Dirty Girl Things
Monday, August 20, 2007
Number Eighty-Nine
“Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.”
Joséphine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American-born French entertainer, most noted for her singing career, while in her early career she was a celebrated dancer (she is often credited as a movie star, although she only starred in 3 films in her early career). She was given the nicknames “Black Venus” or “Black Pearl” and “Créole Goddess”, while in France she was known in the old theatrical tradition as “La Baker”. She became a citizen of France in 1937. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in North America, and for being an inspiration to generations of African-American female entertainers. Josephine Baker adopted 12 orphans of different ethnicities and nationalities.
She started her career as a street performer, dancing in the street as a child. She entered vaudeville joining the St. Louis Chorus at 15. She then headed to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance, performing at the Plantation Club and in the chorus of the popular Broadway revues Shuffle Along (1921) and The Chocolate Dandies (1924). She performed as the last dancer in a chorus line, a position in which the dancer traditionally performed in a comic manner, as if they were unable to remember the dance, until the encore, at which point they would not only perform it correctly, but with additional complexity. She was then billed as “the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudeville.”
On October 2, 1925, she opened in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where she became an instant success for her erotic dancing and for appearing practically nude on stage. After a successful tour of Europe, she reneged on her contract and returned to France to star at the Folies Bergère, setting the standard for her future acts. She performed the Danse sauvage, wearing a costume consisting of a skirt made of a string of artificial bananas.
In later shows in Paris she was often accompanied on stage by her pet cheetah Chiquita, who was adorned with a diamond collar. The cheetah frequently escaped into the orchestra pit, where it terrorized the musicians, adding yet another element of excitement to the show.
Rise to Fame
After a short while she was the most successful American entertainer working in France — whereas in the U.S., she would have suffered from the racial prejudices common to the era. Ernest Hemingway called her “ ... the most sensational woman anyone ever saw.” In addition to being a musical star, Baker also starred in three films which only found success in Europe: the silent film Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934) and Princesse Tamtam (1935). Although Josephine Baker is often credited as a movie star, her starring roles ended with Princesse Tamtam in 1935.
At this time she also scored her greatest song hit, “J’ai deux amours” (1931) and became a muse for contemporary authors, painters, designers, and sculptors including Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, and Christian Dior.
Under the management of Giuseppe Pepito Abatino — a Sicilian stonemason who passed himself off successfully as a Sicilian count, Baker’s stage and public persona, as well as her singing voice, went through an extraordinary transformation. In 1934 she took the lead in a revival of Jacques Offenbach’s 1875 opera La créole at the Théâtre Marigny in the Champs-Élysées of Paris, which premiered in December of that year for a six month run. In preparation for the her performances she went through months of training with a vocal coach.
In the words of Shirley Bassey, who has cited Baker as her primary influence, “ ... she went from a ‘petite danseuse sauvage’ with a decent voice to ‘la grande diva magnifique’ ... I swear in all my life I have never seen, and probably never shall see again, such a spectacular singer and performer.”
She was so well known and popular with the French people that even the Nazis, who occupied France during World War II, were hesitant to cause her harm. In turn, this allowed Baker to show her loyalty to her adopted country by participating in the Underground, when she smuggled intelligence to the resistance in Spain coded within her sheet music. After the war, for her underground activity, Baker was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d’Honneur by General Charles de Gaulle, and also the Rosette of the Résistance.
Yet despite her popularity in France, she never obtained the same reputation at home. Upon a visit to the United States in 1936, she starred in a failed version of the Ziegfeld Follies (being replaced by Gypsy Rose Lee later in the run) her personal life similarly suffered, and she went through six marriages, some legal, some not. During this time, when Baker returned to the United States, she was allegedly at a dinner party and began to speak in French as well as English with a French accent. An African-American maid was reputed to tell her, “Honey, you is full of shit. Speak the way yo’ mouth was born.” She had the woman fired.
In January of 1966 she was invited by Fidel Castro to perform at the Teatro Musical de La Habana in Havana, Cuba. Her spectacular show in April of that year led to record breaking attendance.
In 1973, Josephine Baker opened at Carnegie Hall to a standing ovation.
Civil rights involvement
Though based in France, she supported the American Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s. She protested racism in her own unique way, adopting twelve multi-ethnic orphans, whom she called her “Rainbow Tribe.” Her adopted children were: Akio (Korean son), Janot (Japanese son), Luis (Colombian son), Jarry (Finnish son), Jean-Claude (Canadian son), Moïse (French Jewish son), Brahim (Arab son), Marianne (French daughter), Koffi (Ivory Coast son), Mara (Venezuelan son), Noël (French son), Stellina (Moroccan daughter).
For some time she lived with all of her children and an enormous staff in a castle, Château de Milandes, in the Dordogne in France. Baker bore only one child herself, stillborn in 1941, an incident that precipitated an emergency hysterectomy.
She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States. Her insistence on mixed audiences helped to integrate shows in Las Vegas, Nevada. Nevertheless she was near bankruptcy until she was given an apartment and financial assistance by her close friend, Princess Grace of Monaco, another expatriate American living in Europe.
She also worked with the NAACP. In 1963, she spoke at the March on Washington at the side of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Wearing her Free French uniform with her Legion of Honor decoration, she was the only woman to speak at the rally. After King’s assassination his widow, Coretta Scott King, approached Baker in Holland to ask her if she would take her husband’s place as leader of the American Civil Rights Movement. After many days of thinking it over, Baker declined, stating that her children were “ ... too young to lose their mother.”
Death
On April 9, 1975, Baker starred in a retrospective revue at the Bobino in Paris — Joséphine à Bobino 1975, celebrating her 50 years in show business. The revue, backed by Prince Rainier and Princess Grace, opened to rave reviews and quickly became the rage of Paris. Demand for seating reached such an extent that fold-out chairs had to added to accommodate spectators. The opening night audience was comprised of Prince Ranier and Princess Grace, Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, and Liza Minnelli, among many others.
On the morning of April 10 Baker was found lying peacefully in her bed surrounded by newspapers with glowing reviews of her performance. She had slipped into a coma. She was rushed to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where she died at the age of 68 on April 12, 1975.
She became the first American-born woman to receive the highest French military honors, the Croix de Guerre, at her funeral, which was held at L’Église de la Madeleine. Paris came to a standstill on the day of her funeral, and 20,000 filled the streets to watch her procession. She was interred at the Cimetière de Monaco.
“Place Joséphine Baker” in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris was named in her honor. She has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. The first ever swimming-pool over the Seine which has been launched for the 2006 edition of Paris-Plage, is named “Piscine Joséphine Baker” after her.
In 2006, the director of the Opéra-Comique of Paris, Jérôme Savary, presented his À la Recherche de Joséphine (Searching for Josephine), a musical inspired by Baker’s musical revues and songs from her early career. It tells the story of a French director in search of a star for his Parisian show in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He finds Joséphine Baker, who becomes the toast of Paris. It was hugely successful and has even toured in Louisiana.
(Note: Article from Wikipedia, which also has some videos of Josephine performing).
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Sincerely.
Eve and JW3 and Mélisande
Dirty Girl Things ©
Unrepentant. Unpretentious. Unconventional. ©