78 Facts About Josephine Baker

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

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

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

Josephine Baker's costume, consisting of only 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 aided the French Resistance during World War II.

Josephine Baker refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States and is noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement.

Freda Josephine Baker McDonald was born on June 3,1906, in St Louis, Missouri.

Baker's foster son Jean-Claude Baker wrote a biography, published in 1993, titled Josephine: The Hungry Heart, in which he discusses at length the circumstances surrounding Baker's birth based on his research, concluding that Baker's father was white, and that Baker knew that Carson was not her father.

Josephine Baker McDonald spent her early life on 212 Targee Street in the Chestnut Valley neighborhood of St Louis, a racially mixed low-income neighborhood 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 took in laundry to wash to make ends meet, 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 left him when her vaudeville troupe was booked into a New York City venue, and divorced in 1925; it was during this time she began to see significant career success, and she continued to use his last name professionally for the rest of her life.

Josephine Baker's consistent badgering of a show manager in her hometown led to her being recruited for the St Louis Chorus vaudeville show.

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

Josephine Baker first entered Shuffle Along in one of the US touring companies as she was still underage at the time.

The next revue Josephine Baker went into was The Chocolate Dandies, which opened on September 1,1924.

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 "Danse Sauvage" wearing a costume consisting of a skirt made of a string of artificial bananas.

Josephine Baker's success coincided with the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, which gave birth to the term "Art Deco", and with a renewal of interest in non-Western forms of art, including African.

In 1929, Josephine Baker became the first African-American star to visit Yugoslavia, while on tour in Central Europe via the Orient Express.

Josephine Baker included Pirot kilim into her routine, as a nod to the local culture, and she donated some of the show's proceeds to poor children of Serbia.

At the start of her career in France, Josephine Baker had met Abatino, a Sicilian former stonemason who passed himself off as a count, and who persuaded her to let him manage her.

Josephine Baker starred in four films which found success only in Europe: the silent film Siren of the Tropics, Zouzou and Princesse Tam Tam.

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 socialised 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.

Josephine Baker housed people who were eager to help the Free French effort led by Charles de Gaulle and supplied them with visas.

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 was so upset by this treatment that she wrote articles about the segregation in the United States.

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

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 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 wanted to prove that "children of different ethnicities and religions could still be brothers".

Josephine Baker often took the children with her cross-country, and when they were at Chateau des Milandes, she arranged tours so visitors could walk the grounds and see how natural and happy the children were in "The Rainbow Tribe".

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.

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.

Josephine Baker forced Jarry to leave the chateau and live with his adoptive father, Jo Bouillon, in Argentina, at the age of 15, after discovering that he was gay.

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.

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 30 November 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.

Josephine Baker appears in her role as a member of the French Resistance in Johannes Mario Simmel's 1960 novel, Es muss nicht immer Kaviar sein.