice. She knew he was messin’ around and didn’t go looking for ‘em that night. Then Albert came home drunk at 3 a.m., and in a foul mood. Frankie was dead asleep — her roommate let Albert in.
Seemingly out of nowhere... Albert picked up a lamp... and tried to throw it at her. He asked her some questions that didn’t make sense, the way drunk people do, and then went for his knife. As he waved the knife around and tried to cut her, Frankie reached under her pillow. That’s where she kept her gun. “Didn’t shoot but once,” Frankie said, “standing by the bed.” She got him in the liver — ironic since the guy was out drinking all night.
After that, accounts of what happened align. Albert went to his parents’ house, on the same street. His mother took him to the hospital. The police rounded up Frankie. He identified her as the assailant. Then four days later, he died from the gunshot wound.
After Albert passed, there was a coroner’s inquest and it was determined that his death was a justifiable homicide committed in self-defense. The criteria for that, if you’re not a lawyer, is being in imminent, unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm. The prosecutor decided to pursue the case anyway, so Frankie faced a bench trial. It began, she recalled, on Friday the 13th, that November. But it didn’t turn out to be an unlucky day for her.
Not guilty. Those are two words you haven’t heard on this podcast before. That’s what the jury declared when they acquitted Frankie of the charges.
“The judge even gave me back my gun,” Frankie told a reporter some years later. “...Guess I wasn’t so very guilty if the judge gave me back that gun, was I?” Amazing. She continued, saying that Albert beat her “unmercifully” a few nights before she shot him. She said she was beaten so badly another time that her eye was still festered and sore a month later during the trial — which the judge noticed.
Here’s how to describe what happened in modern terms: Frankie was in an abusive relationship, physically and financially. She was in the terrifying situation of thinking it was her life or his. So she had to make a decision right then and there. Frankie didn’t think she had a choice — killing Albert was her only option to get outta there alive herself. The judge and jury agreed with her.
It’s a shame that records from the original trial are lost because evidence of their abusive relationship and what happened that night must have been overwhelming. And it was probably a lot more gruesome than we imagine.
I don’t want to downplay what a big deal this verdict was, so let me remind you: Frankie Baker was a Black woman born during Reconstruction. She lived in Missouri, a border state during the Civil War — which meant a good chunk of white people in the state wanted to keep slavery and were pissed about being punished for supporting the South after the war.
Frankie grew up in a city that made it a point to underfund the single school for Black kids. Black populations were also redlined, which had something to do with why Frankie lived in one of two so-called “sporting” neighborhoods. Only Black people lived there, but white people visited for gambling, drinking, and prostitution. She existed in an unfortunate time and space where her race, gender, and profession were looked down upon as inferior by absolutely everyone.
There’s been plenty of debate historically about who wrote the song and when it was written — hell, there was debate over whether this “Frankie and Albert” are the “Frankie and Albert” in the song.
Today though, it’s widely accepted that Bill Dooley, a prolific St. Louis songwriter at the time, immediately wrote the tune, performed it around the city, and sold broadsheets of the lyrics before Albert Britt was even dead. Talk about working fast!
While the song was a hit locally, the success didn’t make him rich or famous. Dooley had no way to copyright the song. So it became a hit...for a lot of other people. White musicians were known for coming to sporting areas to hear what Black balladeers were writing in St. Louis. Then they reworked the songs for white audiences.
Around 300 versions of the song have been collected, with different music, lyrics, titles, and even names for the characters. The story twisted, turned, and changed as it traveled across the country. Today people would describe what happened with “Frankie and Johnny” as “going viral.”
But reading through Bruce Buckley’s 1961 study of the song’s origins, it’s not clear that it went viral because people knew about the salacious story that inspired it. If anything, the song traveled well because it used elements from other folk ballads — so it already felt familiar to people who heard it for the first time. That’s due to the fact that Dooley borrowed phrases and music that already existed to create this new work.
The song became so popular that Frankie could not get away from it. She left St. Louis in 1901 because hearing the song constantly made her relive the trauma of that terrible night. She went to Omaha, Nebraska for a few years, but the song followed her there too. She said random people came up to her on the street and sang it at her.
Then she moved to Portland, Oregon, and eventually went straight and opened a shoeshine shop. But the Depression came, and her legitimate business failed. Frankie was penniless when Hollywood turned its attention to her story, giving it a second life — and a very high profile one.
The revived interest in “Frankie and Johnny,” which was now how most people knew the song, started in the 1930s with John Huston, who would become a Hollywood legend for writing and directing classics including The Maltese Falcon and The African Queen.
Huston was a legacy in Hollywood. His dad, Walter, was a stage performer who went to Hollywood and became one of America’s most prominent actors after talkies started up. John had it easier than most, breaking into the entertainment industry. His first project was a marionette play based on “Frankie and Johnny.” If you think that sounds like a weird idea...he did it to impress a girl he liked who was a marionettist. So you’re right. It was a weird idea.
In 1930, Huston turned the play into a book that was partly a fictional account of Frankie’s story, and partly a factual history of the ballad’s origin, all accompanied by illustrations from Mexican artist Miguel Covarrubias. The history part was one of the most accurate accounts of the true events behind the song that existed at the time — but it also relied heavily on an interview with Richard Clay, a bartender and mutual friend of the couple. Or, as I like to call him: not Frankie, not Albert, and not anyone who was actually present the night of the shooting. Just a bartender who heard some things, mostly from his supposed friend Albert.
Around that same time, a mural depicting the events of the song was put up in St. Louis, done by Rural movement painter Thomas Hart Benton. And the characters of Frankie and Albert were used in a poem about lynching by Sterling Brown. Clearly, their story was coming to the forefront of pop culture...again.
Then, along came Mae West. She wrote a play in 1928 called Diamond Lil. When it became a Broadway hit, she turned it into the 1933 film She Done Him Wrong. The movie’s title is a gender-switched take on “Frankie And Johnny’s” refrain: “he was her man, but he was doing her wrong.”
This movie was West’s breakout role in Hollywood. It made over 200 million dollars and saved Paramount Pictures, which was in danger of going bankrupt before its release. Oh, and it was nominated for an Outstanding Production Oscar — that’s what they used to call Best Picture. It also spawned her infamous and oft misquoted line “come on up sometime and see me.”
The movie included a performance of the song “Frankie And Johnny” by West, just before a big action scene that concludes the story. In the film, West goes by the name Lady Lou. While the character was loosely based on a couple of madames from the early 20th century, she had a few things in common with Frankie Baker too. They both worked in the sex trade. They both spoke in a straightforward, proto-feminist manner. And they had to operate in a world where men wanted to control their behavior.
But offscreen, Mae West had a lot of power that Frankie Baker just didn’t. West could write and star in her own plays and movies. And, after this one, she became the second-highest paid person in the entire United States, behind William Randolph Hurst.
Meanwhile, Frankie had no control over her own story. She had to listen to a song about her — that wasn’t even accurate — for 30 years and then see a version of it play out in movies. While everyone else was making serious bank off her trauma, she got a damaged reputation and harassed on the street. And, adding insult to injury, most people retelling her story in the ‘30s were whitewashing it.
Frankie sued Paramount Pictures for defamation in the amount of $100,000. Here’s what she had to say about it: “When the Mae West picture was in town, men and women would gather in front of my place and point….What I want though is peace — an opportunity to live like a normal human being. I know that I’m Black, but even so, I have my rights. If people had left me alone, I’d have forgotten this thing a long time ago. Now they can start paying me.”
The case never went to trial though. It was dismissed for lack of standing.
When Republic Pictures released another film in 1936, this one actually titled Frankie and Johnny, that must have felt like a slap in the face. Frankie sued again in 1938, upping the ante to $200,000. And this time, a judge felt like she had a case. But when the suit went to trial, there were two big problems. Frankie had to convince an all-white jury that the story — which mirrored the song — was about two Black people.
Remember, none of these stories featured Black people, they were effectively erased from history. As unbelievable as it sounds, the other hurdle was convincing the jury that the song was about her life.
It didn’t help that the song’s lyrics don’t tell the real story of what happened that night at all. This is not unusual — especially when men are writing about women. If you listened to the “Delia’s Gone” episode of this podcast, you know Delia wasn’t a lowdown cheater, but a 14-year-old girl. In folk ballads, artistic liberties are mixed with facts, and truth is sacrificed for rhyme scheme. There was no paper trail for Frankie to point at and say “see? This is me.”
That has something to do with the fact that the person who most likely wrote the song didn’t copyright it. So the matter of who wrote it was still undecided in the ‘30s, which made the question of who inspired it an open ended one. People weren’t signing Black songwriters, no matter how gifted or prolific, to publishing and record deals at the turn of the century. So, there weren’t albums of Dooley’s work, or even sheet music, lying around to prove this song was his. Its origin story was left up to folk archivists to write — after the fact. And the people doing that were mostly white men.
If you look back at the St. Louis papers around the time of the crime, there is some discussion of the ballad emerging on the scene since it came about so quickly after the shooting. They refer to it as a dark, depressing song. There’s no lyrical repetition of the line “he done her wrong,” and it’s certainly not the upbeat-sounding version you get from Elvis Presley.
You can hear the roots in versions of “Frankie and Albert” by Mississippi John Hurt and Lead Belly, who highlight the complicated guitar riff and make it sound more like blues than ragtime or Broadway. So Frankie faced an uphill battle with little evidence to prove her case.
The other thing working against Frankie in the defamation suit was the expert testimony of Dr. Sigmund Spaeth, a musicologist and composer. He was a consultant on She Done Him Wrong and wrote a story for the New York Times in 1934 about the cloudy origins of “Frankie and Johnny.”
It reversed his previously published position that the ballad was likely written in 1899 after Frankie Baker shot Albert Britt. Now he backed a theory that this was a Civil War-era song, written about an entirely different woman. Gee, do you think his interest in the film had any influence there?
From the stand, Spaeth, who was also a household name as the host of two NBC music shows, said: “I’m glad to see Frankie is such a nice woman. I always thought she should have been punished severely.”
First of all, excuse you??? Second of all, you thought what????? That’s straight-up racism AND sexism AND just rude. After that comment, when the white male expert witness — whose face was recognizable by millions of Americans who saw him on TV weekly — made his proclamations about where the song came from, the case was over. Didn’t matter that he had a conflict of interest. Frankie lost.
Frankie Baker was committed to a mental hospital in 1950. She died in 1952 at Eastern Oregon State Hospital in Pendleton at age 75, after suffering a stroke.
In more modern iterations, the ballad of Frankie and Johnny ends with a verse about how the story has no meaning and has no end. It seems that was tacked on to explain how a woman could get away with murder and not suffer any consequences. Maybe it’s time to update the song to better reflect the very real consequences Frankie suffered for decades after it came out. And to reflect that she didn’t deserve to be punished for protecting herself against an assailant, then against slander, appropriation, and whitewashing — or for asserting a desire for respect in a world that offered her absolutely none.
Thanks for listening to Songs in the Key of Death. For more on the death of Albert Brit and the life of Frankie Baker, check our show notes. In this episode, a few texts were especially helpful: Mental Floss’s overview of the history of Frankie And Johnny; Bruce Redfern Buckley’s study of the way the Frankie And Johnny song traveled; John Huston’s history of Frankie & Albert; Stacy I. Morgan’s book Frankie and Johnny: Race, Gender, and the Work of African American Folklore in 1930s America; and the Graceland archives.
We turn now to Sad13 with their reimagined take on “Frankie and Johnny,” in which we no longer do Frankie so wrong.
