89 Facts About Josephine Baker

Freda Josephine Baker, naturalized as Josephine Baker, was an American-born French dancer, singer, and actress.

Josephine Baker's career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France.

Josephine Baker was the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 French silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by and.

Josephine Baker's costume, consisting only of a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.

Josephine Baker adopted 12 children which she referred to as Rainbow Tribe and raised them in France.

Josephine Baker aided the French Resistance during World War II, and worked with the British Secret Intelligence Service and the US Secret Service, the extent of which didn't get publicized until 2020 when French documents were unclassified.

On November 30,2021, Josephine Baker was inducted into the Pantheon in Paris, the first black woman to receive one of the highest honors in France.

Josephine Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald in St Louis, Missouri.

Josephine Baker's estate identifies vaudeville drummer Eddie Carson as her natural father despite evidence to the contrary.

Josephine Baker let people think Eddie Carson was the father, and Carson played along, Josephine knew better.

Josephine Baker McDonald spent her early life on 212 Targee Street in the Chestnut Valley neighborhood of St Louis, a racially mixed low-income area near Union Station, consisting mainly of rooming houses, brothels, and apartments without indoor plumbing.

Josephine Baker was poorly dressed, hungry as a child, and developed street smarts playing in the railroad yards of Union Station.

Josephine Baker's mother married Arthur Martin, "a kind but perpetually unemployed man", with whom she had a son and two more daughters.

Josephine Baker worked in a laundry; her mother placed her there due to her family being impoverished; she worked there in order to increase the income of her family and, at eight years old, Josephine began working as a live-in domestic for white families in St Louis.

In 1917, when she was 11, a terrified Josephine Baker McDonald witnessed racial violence in East St Louis.

Josephine Baker lived as a street child in the slums of St Louis, sleeping in cardboard shelters, scavenging for food in garbage cans, making a living with street-corner dancing.

Josephine Baker soon left him when her vaudeville troupe was booked into a New York City venue.

Josephine Baker's unrelenting badgering of a local show manager led to her recruitment for the St Louis Chorus vaudeville act.

In "Shuffle Along", Josephine Baker was a dancer at the end of a chorus line.

Josephine Baker began in "Shuffle Along" with one of the US touring companies, but, once she came of age, she was transferred to the Broadway production, where she remained for several months, until the show closed, in 1923.

Josephine Baker sailed to Paris in 1925 and opened on October 2 in "la Revue negre" at Theatre des Champs-Elysees.

Josephine Baker performed the, wearing little more than a skirt of strung-together artificial bananas.

Josephine Baker's success coincided with the 1925, which gave birth to the term "Art Deco", as well as a renewed interest in non-Western art forms, including those of African origin, which Baker would represent.

In 1929, Josephine Baker became the first African-American star to visit Yugoslavia, which she included on a tour through Central Europe via the Orient Express.

Josephine Baker became not only Baker's manager, but her lover as well.

Josephine Baker's star turn in a 1936 revival of "Ziegfeld Follies" on Broadway was not commercially successful, and later in the run she was replaced by Gypsy Rose Lee.

Josephine Baker returned to Paris in 1937, married the French industrialist Jean Lion, and became a French citizen.

Between 1933 and 1937, Josephine Baker was a guest at the start of the Tour de France on four occasions.

In September 1939, when France declared war on Germany in response to the invasion of Poland, Josephine Baker was recruited by the Deuxieme Bureau, the French military intelligence agency, as an "honorable correspondent".

Josephine Baker worked with Jacques Abtey, the head of French counterintelligence in Paris.

Josephine Baker socialized with the Germans at embassies, ministries, night clubs, charming them while secretly gathering information.

Josephine Baker attended parties and gathered information at the Italian embassy without raising suspicion.

The Deuxieme Bureau shared information with Wilfred Dunderdale at Secret Intelligence Service in London, and when it had to go underground, Josephine Baker reported to London directly-and in North Africa she reported via the American diplomate spies to London.

Josephine Baker collected detailed intelligence on German troop movements, as well as the locations and activities of airfields and harbors.

Confident in her celebrity status and the protections it afforded, Josephine Baker believed she could operate without raising suspicion.

Josephine Baker's boldness paid off, allowing her to smuggle intelligence across borders and deliver critical reports to the French Resistance.

Josephine Baker's estate provided the center of French Resistance activities, including the installation of a radio transmitter in order to be in touch with the Allied forces and storing weapons in its cellar.

Josephine Baker carried information for transmission to England, about airfields, harbors, and German troop concentrations in the West of France.

Josephine Baker pinned notes with the information she gathered inside her underwear.

Josephine Baker met the Pasha of Marrakech, whose support helped her through a miscarriage.

In 1949, a reinvented Josephine Baker returned in triumph to the Folies Bergere.

In 1951, Josephine Baker was invited back to the United States for a nightclub engagement in Miami.

In 1952, Josephine Baker was hired to crown the Queen of the Cavalcade of Jazz for the famed eighth Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, which was produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr.

Josephine Baker criticized the club's unwritten policy of discouraging Black patrons, then scolded columnist Walter Winchell, an old ally, for not rising to her defense.

In January 1966, Fidel Castro invited Josephine Baker to perform at the "Teatro Musical de La Habana" in Havana, Cuba, at the seventh-anniversary celebrations of his revolution.

In 1968, Josephine Baker visited Yugoslavia and made appearances in Belgrade and in Skopje.

Josephine Baker commented, "Nobody wants me, they've forgotten me"; but family members encouraged her to continue performing.

Josephine Baker still continued to captivate audiences of all ages.

Josephine Baker traveled in the South, giving a talk at Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, on "France, North Africa and the Equality of the Races in France".

On October 16,1951, Josephine Baker experienced a public incident where she was said to have been refused service at the upscale Stork Club in New York City.

Josephine Baker labeled her as an anti-American communist sympathizer, which turned the public attention away from the discrimination she had to face.

Josephine Baker 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.

In 1951, Josephine Baker made charges of racism against Sherman Billingsley's Stork Club in Manhattan, where she had been refused service.

Actress Grace Kelly, who was at the club at the time, rushed over to Josephine Baker, took her by the arm and stormed out with her entire party, vowing never to return.

Josephine Baker indicated that he had read his mother's FBI file and, using comparison of the file to the tapes, said he thought the Stork Club incident was overblown.

Josephine Baker was presented with life membership with the NAACP by Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche.

Josephine Baker attended rallies for McGee and wrote letters to Fielding Wright, the governor of Mississippi, asking him to spare McGee's life.

In 1957, Josephine Baker gave a speech at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, criticizing racial discrimination.

Jean-Claude Baker wrote that Josephine was bisexual and had several relationships with women.

In 1937, Josephine Baker married Frenchman Jean Lion, but they separated in 1940.

Josephine Baker married French composer and conductor Jo Bouillon in 1947, and their union lasted 14 years before ending in divorce.

Josephine Baker's estate featured hotels, a farm, rides, and the children singing and dancing for the audience.

Josephine Baker charged an admission fee to visitors who entered and partook in the activities, which included watching the children play.

Josephine Baker created dramatic backstories for them, picking them with clear intent in mind: at one point, she wanted and planned to adopt a Jewish baby, but she settled for a French one.

Josephine Baker raised them in different religions in order to further her model for the world, taking two children from Algeria and raising one child as a Muslim and raising the other child as a Catholic.

One member of the Tribe, Jean-Claude Josephine Baker, said: "She wanted a doll".

Later on, Josephine Baker would become the legal guardian of another boy, named Jean-Claude, and considered him an unofficial addition to the Rainbow Tribe.

For some time, Josephine Baker lived with her children and an enormous staff in the chateau in Dordogne, France, with her fourth husband, Jo Bouillon.

Bouillon claimed that Josephine Baker bore one child, though it was stillborn in 1941, an incident that precipitated an emergency hysterectomy.

In 1968, Josephine Baker lost her chateau owing to unpaid debts; afterwards Princess Grace offered her an apartment in Roquebrune, near Monaco.

Josephine Baker was back on stage at the Olympia in Paris in 1968, in Belgrade and at Carnegie Hall in 1973 and at the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium and at the "Gala du Cirque" in Paris in 1974.

Four days later, Josephine Baker was found lying peacefully in her bed surrounded by newspapers with glowing reviews of her performance.

Josephine Baker was in a coma after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.

Josephine Baker was taken to Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, where she died, aged 68, on April 12,1975.

Josephine Baker received a full Catholic funeral at L'Eglise de la Madeleine, attracting more than 20,000 mourners.

The only American-born woman to receive full French military honors at her funeral, Josephine Baker's funeral was the occasion of a huge procession.

Josephine Baker has been inducted into the St Louis Walk of Fame, and on March 29,1995, into the Hall of Famous Missourians.

The Piscine Josephine Baker is a swimming pool along the banks of the Seine in Paris named after her.

Josephine Baker continued to influence celebrities more than a century after her birth.

Josephine Baker appears on the French 20-cent euro coins released in March 2024.

In May 2021, an online petition was set up by writer Laurent Kupferman asking that Josephine Baker be honoured by being reburied at the Pantheon in Paris or being granted Pantheon honours, which would make her only the sixth woman at the mausoleum alongside Simone Veil, Genevieve de Gaulle-Anthonioz, Marie Curie, Germaine Tillion, and Sophie Berthelot.

The ceremony took place on Tuesday, November 30,2021, and Josephine Baker thus became the first black woman to be honored in the secular temple to the "great men" of the French Republic.

In 1991, Baker's life story, The Josephine Baker Story, was broadcast on HBO.

In 2002, Josephine Baker was portrayed by Karine Plantadit in the biopic Frida.

In July 2012, Cheryl Howard opened in The Sensational Josephine Baker, written and performed by Howard and directed by Ian Streicher at the Beckett Theatre of Theatre Row on 42nd Street in New York City, just a few doors away from Chez Josephine.

In June 2016, Josephine, a burlesque cabaret dream play starring Tymisha Harris as Josephine Baker premiered at the 2016 San Diego Fringe Festival.

Josephine Baker appears in her role as a member of the French Resistance in Johannes Mario Simmel's 1960 novel,.

Actress Phylicia Rashad's 1978 disco concept album Josephine Superstar is a biographical dedication to Baker's legacy.

The lyrics detail Josephine Baker's life, including her youth, career, and romances in St Louis, Broadway, and Paris.