Baker, Josephine (1906-1975)

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Baker, Josephine (1906-1975)

On stage, Josephine Baker epitomized the flamboyant and risqué entertainment of the Jazz Age. Her overtly erotic danse sauvage, her exotic costumes of feathers and bananas, and her ability to replicate the rhythms of jazz through contortions of her body made the young African American dancer one of the most original and controversial performers of the 1920s. From her Parisian debut in 1925, Baker rocked middle-class sensibilities and helped usher in a new era in popular culture. In the words of newspaperwoman and cultural critic Janet Flanner, Baker's "magnificent dark body, a new model to the French, proved for the first time that black was beautiful." Off stage, Baker's decadent antics and uncanny ability to market herself helped to transform her into one of the first popular celebrities to build an international, mass appeal which cut across classes and cultures.

For a woman who would end her life with one of the most recognized faces in the world, Baker's beginnings were inauspicious. She was born Josephine Freda McDonald in the slums of St. Louis, Missouri, on June 3, 1906 and, according to her own accounts, grew up "sleeping in cardboard shelters and scavenging for food in garbage cans." She left home at the age of thirteen, married and divorced, and went to work as a waitress. By sixteen she had joined the Jones Family Band and was scraping out an income as part of a minor act in black vaudeville. Her ungainly appearance and dark skin made her a comic figure. Even after her New York debut as a chorus girl in Shuffle Along, a popular musical review, Baker's talents remained unrecognized. The young dancer's career changed dramatically when she accompanied La Revue Négre to France in 1925. In New York, her ebony features had earned her the contempt of audiences partial to light-skinned blacks; in Paris, her self-styled "exotic" beauty made her an instant sensation. Her danse sauvage, sensual and frenetic, both shocked and charmed Parisian audiences. She grew increasingly daring when she earned lead billing at the Folies-Bergére and performed her exotic jazz dances seminude to popular acclaim. Her antics soon attracted the attention of such artistic luminaries as Pablo Picasso and Man Ray. In a Western Europe recovering from the disruptions of the First World War, Baker's untamed style came to embody for many observers the pure and primitive beauty of the non-Western world.

Baker thrived on the controversy surrounding her routine. She coveted the appreciation of her numerous fans and, in an effort to promote herself, adopted many of the mass-market tactics that soon became the hallmarks of most popular celebrities. She encouraged the dissemination of her image through such products as Josephine Baker dolls and hired a press agent to answer her fan mail. She also exposed her private life to the public, writing one of the first tell-all biographies; she invited reporters into her home to photograph her with her "pet" tiger and to admire her performing daily chores in her stage costumes. The line between Baker the performer and Baker the private individual soon blurred—increasing her popularity and creating an international Josephine Baker cult of appreciation. In the early 1930s, Baker embarked on a second career as a singer and actress. Her films, Zou-Zou and Princess Tam-Tam, proved mildly successful. Yet by 1935 the Josephine Baker craze in Europe had come to an end and the twenty-nine year old dancer returned to the United States to attempt to repeat in New York what she had done in Paris. She flopped miserably. Her danse sauvage found no place in depression-era America and white audiences proved to be overtly hostile to a black woman of Baker's sophistication and flamboyance. She returned to France, retired to the countryside, and exited public life. She became a French citizen in 1937.

The second half of Baker's life was defined both by personal misfortune and public service. She engaged in espionage work for the French Resistance during World War II, then entered the Civil Rights crusade, and finally devoted herself to the plight of impoverished children. She adopted twelve orphans of different ethnic backgrounds and gained some public attention in her later years as the matron of her "Rainbow Tribe." At the same time, Baker's personal intrigues continued to cloud her reputation. She exhausted four marriages and offered public praise for right-wing dictators Juan Perón and Benito Mussolini. What little support she had in the American media collapsed in 1951 after a public feud with columnist Walter Winchell. In 1973, financial difficulties forced her to return to the stage. She died in Paris on April 12, 1975.

Few performers can claim to be more "of an age" than Josephine Baker. Her star, rising so rapidly during the 1920s and then collapsing in the wake of World War II, paralleled the emergence of the wild, free-spirited culture of the Jazz Age. Her self-promotion tactics made her one of the first popular celebrities; these tactics were later copied by such international figures as Charles Lindbergh, Charlie Chaplin, and Marlene Dietrich. Yet it was Baker's ability to tap into the pulsing undercurrents of 1920s culture that made her a sensation. Picasso once said that Baker possessed "a smile to end all smiles"; it should be added, to her credit, that she knew how to use it.

—Jacob M. Appel