Female Heroes: Josephine Baker
When I was first approached to read and review Orphan, Monster, Spy, I was quite taken aback by the offer. I’d only done a little blogging before, and it was a big opportunity for me. Naturally, I took the chance, and decided to do the review. And I’m very pleased that I did. Matt Killeen’s debut is great for fans of The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak, and comes highly recommended by me, as you can see from my review. The book was wonderful and unique, fast-paced and riveting, and I’m so pleased that I can now say that I have the author, Matt Killeen, here on his book blog tour to talk about one of his favourite historical heroines, Josephine Baker!
Entertainer, activist, French resistance agent, bisexual, uber-mother and the first film-star of colour? Yeah, I couldn’t really leave Josephine Baker out of this list. If you’re assigning points for this, she kind of wins.
Born into a show business family and crushing poverty, Freda Josephine McDonald went from street dancing to vaudeville, defying her mother’s disapproval along the way. Her success lead to a tour of France that became permanent, leaving the US behind her. “One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people.” She returned to star on Broadway, only to receive a brutally racist critique from Time magazine.
She was an instant hit in Paris, where her erotic dancing and nudity coincided with a spike in fascination for African culture. Problematic as it now seems, her Danse Sauvage with her iconic banana skirt and pet cheetah became her trademark and made her the most successful American entertainer in the country. She went on to star in three feature films. Hemingway called her “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw” and Shirley Bassey said, “I swear in all my life I have never seen, and probably never shall see again, such a spectacular singer and performer.”
Dance historians have called her “the Beyoncé of her day” and on her 110th birthday, Vogue wrote that Danse Sauvage “brilliantly manipulated the white male imagination” and “radically redefined notions of race and gender through style and performance in a way that continues to echo throughout fashion and music today.”
So far so interestingly prosaic, but this is where things get very interesting.
As the clouds of war gathered in 1939, Josephine Baker began working for French military intelligence, gathering information on German troop movements, Italian plans and Japanese gossip from loose tongues at parties and salons across Europe. The invasion of France drove her to her country house where she housed fugitives and arranged Visas for others heading to join the Free French forces. She continued to tour and act as a courier for messages and intelligence from Free French territory and elsewhere back to England, written in invisible ink on her sheet music or pinned inside her underwear. In-between she had a series of miscarriages and organised entertainment for the half-a-million Free French troops. The end of the war saw her receive some of France’s highest honours.
A war hero, she returned to the Paris stage to do some of her most successful and thoughtful work before heading back to the US for a sold-out tour. She demanded desegregated audiences, a move that began the end of the practice and became the civil-rights organisation the NAACP’s Woman of the Year. But she created powerful enemies and she was accused of being a communist, which resulted in her Visa being revoked. She continued her civil-rights work back in France and then returned to be an official speaker at The March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. After his assassination his widow Coretta invited her to lead the movement, an honour she declined because she didn’t wish to leave her huge adopted family of 12 children motherless in the event of an assassination.
She lost all her money. Borrowed a villa from Grace Kelly. As you do.
Four days after one of her greatest successes, the launch of a revue to celebrate 50 years in the business, she suffered a stroke, went into a coma and died having crammed more into her 68 years than most people could dream possible.
Interested in hearing more about Matt’s favourite fictional and historical heroines? Then check out the next stop on the Orphan, Monster, Spy tour: Tea Party Princess tomorrow (4th March) for more fun.
And you can check out the other blogs joining in here:
