Beverley East, Contributor

Baker - contributed Josephine Baker - 1906-1975

Dancer, singer, actress, entrepreneur, pilot, spy, philanthropist and mother of the Rainbow Tribe.

I am always fascinated and drawn to the unusual and the outrageous, so, of course, I am a big fan of stars like Grace Jones, Tina Turner, Pattie Labelle and Bette Middler. But before all these divas hit the stage there was Josephine! Madame Baker, if you please.

I've just returned from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. There, I stood in total awe and admiration as I walked through the halls absorbing every image of Madame Baker as if I were sampling food in a restaurant. Delicious, exquisite, divine.

The colours, the sounds, the images, the subtle seductions of portraits of her - a skinny little black girl from St. Louis, Missouri, who could barely read or write, ran away from home at the age of 13 to join a travelling roadshow and never looked back. By 1926, Josephine Baker became the toast of Paris.

Josephine was born Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906. Although she was married several times, she carried her second husband's name throughout her entire career.

The racial divide of America was not for her temperament as she was a free-spirited individual. She worked in several nightclubs and was part of a travelling performance group called the Dixie Steppers. She arrived in France as a dancer with the black American vaudeville troupe La Revue Negre.

From the first night on-stage she was an instant success. She was 19 years old. Within two years she rose to fame and conquered the worlds of art and theatre. Her growing visibility as an international star made her a pivotal figure in black Paris.

Opened nightclub

By December 1926, she owned her own nightclub, Chez Josephine, on the Rue Fontaine, where she entertained after hours. When she appeared in Berlin as part of her 1928 world tour she opened another Chez Josephine, in Germany at 53 Behrenstrasse.

Other incarnations of her nightclub were launched in other cities that she visited. In 1936, appeared in New York in the Ziegfield Follies, and a townhouse previously owned by Barbara Hutton was transformed into another Chez Josephine. One of her sons runs the New York restaurant to this day.

Fashion icon

Through her sensuous dance performances she titillated men and freed women to dream of lives far removed from the domestic drudgery they knew. She learned to drive and then learned to fly.

During 1931-1935 she made two feature films Zou-Zou and Princess Tam-Tam, always the lead and never in secondary roles such as the likes of Hollywood movies. She became a fashion icon and designers begged her to wear their creations.

Hollywood called her with 'mammy and maid girl' roles. She scoffed at the very thought of demeaning herself to those stereotypical images. Beyond her fashion sense she marketed her own hair product, Bakerfix, a type of brilliantine cream invented by an Argentine chemist. Her role model was then Madam C.J. Walker from which she copied the hair pomade Madam had developed.

Her career took a different turn during World War I and throughout World War II. She worked as a courier for the French underground, using her home at Les Milandes as an operating base before her transfer to Morocco.

She travelled through North Africa, South America and Cuba as part of the intelligence wing of the Free France Secret Service. She smuggled intelligence written in invisible ink on her music sheets, and pinned photographs underneath her dress.

This information was transferred to Resistance members who took the information to France and England. When she became sick in Casablanca in 1941 Baker exploited her situation by taking and passing information from her visitors who came to pay their respects.

Honoured

She returned to her Chateau Les Milandes in 1944 and received the Medal of Resistance with the grade of an officer in 1946. While France was occupied, Baker was barred from the stage in Paris and left for the south of France. She entertained allied forces in North Africa, Jerusalem, Beirut and Casablanca and insisted that all her shows be integrated when she performed in front of American troops. During those lean years she helped the poor working in soup kitchens, buying food for the needy and toys for children.

In 1961, Baker was named Chevalier of the legion d'Honneur by the French Government. In May 1968, she marched down the Champ Elysées with President Charles de Gaulle.

In her later years she became a philanthropist. From 1940 to 1969 Les Milandes was the headquarters for her dream project to change the world one child at a time.

She had no children of her own, but adopted a dozen from different nationalities. The Chateau had been ruined during the war years and efforts to renovate it took its financial toll on her.

She was forced back to the stage in her 60s, but still flashing those lovely legs. Beyond restoring the chateau she also refurbished the abandoned village surrounding it adding new homes for the workers, two hotels, three restaurants, a golf course, wax museum, gas station, post office and other amenities. By the '50s she opened her home to the tourist trade and in one summer 300,000 visitors came to see what she had built.

Josephine Baker was more than a woman who could sing and dance semi naked. In the height of her career she was demanding a US$5,000 per month salary while women did not have the right to vote. She broke down barriers of both race and gender. She was fearless and unstoppable.

She died of a brain tumour on April 12, 1975. She was the only African American woman who received a state funeral in Paris.

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