by When she arrived in Paris in 1925, Josephine Baker was “just a principal dancer with a knack for comedy,” according to the statement observer explained it in an atmospheric photo essay about the singer, dancer and superstar in 1986. It was the 19-year-old’s first experience with segregated society and a farewell to her childhood in the slums of St. Louis (where she experienced “the worst of the race riots “ experienced). and massacres that the United States had experienced’) she fell in love with the city.
Picasso and Matisse portrayed her, Hemingway and Kurt Weil wrote about her
Paris returned the favor: in 1926 Baker appeared at the Folies Bergère “in a belt of gilded bananas”; she made her fortune and purchased her own nightclub; Picasso and Matisse portrayed her, Hemingway and Kurt Weil wrote about her.
Baker angered the Nazis (they protested her “degenerate” performance outside the Berlin theater where she starred) and more. The article does not delve into her double life as a secret agent of the Resistance, which was still only rumor at the time, but notes that her Legion of Honor and the Resistance Medal were the kind of honors “not normally given to former vaudeville nude dancers.” become”.
Even outside of this secret life, Baker was a complex figure: “a complicated friend, lover, mother and colleague.” Unable to have children, she and her fourth husband, bandleader Jo Bouillon, adopted twelve children of various nationalities; In 1956 she retired to the Dordogne to look after her. No one believed it was her final farewell, and in fact the money ran out in 1969 and Baker triumphantly returned to the stage, “even more attractive than in 1956”.
In 1975 she celebrated her 50th anniversary in Paris with a series of performances (she also had the opera glasses removed from the halls to preserve their mystique). Baker surprised the audience with her “youth and vivacity” and danced an “energetic Charleston”; The premiere audience applauded for 15 minutes. After the 14th performance, the music finally fell silent: “After eating with friends, Josephine went home and died quietly in her sleep amid the flowers and press clippings of her final triumph.”
