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Josephine Baker - 1951
photo: Michael Ochs Archive
120 years ago today in 1906, one of the greatest performers in theater history, Freda Josephine Baker, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the birthplace of my mother.
Baker's mother, Carrie, was adopted in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1886 by Richard and Elvira McDonald, both were former slaves
of African descent and vaudeville performers. Carrie McDonald was a
person of African American and Native American heritage. The records of
the city of St. Louis show that (Baker's mother) Carrie McDonald ... was
admitted to the exclusively white Female Hospital on May 3, 1906, diagnosed as
pregnant and discharged on June 17; her baby, Freda J. McDonald, was
born two weeks earlier. Why six weeks in the hospital especially for a
black woman (of that
time) who would customarily have had her baby at home with the help of a
midwife? Her son, Jean-Claude Baker failed to unearth the
identity of Baker's biological father (which he described as "the most
painful mystery of her life"), but that he, Baker, and others believed
her father to have been a white man. He added that Eddie Carson "played
along" with the assertion that he was Baker's father. Khalid Elhassan,
the author of 40 Fascinating Facts About the Fabulous
Josephine Baker, noted that it was "almost unheard of" for a person of
color to be treated in a white hospital during segregation; he opined
that "the likeliest explanation is that Josephine’s mother, who worked
for a wealthy German family, had been impregnated by her employer, who
then pulled strings to get [her] admitted into the city’s best
hospital".
photographer unknown
She spent her early life in the Chestnut Valley
neighborhood of St. Louis, a racially mixed low-income area consisting mainly of rooming houses, brothels, and apartments
without indoor plumbing. She was poorly dressed and hungry, and she developed street smarts playing in the railroad yards of Union Station. In 1917, when she was 11, a terrified Josephine McDonald witnessed racial violence in East St. Louis. In a speech years later, she recalled what she had seen:
"I can still see myself standing on the west bank of the Mississippi looking over into East St. Louis and watching the glow of the burning of Negro homes lighting the sky. We children stood huddled together in bewilderment ... frightened to death with the screams of the Negro families running across this bridge with nothing but what they had on their backs as their worldly belongings... So with this vision I ran and ran and ran..."
By age 12, she had dropped out of school. At 13, she worked as a waitress at the Old Chauffeur's Club at 3133 Pine Street. She also lived as a street child in the slums of St. Louis, sleeping in cardboard shelters, scavenging for food in garbage cans, making a living with street-corner dancing. At the Old Chauffeur's Club Josephine met Willie Wells,
whom she married at age 13, but the marriage lasted less than a year.
Following her divorce from Wells, she found work with a street
performance group called the Jones Family Band.
At the age of 13, she headed to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance and in 1921 she secured a role in the chorus line of a touring production of the groundbreaking and hugely successful Broadway revue Shuffle Along that helped bring public attention to Florence Mills, Paul Robeson, and Adelaide Hall (links below).
In her teens her
mother opposed her becoming an entertainer and scolded her for not
tending to her second husband, William Howard Baker, whom she had
married in 1921, at age 15. They divorced in 1925, during a period when her career
success was beginning but she continued to use his last name
professionally for the rest of her life.
Baker sailed to Paris in 1925 and opened on October 2 in La Revue nègre at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, performing Danse Sauvage with fr:Joe Alex, wearing a feather skirt. She was 19 at the time.
She became an instant success for her erotic dancing
and for appearing practically nude onstage as seen in her banana costume, wearing little more than "strings of pearls, wrist cuffs, and a skirt with 16 rubber bananas"
After a successful tour of
Europe, she broke her contract and returned to France in 1926 to star at
the Folies Bergère, where she performed the Danse Sauvage
Her success coincided with the 1925 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs, which gave birth to the term "Art Deco", as well as a renewed interest in non-Western art forms, including those of African origin, which Baker would represent. In later shows in Paris, she was often accompanied on stage by her pet cheetah, "Chiquita", donning a diamond collar. Chiquita frequently escaped into the orchestra pit; of course, it terrorized the musicians and added another element of excitement to the show (You really think?).
Bakerfix clebfre fixator by French School.
At the start of her career, Baker was accompanied by "Count" Giuseppe "Pepito" Abatino. Abatino, a Sicilian former stonemason who passed himself off as a count, persuaded her to let him manage her. He became not only Baker's manager, but her lover as well. The two
could not marry because she was not yet divorced from her second
husband, Willie Baker.
"Count" Giuseppe "Pepito" Abatino
ca 1920's
photographer unknown
photographer unknown
In 1926, Abatino established the first Chez Josephine cabaret at 40 Rue Fontaine, in Montmartre, Paris, as a gift to Baker. Bergfelder, Harris, and Street wrote that Siren of the Tropics
"rehearses the 'primitive-to-Parisienne' narrative that would become the
staple of Baker's cinema career, and exploited in particular her comic
stage persona based on loose-limbed athleticism and artful clumsiness." Zouzou and Princesse Tam Tam were both star vehicles for Baker.
In 1931, Baker sang professionally for the first time. During this period, she released her most successful song, J'ai deux amours. The song expresses the sentiment that "I have two loves, my country and Paris." Baker's assimilation into French popular culture was completed by her association with the song. There are two versions of J'ai deux amours on YouTube; the first from 1926, the second from 1967. It is awe-inspiring to see the transformation she made.
In 1934, she took the lead in a revival of the Jacques Offenbach opera La créole, which premiered in December of that year for a six-month run at the Théâtre Marigny on the Champs-Élysées of Paris. In preparation for 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."
In 1939, she was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, the French military intelligence agency, as an "honorable correspondent". She socialized with the Germans at embassies, ministries, night clubs,
charming them while secretly gathering information. Her café-society
fame enabled her to rub shoulders with those in the know, from
high-ranking Japanese officials to Italian and Vichy bureaucrats, attend parties and gather information at the Italian embassy without raising suspicion. reporting all to Abtey what she heard.
When she was forced to leave Paris, she went to the Château des Milandes, her home in the Dordogne département
in the south of France. It became, especially in
World War II, one of the most important hideaways; she would shelter
resistance fighters and Jewish refugees, providing them with documents
and even money for food, clothes, and forged documents she usually
financed herself. Her estate also provided the center of French Resistance
activities, including the installation of a radio transmitter in order
to be in touch with the Allied forces and storing weapons in its cellar.
Despite her popularity in France, Baker never attained the equivalent
reputation in America. Her star turn in a 1936 revival of Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway was not commercially successful, and later in the run she was replaced by Gypsy Rose Lee. Time
magazine referred to her as a "Negro wench ... whose dancing and
singing might be topped anywhere outside of Paris", while other critics
said her voice was "too thin" and "dwarf-like" to fill the Winter Garden Theatre. She returned to Europe heartbroken .This contributed to Baker's becoming a legal citizen of France and giving up her American citizenship.
In 1966, Fidel Castro invited Baker to perform at the "Teatro Musical de La Habana" in Havana, Cuba, at the seventh-anniversary celebrations of his revolution. Her spectacular show in April broke attendance records.
Baker supported the American Civil Rights Movement
during the 1950s. When she arrived in New York with her husband,
they were refused reservations at 36 hotels because of racial
discrimination. This led her to write several articles about segregation
in the United States. The FBI tracked everything she did, and opened a file on her. She refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States, although she was offered $10,000 by a Miami club; the club eventually met her demands. Her insistence on mixed audiences helped to integrate live entertainment shows in the Las Vegas Valley.
In 1951, Baker made charges of racism against the Stork Club in Manhattan, where she had been refused service. Actress Grace Kelly,
who was at the club at the time, rushed over to Baker, took her by the
arm and stormed out with her entire party, vowing never to return
(although she returned on January 3, 1956, with Prince Rainier of Monaco). The two women became close friends after the incident. Her reputation as a crusader grew to such an extent that the NAACP had Sunday, May 20, 1951, declared "Josephine Baker Day."
In 1968, Baker lost her château owing to unpaid debts; afterwards Princess Grace offered her an apartment in Roquebrune, near Monaco.
In 1973 she performed at Carnegie Hall to a standing ovation. The following year, she appeared in a Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium, and then at the Monegasque Red Cross Gala,
celebrating her 50 years in French show business.
On April 8, 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, financed by Prince Rainier, Princess Grace, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, opened to critical aclaim. The opening-night audience included Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli. Four days later, Baker was found in her bed in a coma after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. She was taken to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where she died, aged 68, on April 12, 1975.
In a 1974 interview with The Guardian, she explained that her first big break came in a bustling European city:
No, I didn't get my first break on Broadway. I was only in the chorus in 'Shuffle Along' and 'Chocolate Dandies'. I became famous first in France in the twenties. I just couldn't stand America and I was one of the first coloured Americans to move to Paris.
Advancing years and
exhaustion began to take their toll; she sometimes had trouble
remembering lyrics, and her speeches between songs tended to ramble.
However, she still continued to captivate audiences of all ages. Through all her many trials and tribulations she remained the Grande Dame until the very end.
There are two videos on YouTube of her singing J'ai deux amours, the first in 1931, the second in 1968. It is awe-inspiring to see the graceful transition she makes (links below).
Viewfinder links:
Net links:
Dangerous Minds ~ From stage siren to secret spy: the story of Josephine Baker
Town & Country ~ Baker’s Undercover Life as an Intelligence Agent
UMKC Women's Center ~ The Activism of Josephine Baker
YouTube links:
Art Minutes ~ "Josephine Baker" by Jean Chassaing
J'ai deux amours ~ 1931
J'ai deux amours ~ 1968
"I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens, and into the houses of presidents and much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth. And then look out, 'cause when Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world..."
Styrous® ~ Wednesday, June 3, 2026
