Today’s Maven is Josephine Baker (June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975) was an American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame in her adopted homeland of France.
Quick Bio: Josephine Baker was the first African American female to star in a motion picture, to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. Not only was Josephine beautiful, but she brought incredible amounts of change to the US for African Americans. While living as a street child in the slums of St. Louis, sleeping in cardboard shelters and scavenging for food in garbage cans she began using street performances to support herself and catch attention. Eventually, at age 15, she was recruited for the St. Louis Chorus vaudeville show. Heading to New York City during the Harlem Renaissance she soon became the “highest paid chorus girl in vaudeville”. On October 2, 1925, she opened in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where she became an instant success for her erotic dancing and for appearing practically nude on stage. After a successful tour of Europe, she returned to France to star at the Folies Bergères. She performed the Danse sauvage, wearing a costume consisting of a skirt made of a string of artificial bananas (one of her most famous acts). After a short while she was the most successful American entertainer working in France.
Despite her popularity in France, she never obtained the same reputation in America. Her affection for France was so great that she became a French citizen and when World War II broke out, she volunteered to spy for her adopted country—working for the French government as an “honorable correspondent”. As an entertainer, Baker had an excuse for moving around Europe and assisted the French Resistance by smuggling secrets written in invisible ink on her sheet music, pinned notes with information she gathered inside her underwear (counting on her celebrity to avoid a strip search) and helped quite a lot of people who were in danger from the Nazis get visas and passports to leave France..
Josephine Baker is as timeless as her Civil Rights efforts and for that we find her as sexy as her performances are famous.
Notable Quotables:
- “The things we truly love stay with us always, locked in our hearts as long as life remains.” — Josephine Baker
- “I’m not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that. ” — Josephine Baker
- “Surely the day will come when color means nothing more than the skin tone, when religion is seen uniquely as a way to speak one’s soul; when birth places have the weight of a throw of the dice and all men are born free, when understanding breeds love and brotherhood.” — Josephine Baker
- “Is that what they call a vocation, what you do with joy as if you had fire in your heart, the devil in your body?” — Josephine Baker
