Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was an American singer, actress, and dancer. She is recognized for being the first African-American woman to star in a major movie like it was. Zouzou (1934). She also stood out as a bilingual starlet, achieving fame in French dance halls in the 1920s..
Also known as "Bronze Venus" or "Black Pearl", she was a recognized activist in the civil rights movement in North America and a fighter against racial discrimination. She was also a collaborator with French military intelligence during World War II, obtaining information or transmitting it covertly..
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On June 3, 1906, Freda Josephine McDonald was born in the city of St. Louis, Missouri in the United States. Her parents were Carrie McDonald, a frustrated dancer, and Eddie Carson, a vaudeville (stage comedy) drummer who abandoned them a year later. He had three siblings from his mother's second marriage: Richard, Margaret and Willie Mae.
From a very young age, when she was just 8 years old, she began working as a domestic worker for white families. In his spare time, Baker played with other children in his neighborhood to pretend they were artists. In 1919 she ran away from home and began working as a waitress to support herself until she married Willie Wells..
He resigned from his job for a few weeks, just the amount that the short marriage lasted. Her attraction to music never left her, so she began to group with other street artists under the name Jones Family Band. The Booker T. Washington theater would be the stage where they would premiere.
His next performance at the Dixie Steppers Theater gave him the opportunity to join the company. She stayed behind the scenes for several months, as the star's wardrobe manager, Clara Smith. In those years she met Willi Baker, who would be her husband in 1920. Upon marrying, Joséphine decides to change her surname.
The following year, while they were on tour in Philadelphia, another opportunity knocked on Joséphine's door, when she took the place of one of the chorus girls, who was unable to perform because she was injured. There she captured the attention of producers who made her part of the first African-American musical, Shuffle Along, in 1922.
After his second separation he moved to New York and was making a career on Broadway until in 1925 he went to France to achieve fame.
Paris was the city that would witness the sensual movements that gave life to its Danse sauvage on the stage of Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Dressed in a feather skirt, to the rhythm of the Charleston and with her co-star, Joe Alex, she caused a sensation from the public that they were mostly white men. Below you can see Baker dancing the Charleston:
From then on he became one of the most sought-after stars in the world. music-hall, appearing at the Folies-Bergère, the main auditorium in Paris. Her exotic half-naked dance with a daring costume adorned with artificial bananas, in the production of La Folie du Jour it would be one of his most iconic presentations.
In 1926 his fame was such that he opened his own club Chez Joséphine, which closed the following year. All that came after was to reap only successes from the hand of his manager and lover, Pepito Abatino. Baker became the most successful American artist in France and the highest paid in all of Europe.
It also aroused the admiration of the artistic and intellectual elite of Paris, in personalities such as Georges Simenon, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. She became a pin-up model and was part of the Parisian attraction for jazz and black music.
His career as a professional singer began in 1930 and four years later he made his big screen debut. He got to star in three films, although they were only successful in Europe.
In 1936 he returned to Broadway to perform in Ziegfeld Follies, with Bob Hope and Fanny Brice. However, he could not reap the success he expected in his native country, since part of the public opinion rejected the show considering it promiscuous. Also, critics treated her harshly in their reviews..
Upon his return to Paris, after the cold receptivity of the United States, he had a hard time renouncing his American citizenship. In 1937, she adopted France as her new homeland and contracted her third marriage to the French industrialist Jean Lion, from whom she would separate three years later..
The arrival of World War II appeased Joséphine's artistic career like so many others. During those years in which they suffered the German occupation, he worked in the Red Cross. He also provided support to the French military intelligence, even smuggling messages on his score and even on his underwear for the Deuxième Office.
Faced with the danger of war, Baker spent some time living in Morocco and presented several health problems. Upon recovering, he joined other colleagues in the artistic milieu and formed an entertainment network for French, British and American soldiers, eventually performing in North Africa and the Middle East..
Before the fall of the Nazi regime and the end of the war, Baker was decorated in 1946 with the Croix de guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance, in addition to being named as a Knight of the Legion of Honor. The following year she married for the fourth time, this time with the conductor and composer Jo Bouillon, with whom she would remain for 14 years..
Baker was unable to have children due to a hysterectomy she had to undergo after a miscarriage. But the postwar years were dedicated to adopting 12 children of different ethnicities and religions. On the farm he acquired in the south of France, Les Milandes, settled with her family who called her the "rainbow tribe" and described as her "brotherhood experiment".
Since the 1950s he has been performing in his home country on an occasional basis, with a much warmer reception than in previous years. However, he was a victim of racial discrimination, and his stay in more than 30 hotels was rejected..
He then began to make his position against racism public and notorious, despite the threats he received from the Ku Klux Klan. He actively participated in demonstrations, boycotted segregated clubs, refused to make presentations to segregated audiences, and demanded that his audience be mixed. He also gave a talk at a university in Nashville on equality and civil rights..
In recognition of her activism, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) declared May 20 as Joséphine Baker Day. In 1963 she was one of the few women who spoke at the march for work and freedom led by Martin Luther King Jr., in Washington and that would mark the history of North America..
In 1966 she appeared at the Musical Theater of Havana, invited by the dictator Fidel Castro. Two years later he visited Yugoslavia, specifically in Belgrade and Skopje.
In the latter part of her career, Baker ran into serious financial trouble and was evicted from her 300 acre property in the Dordogne. His great friend, the Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly, reached out to him and gave him accommodation in one of her houses in Roquebrune. She was about to give up her career altogether, but was encouraged by her family to continue.
He did so until his last days despite physical exhaustion and some difficulty remembering the lyrics of his songs. In 1973 at Carnegie Hall he received a standing ovation, followed by another pair of successful performances at the London palladium.
In 1975 he celebrated his 50 years of artistic career at the Monaco Red Cross Gala. It was a great show, in which renowned figures such as Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli were invited. That night he shone getting the best reviews a few days after his death.
On April 12, 1975, at the age of 68, one of the first African-American stars died in Paris due to a stroke. She was found in her bed surrounded by the newspapers that had reviewed her successful and last presentation..
His funeral was held in L'Église de la Madeleine, where he received the honors of the French military corps. Accompanied by some 20 thousand people stationed in the streets, her remains were transferred to the Cimetière of Monaco.
Today, a neighborhood of Montparnasse from Paris and a swimming pool on the banks of the River Seine. It was also included in the San Luis Walk of Fame, in the Legacy Walk in Chicago and in the Rainbow Honor Walk. It has also been the inspiration for songs, musicals and television series.
-La Revue des Revues (1927)
-The Sirène des Tropiques (1927)
-Short film Le Pompier des Folies Bergère (1928)
-La Folie du jour (1929)
-Die Frauen von Folies Bergères (1929)
-Zouzou (1934)
-Princesse tam Tam (1935)
-Moulin rouge (1940)
-Fausse alert (1940)
-An Jedem Finger Zehn (1954)
-Carosello del varietà (1955)
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