Ruth Bayton: Dancer Missing In Spain

Born Feb. 3, 1907 between Tappahannok and Whitestone, Virginia. Ruth Bayton was the sixth child of Virginia and Hansford C. Bayton. Hansford was a well known river boat captain who operated an excursion steamer in the Tidewater section along the Virginian coast.

In 1922, after leaving school, Ruth found work as an stenographer. During the summer, she was introduced to Will Vodrey (director of the Plantation Orchestra) who took her to New York to join a beauty contest. She won the contest, and was given a part in the chorus in the "Plantation Revue" with Florence Mills as the star. The following summer, the show was taken to London as "From Dixie to Dover Street". The show did extremely well, and returned to the US to play on Broadway in 1924 as "Dixie to Broadway".

In 1926, she joined Lew Leslie's show in Paris as "Blackbirds of 1926". The show opened on May 28, it was a sensation. On night, Henri Lartigue, who worked for the booking agency of William Morris, offered her a lucrative contract in Berlin with a weekly salary of $200.

On August 4th, “Der Zug Nach dem Westen” opened in Berlin and Ruth made her appeared in a girdle of a dozen bananas. Her dancing was a large success to the Austrian and German press with her extravagant jungle revue. During her time in Germany, rumors circulated of her affair with King Alfonso of Spain.

From 1927-1930, she toured Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Austria. One visiting journalist described her as the prettier replacement of Josephine Baker:

She lives at the Hotel Ambassadors, one of the best hotels in the Europe, has a fine $10.000 Hispano-Suiza driven by a French chauffeur, keeps two maids, and entertains at one of the leading music halls, the Folies-Wagram where she earns five figures in Francs weekly.” Something she would have never accomplished in America. “Absolutely impossible, I would have never been given the opportunity. I love Paris, the German people have been very kind, and so have the folks in Spain.”

December 1930, Ruth returned to New York, to try her luck back in America to showcase her talents that were so well publicized in Europe. February 1931, she bought a spacious apartment in the elite Sugar Hill district near Harlem. Ruth decided to rest from the stage for a while and ran a small boutique from her apartment in Harlem for a few months.

She returned to the night club world in 1932 and again struck it rich when she foiled a holdup in a ritzy Broadway cabaret and was rewarded handsomely. With this money she returned to Spain and has not been heard from since.

In November 1932, while in New Jersey, rented rooms from the mother of an old friend, Crackshot Hackley. While there she got in an argument with John Burtt, director of the Lafayette Theatre, which ended in Ruth beating him with a dog chain from one her pets. The fight later involved Crackshot and his mother. After this, Ruth packed her bags and told her family she was returning to Spain {probably with a new stage name}.

In February 1933, French announced her return to France on the SS Lafayette. Several months later she was found performing at the Rio-Rita Cabaret. During the summer of 1934, she was in Deauville amongst other wealthy French bankers and counts. Afterwards she disappears until 1937, when the Afro-American states she was probably missing somewhere in Spain as the Civil War raged across the country.

She seems to have escaped to South America, because serveral months later, her name appeared at the Palacio de Justicia, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

She returns to the US in the winter of 1943 from Argentina to visit her family, before moving back to Europe, even though WWII was still raging, probably to neutral Spain. In 1946, she left Europe again from London on the SS John Ericsson back to New York. Afterwards, she disappears again...