Josephine Baker was an American-born singer, dancer, activist, cultural icon, and spy who took Paris by storm in the 1920s and was one of the most popular music hall performers in France.
Baker (real name Freda Josephine McDonald) was born in St. Louis. She grew up very poor, so she often danced on the street to earn extra money. By the time she was 16, she joined a dance troupe from Philadelphia and began touring with them. Baker’s first big break came in 1923 when she joined the chorus for a road company that was performing the musical comedy Shuffle Along. That allowed her to move to New York City and advance through the music scene until she was performing on the floor show of the famed Plantation Club.
Fueled by the popularity of the Harlem Renaissance in New York, Baker moved to Paris in 1925 to dance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées and introduced her unique style and ethereal grace to France. Baker went on to become one of the most popular music hall entertainers in France, with her most memorable performance showing at the Folies-Bergère where she danced wearing only a g-string ornamented with a string of bananas.
Baker started singing in 1930. She made her screen debut in 1934, starring in Zouzou and making her the first black woman to star in a major motion picture.
With the outbreak of the war, Baker went to work for France. She worked as an ambulance driver, entertainer, and spy. Her celebrity status granted her access to exclusive parties all across Europe, where she used her natural charm and wit to get close to important figures and learn the locations of troops and their stationed locations from high-ranking German, Japanese, and Italian officials.[1]
Baker’s method of smuggling her secrets is also one for the books. Baker’s “assistant” — fellow agent Jacques Abtey — would record their findings in invisible ink on pages of sheet music, while Baker herself often pinned photos to the inside of her undergarments to avoid detection.[2]
After multiple short-lived marriages, Baker started adopting children in the 1950s and '60s. Baker adopted 12 children from different countries, ranging from Finland to Venezuela, and called them “The Rainbow Tribe”. Baker wanted to prove that “children of different ethnicities and religions could still be brothers”. Some of her children later felt that they had been used as props for her political message. Others have fonder memories.
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 Las Vegas, Nevada.[3] After this incident, she began receiving threatening phone calls from people claiming to be from the Ku Klux Klan but said publicly that she was not afraid of them.
Following many years abroad, Baker returned to the United States in 1963.
Baker died in Paris on April 12, 1975; she was 68. [4]
Josephine Baker's son — and historian — Jean-Claude Baker stated that Josephine would often develop “lady lover friendships” with her fellow performers while they all stayed together during her travels. In addition to her four marriages, she had a number of affairs with men and women. Some of her paramours included artist Frida Kahlo, singer/dancer Clara Smith, and novelist Colette.[5]