JOSEPHINE BAKER
There has never been anybody quite like her
She was the epitome of the sexotic
Fought bravely for so many things
To established society she was the epitome of the sexotic; she was married several times (occasionally unofficially) – and was said to be bisexual, she was a superlative dancer, a star comedienne and a more than competent singer; she was a Civil Rights campaigner and a decorated war heroine; she raised a multi-ethnic family of adopted children, and fell from riches back into poverty; she loved and betrayed love, she was adored and she was detested; and she was the best-known woman of African heritage of her generation. She was born a hundred years ago this month – and when she died she was given a state funeral. She was a legend in her own life-time, and beyond.
She was Josephine Baker.
Freda Josephine McDonald was born on 3rd June 1906 in St Louis, Missouri in humble circumstances to washerwoman Carrie McDonald and vaudeville drummer Eddie Carson – her father soon abandoned mother and daughter. As a child she “got by” by baby-sitting and cleaning houses for wealthy white families. Josephine dropped out of school at 12 years old and was working as a waitress a year later. While employed there she had a brief marriage to Willie Wells, and shortly afterwards married Willie Baker, from whom she parted soon afterwards but whose name she kept throughout her life. The youngster learned “the ropes” of the entertainment business by touring with The Jones Family Band and The Dixie Steppers. Yet when she auditioned to be a chorus girl in the production Shuffle Along she was rejected for being “too skinny and too dark”.
Disappointed but not deterred Josephine watched, and developed her skills, from the vantage-point of being a wardrobe-assistant and understudy. Soon she was promoted to the chorus-line itself, but the comic touches she brought to the act – such as rolling her eyes, criss-crossing her legs and her clumsy stage-movements – were not in the script. Even so by 1924 young Ms Baker had become the star of the show and of the ill-fated Chocolate Dandies, and was soon up-staging established favourites including Florence Mills, the darling of both Harlem and white society.. It was the reluctance of another “name” entertainer, Ethel Waters, to accept an engagement with La Revue Negre at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris the following year that gave the young artiste her chance.
Josephine took Paris by storm. Dressed in nothing more than a skirt of feathers in the Danse Sauvage and of bananas for La Folie du Jour she was an overnight success - though the show generally received poor reviews. Her act, which was described as being outrageously funny as well as sexy, and her zany personality inspired both painters and writers. She toured the continent extensively and within two years was already one of the most photographed women in the world and the highest-paid entertainer in Europe. This was at the end of the Roaring Twenties, just before the onset of the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism. Hitherto the young American in Paris had appeared to be little more than a transient symbol of a transient decade: her true mettle was yet to be tested.
Baker had witnessed at first-hand the infamous St Louis race riot in 1919, and the injustice of that society still rankled with her. She, herself, was still not accepted in her homeland. Although Josephine had developed into a sophisticated, mature and – indeed – powerful woman, now famous for an extensive range of costumes and fashionable clothes (which belied the sparseness of attire by which she had made her initial impact), American audiences and critics refused to welcome her when she returned as an international star in 1936 – the New York Times referred to her as a “Negro wench”. She took the rejection badly: shortly afterwards she became a French citizen..
While some of well-known contemporaries were suspected of making an accommodation with the German invaders in the Second World War, nobody could doubt where Josephine stood. As a Red Cross nurse and also a sub-lieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force she used her celebrity to travel extensively, “sweet-talking” diplomats into processing visas for associates, carrying secret messages and reporting back on what she had seen. For her hard work and dedication she was awarded the Medal of the Resistance with rosette and named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour by the French government. Josephine’s activities were curtailed only by a serious illness which almost took her life for which she was taken into hospital in Casablanca.
Baker, who could be capricious, was also generous in supporting colleagues, appearing at charity occasions, and, in war-time, entertaining the troops. She had a keen personal rivalry with French entertainment idol Maurice Chevalier. When they appeared on the same concert for soldiers on the famous Maginot Line of defensive forts Chevalier claimed the right (as being the bigger star) to close the show. He did not get the chance to do so. Josephine’s performance was so popular that she received “encore” after “encore” which extended her act appreciably and, at that time of curfew, prevented Maurice from taking the stage.
Josephine Baker had not backed down to the Nazis, and was not afraid to take the fight against racism to the U.S.A. She refused to perform before segregated audiences. After the popular Stork Club in New York denied her service, Josephine contested an acrimonious feud with the powerful newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. At first the then leaders of the Civil Rights movement did not relish having such a controversial recruit to their cause, but eventually the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) named 20th May as being Josephine Baker Day.
By now the entertainer was in severely distressed financial circumstances due to her extravagance, her purchase of a medieval chateau, her clothes, her extensive menagerie of exotic animals, and to her pursuit of a dream. Josephine adopted a dozen boys and girls of differing racial origin – the “Rainbow Tribe” – to prove that “children of different ethnicities and religions could still be brothers”. The “Rainbow Tribe” comprised Akio, Janot, Luis, Jari, Jean-Claude, Moise, Brahim, Marianne, Koffi, Mara, Noel and Stellina. Furthermore she was now increasingly out of step with the new age of more militant civil rights agitation, whose younger representatives did not always appreciate the full extent of her commitment.
By the 1960s – although she spoke and stood with Dr Martin Luther King at the “I have a dream” Lincoln Memorial demonstration in 1963 – Baker’s career and fortunes were in free fall. She had to sell the castle, making “The Rainbow Tribe” homeless. Her marriage to fourth husband, orchestra-leader Jo Bouillon, ended in separation as had that to Jean Lion, by which she had acquired her new nationality, and the two of her youth. Yet her life had shown several times already that Josephine Baker was never out until she was out – and she wasn’t out yet. No scriptwriter could have given her a better “departure” from the stage.
In 1973 she performed at the Carnegie Hall in New York, the city in which she had been so reviled previously. This time Josephine received a standing ovation – American attitudes had come a long way in the intervening years – they had begun to catch up with Josephine. Then on 8th April 1975 Baker starred in Josephine, a show of her life, at the Bobino Theatre in Paris with celebrities such as Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco – who had rescued her from poverty by giving her a villa in which to live, actresses Sophia Loren and Jeanne Moreau, and rock-star Mick Jagger in the audience. President Giscard D’Estaing sent her a telegram: “In tribute to your limitless talent, and in the name of a grateful France, I send you fond wishes, dear Josephine, on the golden anniversary. Paris is celebrating with you”. The 68 year-old entertainer, who reprised her hits of half-a-century, was a sensation once more, as she had been 50 years earlier. The reviews were the best that she had ever received.
Four days later Josephine was dead (from a cerebral haemorrhage).
The French government honoured her funeral with full military honours including a 21-gun salute as befitted a national heroine. Some 20,000 people crowded the streets of Paris to watch the procession on its way to the Church of the Madeline. She was buried at the Cimetiere de Monaco in Monaco. It wasn’t a bad “exit” for “kid” from the slums of St Louis, but then ……..
Whatever the initial impression may have been – the wide rolling eyes, the clumsy stage-movements, the banana dance – Josephine Baker was never just a “kid” from anywhere. The French government had got it right – she was a heroine. As biographer Ean Wood describes, her life had been a battle. “She fought bravely for so many things over so many years: for her success as an entertainer, for blacks (by which she meant anyone who was oppressed or slighted), for the Allied cause in the war, for her animals, and for her children, who – in spite of the oddness of their upbringing – turned out well and remember her with affection”.
Josephine Baker – whichever way you look at it, there has never been anybody quite like her
