There were many American expats filling the streets of Paris in the 1920’s but there was one that did it with an extra panash and made an immediate impression. Josephine Baker was a woman ahead of her time and blazed her own path from the streets of St Louis to the stages of Paris.
Born on June 3, 1906 in St Louis to her mother Carrie, and a father she would never know. Her mother had worked for a German family in St Louis, and it is believed that the man of the house could be her dad, but the secret went to her grave. At just 8 years old, her mother hired her out to be a live-in maid. One day when she used too much laundry detergent her boss held her hands to a hot stove burning them.
Her mother wasn’t much in the picture and continued to have other children and didn’t care about Josephine at all and forced her to live on the street. Josephine would make small bits of money dancing on a street corner in between waitress jobs. At just 14 years old, she married Willie Wells, the marriage only lasted a few months. The next year she married Willie Baker, the nuptials lasted four years but she would keep his last name.
In 1921 she moved to New York City at the height of the Harlem Renaissance and performed at the Plantation Club at just 15 years old. The last in the chorus line, she fumbled through the moves while the audience roared with laughter. In the next scene, she came out on stage and wowed the crowd with her amazing dance moves, clearly not the lost dancer on the end and became the highest paid chorus girl in vaudeville.
On October 2, 1925, when her troupe was headed to Paris, she wasn’t going to miss the chance. At 19 she performed on the stage at the Theatre des Champs Elysees and she was an instant success with her exotic moves and teeny tiny costumes. In 1926, in the historic Folies Bergère was the site of her “Danse Sauvage” complete with her banana skirt, more banana than it was skirt. Her other costumes included a single flamingo feather hanging between her legs and a live cheetah named “Chiquita” with its own diamond collar.
She branched out and began to sing and acted on film and in operas including Jacques Offenbach’s Le Creole in 1934. Offenbach, who wrote the famous Can Can song and also was a lover of another of our ladies, Valtesse de la Bigne. A role she trained for over six months.
In 1936, she made a brief return to the USA to perform on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies, but was not received well and when few tickets were sold she returned to Paris. Later in life she said that she “couldn’t stand America”, after this trip she renounced her citizenship. A marriage to Jean Lion in 1937 also came with a French passport and she never looked back.
At the start of World War II, she left Paris for the Chateau de Milandes in the Dordogne. With her stage persona she used it to her advantage to help the Resistance. Traveling around France she was the perfect spy to pass notes on sheet music to other Resistance leaders at times pinning them inside her underwear so the German’s wouldn’t find them. Always at home on the stage she visited many of the French, American and British bases performing for the troops, her very own USO spreading some much needed cheer with the banana skirt. Later she would be awarded the Crois de Guerre, Rosette de la Resistance and the Chevalier de Légion d'honneur, not so bad for a girl that once danced on the street.
An outspoken activist for Civil Rights, she places a clause in her contracts when returning to America that she wouldn’t perform in segregated clubs. In 1951 she returned to the States to accept the NAACP’s Woman of the Year award that came with a parade of thousands of people through the streets of New York. On the same trip she was booked to perform at the Stork Club in NYC, that left out that they weren’t allowing black people in the audience. Just before the curtain was to go up she heard and refused to perform. The club threatened her with deportation and the loss of thousands of dollars. However, they picked the wrong night. Princess Grace of Monaco was in the audience with a group of friends and when Josephine made a small scene the princess walked up to her took her by the arm and walked out. It would be the beginning of a friendship that lasted her whole life. Her visa was revoked and she wasn’t allowed to return for ten years.
In 1963, she did return to the United State and this time stood next to Martin Luther King Jr on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for the March on Washington. After his tragic death, his widow called Josephine and asked her to pick up his torch and take over as the leader of the Civil Rights movement. She declined and remained in France and spent as much time as she could at her chateau.
Knowing what it was like to grow up with parents she began to adopt children of her own. Twelve children from 11 different countries, she would call them her “Rainbow Tribe”. All different ages it was important to her to raise them in their own religion, beliefs and languages. What a beautiful thought and still needed so many years later.
Plagued with money issues her entire life, when she needed money she performed but then spent it just as quickly. When she couldn’t afford her payments on the chateau, her friends including Bridget Bardot and Princess Grace tried to help. While away on tour she was told that her home was being repossessed. She left immediately, returned and locked herself in her kitchen. It lasted for a few days until she left the kitchen for another room and they locked her out.
On April 8, 1975 in celebration of her 50 years on stage a multi day grand show was planned at the Bobino in Montparnasse. The entire production was paid for by Princess Grace and Prince Rainier and even Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Two days later as she lay in bed reading her glowing reviews she suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and fell into a coma.
On April 12, 1975 the great woman of the stage died at 68 years old. So beloved in France, she was given a full Catholic mass in the Eglise Madeleine with full French honors, the only American woman given the honor.
Her Chateau was later opened as a museum that you can visit today complete with her Art Deco bathroom designed to match her bottle of Arpège designed by one of our other ladies, Jeanne Lanvin. Don’t you love how they are all so intertwined.
https://www.milandes.com/en/
