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Josephine Baker
From Outcyclopedia, the free and queer encyclopedia. One of the greatest entertainers and most beautiful women of the twentieth century, Josephine Baker was born Freda Josephine Carson in St. Louis, Missouri, on 3 June, 1906. Shortly after her birth, Josephine's father, a drummer in a vaudeville playhouse orchestra, walked out on her mother, who remarried. Josephine's stepfather was frequently unemployed and her mother struggled to support Josephine and her step-siblings by working as a washerwoman. Josephine herself started working young, cleaning house and baby sitting for rich white families who forbade her to kiss their babies. Narrowly surviving the St. Louis race riots of 1917, young Josephine began working as a waitress at thirteen and was even married very briefly before running away to join the vaudeville circuit, performing first with The Jones Family Band and then The Dixie Steppers. Like her contemporary, Fannie Brice, Josephine was able to alternate effortlessly between being a sultry siren and a comical cut-up. After auditioning and being rejected as a chorus girl for the stage show Shuffle Along for being "too skinny and too dark," Josephine accepted a job as a dresser for the show, all the while studying and memorizing the chorus line's dance routines. Just as in the old movie cliché, one of the chorus line dancers was unable to perform one night, and Josephine was the only person available to replace her. Her improvised comical eye-rolling and deliberate misstepping during the routine made her an instant hit with the audience. Shuffle Along had a long and successful run, largely thanks to her. Following the conclusion of Shuffle Along's run, she did a brief stint at New York's Plantation Club. In 1921 she married Willie Baker, whose name she chose to keep following their divorce, after which she traveled to Paris in 1925 to perform in La Revue Nègre. Here, in a number called "Danse Sauvage," Josephine Baker performed an exotic and provocative routine, wearing nothing but a feather skirt. Parisian audiences went wild and instantly fell in love with her. The change in venues from America to France had a profound impact on Josephine Baker. Although much of the content and promotional material for La Revue Nègre was little above that of minstrel shows and contained many racial stereotypes, the French's love of such material was based more on a naive sense of quaintness than racism, and their love and affection for Josephine and her co-stars were indeed genuine. Being thrust into an integrated society devoid of racism was a liberating experience for Josephine. She was also impressed by the Parisians' more relaxed attitudes towards sex, and soon became more aware not only of her own great beauty and sexual allure, but of the mutual sexual attraction she had with both men and women. Despite her many husbands and male lovers, she never had any biological children and towards the end of her life came to prefer purely platonic relationships with men. Josephine's suitors numbered in the thousands, and included one young man who, upon being turned down by her, killed himself on the spot. Her admirers included e.e. cummings, Ernest Hemingway, Alexander Calder, and George Rounalt. She did accept marriage to her manager, Pepito di Abatino, a professed "Count" whose nobility was never substantiated. In 1928 he dueled with a rival suitor in Buda-Pest, but the duel ended after only 10 minutes, when di Abatino was scratched by his opponent's blade. Josephine's marriage to Abatino did not last long, although exactly how and when it ended is a matter of dispute. Following La Revue Nègre, Josephine Baker appeared at the Follies-Bergère in La Folie du Jour, performing the routine for which she was most famous, dancing in nothing but a skirt made of bananas. Josephine's stardom was now assured, and she quickly became the most highly paid performer in Europe. She indulged herself with her new found wealth, buying many expensive clothes and jewelry, as well as a chateau at Castlenaud-Fayrac and a small menagerie of animals, including a leopard, a chimpanzee, and even a pig. Making a transition to film, she starred in the silent movies La Sirène des Tropiques (1927), and the sound pictures Zou-Zou(1934) and Princess Tam-Tam (1935), all of which were enormously successful in Europe but had limited exposure in the States. Invited by Flo Ziegfield to appear in his 1936 Follies, Josephine Baker eagerly returned to the States, only to be crushed by the hostility of white audiences and critics. She returned to France heartbroken. The following year she married her fourth husband, Jean Lion, from whom she gained French citizenship. The marriage ended a year later, although Lion continued to love Josephine for the rest of his life. When France found itself at war with Germany in 1939, Josephine Baker served her adopted country well, performing for the troops and volunteering as both a sub-lieutenant in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and with the Red Cross. When Paris fell to the Germans in June of 1940, Josephine, who could have returned to the States, remained in France. Allowed to travel Europe because of her celebrity status, she often carried intelligence messages for the French Resistance with her, written in invisible ink on her sheet music. Illness forced her to stop her travels in Casablanca in 1941, where she remained as American and British troops liberated Morocco from the Nazis the following year. She then began entertaining Allied troops throughout Africa and the Middle East, returning to France after the war's conclusion and receiving the Croix de Guerre in 1946. In 1947 she married bisexual band performer Joe Bouillon, and after becoming aware of the plight of refugee children began adopting the first of twelve children from various nationalities and ethnic groups, her "Rainbow Tribe." Josephine's generosity was motivated not only by her great love of children but also her desire to show the world that hate and racism were learned behaviors and that children of different backgrounds could just as easily learn to live together in love and friendship. Her chateau became a resort where visitors could come to see her children living and playing together in friendship and happiness. However, good though her intentions may have been, some of her children felt like sideshow attractions, and years after her death voiced their resentment for being put on display. Joe Bouillon's own discomfort with the spectacle, together with Josephine's extravagant lifestyle and the increasing debts it incurred, eventually brought an end to their marriage in 1956. In 1951 Josephine Baker returned to the States, but found her welcome to be not much warmer than before. When refused service at New York's Stork Club, she exploded in a tirade against the management, and also radio commentator Walter Winchell, a Stork Club patron, for refusing to come to her aid. Winchell would later fire back on his show by accusing Baker of being a Communist, an accusation which drew the attention of J. Edgar Hoover. Baker returned to France, her mother and step-siblings in tow. Though she vowed never again to return to America, she did on numerous occasions, both to perform and to assist the burgeoning civil rights movement. During her visits to America, she refused to perform in venues where the audiences were segregated. Both for her humanitarian efforts and her bravery in the war, Charles de Gaulle inducted her in 1961 into the Legion of Honor. In 1963 she was invited to speak at the March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King. Despite these accolades, in 1969 Josephine Baker was evicted from her chateau, which was auctioned off to pay her mounting debts, including back taxes. Princess Grace of Monaco, who had been at the Stork Club on that night in 1951, took Josephine in and gave her a villa in which to live. From here she continued to travel Europe and the States and began a friendship with New York artist Robert Brady. This blossomed into a platonic relationship and the two exchanged marriage vows in an Acapulco church in 1973, without clergy or witnesses. The marriage was purely symbolic in nature. That same year she agreed to perform at Carnegie Hall, though she was terrified that she would receive the same hostile reception as she had in her previous attempts to capture American audiences. Instead she received a standing ovation which brought tears to her eyes. In 1975, on 8 April, she performed at the Bobino Theatre in Paris, performing a montage of her best-loved numbers. A few days later, on 12 April, she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while reading the many praising reviews of her stage performance. As one of her children would later comment, "She died of happiness." Thousands crowded the streets of Paris to witness her funeral procession. The first American woman to receive full military burial honors from the French government, she was given a twenty-one gun salute and buried in Monaco. Josephine Baker continues to command a huge following of fans and admirers, not only for her talent but also for her courage and loving heart. In 1991 HBO produced a movie based on her life, starring Angela Basset. Among the liberties taken by the otherwise outstanding biography was a complete omission of Baker's bisexuality. External links: Silent Movies.Com: Josephine Baker Women's History - Josephine Baker Entry revised 15 November, 2004. All text is available for use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (see Copyrights for details). |
