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Enquanto os tambores de guerra reverberavam pela Europa em 1939, o chefe do serviço de inteligência militar da França recrutou uma espiã improvável: a mulher mais famosa da França - Josephine Baker.
Jacques Abtey passou os primeiros dias da Segunda Guerra Mundial recrutando espiões para coletar informações sobre a Alemanha nazista e outras potências do Eixo. Normalmente, o chefe do serviço secreto procurava homens que pudessem viajar incógnitos. Então, novamente, nada era típico quando se tratava de dançarina e cantora nascida nos Estados Unidos.
Nascido na pobreza em St. Louis em 1906, Baker cresceu sem pai em uma série de choupanas infestadas de ratos. Ela teve apenas uma escolaridade esporádica e se casou pela primeira vez aos 13 anos. Picada pela discriminação em Jim Crow America com base na cor de sua pele, ela deixou aos 19 anos para se apresentar como uma dançarina burlesca nos music halls de Paris, onde seu ousado as rotinas de dança vestidas com pouco mais do que um colar de pérolas e uma saia banana de borracha fizeram dela uma sensação da Idade do Jazz. Depois de se dedicar ao canto e atuação em filmes, ela se tornou a artista mais bem paga da Europa.
Uma celebridade da estatura de Baker feita para um candidato a espião mais improvável, já que ela nunca poderia viajar disfarçadamente, mas isso é exatamente o que a tornava uma perspectiva tão atraente. A fama seria seu disfarce. Abtey esperava que Baker pudesse usar seu charme, beleza e estrelato para seduzir segredos dos lábios de diplomatas bajuladores em festas da embaixada.
Tendo encontrado na França a liberdade que a América prometia em pergaminho, Baker concordou em espionar para seu país adotivo. “A França me fez o que sou”, disse ela a Abtey. “Os parisienses deram-me o seu coração e estou pronto para lhes dar a minha vida.”
Os gritos de “Volte para a África!” ela tinha ouvido falar de fascistas enquanto se apresentava em toda a Europa também alimentou sua decisão. “É claro que eu queria fazer tudo o que pudesse para ajudar a França, meu país adotivo”, disse ela Ébano revista décadas depois, “mas uma consideração primordial, a única coisa que me moveu tão fortemente quanto o patriotismo, foi meu ódio violento de discriminação em qualquer forma.”
ASSISTIR: América: The Story of Us: Segunda Guerra Mundial no Vault de HISTÓRIA
Baker usa o poder das estrelas para aprender segredos
Baker começou sua carreira de espionagem participando de festas diplomáticas nas embaixadas italiana e japonesa e reunindo informações sobre os poderes do Eixo que possivelmente entrariam na guerra. Sem medo de ser pega, a espiã neófita escreveu notas do que ouviu nas palmas das mãos e nos braços sob as mangas. "Oh, ninguém pensaria que sou um espião", disse Baker com uma risada quando Abtey a advertiu sobre o perigo.
Semanas depois que as forças alemãs invadiram a França, Baker continuou suas apresentações noturnas em Paris, cantou para soldados na frente de guerra pelo rádio e confortou refugiados em abrigos para desabrigados. Quando os invasores cercaram Paris no início de junho de 1940, Abtey insistiu que ela partisse, então Baker carregou seus pertences, incluindo um piano de ouro e uma cama que já foi propriedade de Maria Antonieta, em vans e partiu para um castelo a 300 milhas a sudoeste . Enquanto as tropas nazistas desciam a Champs-Élysées e ocupavam sua casa em Paris, Baker escondeu refugiados e membros da Resistência Francesa em seus novos aposentos.
Em novembro de 1940, Abtey e Baker trabalharam para contrabandear documentos para o general Charles de Gaulle e o governo da França Livre no exílio em Londres. Sob o pretexto de embarcar em uma turnê pela América do Sul, a artista escondeu fotos secretas sob o vestido e carregou partituras com informações sobre os movimentos das tropas alemãs na França escritas em tinta invisível. Com todos os olhos fixos na estrela enquanto cruzavam a fronteira com a Espanha a caminho de Portugal neutro, o chefe da segurança francês, que se passou por secretário de Baker, recebeu pouca atenção das autoridades alemãs. O holofote que Baker atraiu permitiu que Abtey viajasse nas sombras.
Em Portugal e na Espanha, Baker continuou a colher detalhes sobre os movimentos de tropas do Eixo nas festas da embaixada. Esquivando-se nos banheiros, a agente secreta fez anotações detalhadas e as prendeu ao sutiã com um alfinete de segurança. “Minhas anotações teriam sido altamente comprometedoras se tivessem sido descobertas, mas quem ousaria revistar Josephine Baker até a pele?” ela escreveu mais tarde. “Quando eles perguntaram mim para jornais, geralmente significavam autógrafos. ”
LEIA MAIS: Negros americanos que serviram na segunda guerra mundial enfrentaram a segregação no exterior e em casa
Baker continua espionando mesmo quando está doente
Ordenado ao Marrocos em janeiro de 1941 para estabelecer um centro de ligação e transmissão em Casablanca, Abtey e Baker cruzaram o Mar Mediterrâneo. O artista trouxe 28 bagagens e um zoológico de macacos de estimação, ratos e um Dogue Alemão. Quanto mais visível a viagem de Baker, menos suspeitas ela gerou.
No Norte da África, ela trabalhou com a rede da Resistência Francesa e usou suas conexões para garantir passaportes para judeus que fugiam dos nazistas na Europa Oriental até que ela foi hospitalizada com peritonite em junho de 1941. Ela passou por várias operações durante uma hospitalização de 18 meses que a deixou tão doente que o Chicago Defender publicou por engano seu obituário, escrito por Langston Hughes. Ele escreveu que Baker foi “tão vítima de Hitler quanto os soldados que hoje caem na África lutando contra seus exércitos. Os arianos expulsaram Josephine de sua amada Paris. ” Baker corrigiu rapidamente o registro. “Houve um pequeno erro, estou ocupada demais para morrer”, disse ela ao Afro-Americano.
Mesmo com a convalescença de Baker, o trabalho de espionagem continuou enquanto diplomatas americanos e membros da Resistência Francesa se reuniam ao lado de sua cama. De sua varanda, ela viu as tropas americanas chegarem ao Marrocos como parte da Operação Tocha em novembro de 1942. Depois que ela foi finalmente dispensada, Baker visitou os campos militares aliados de Argel a Jerusalém. Durante o dia, ela viajava em jipes pelos desertos escaldantes do Norte da África. À noite, ela se agasalhava e dormia no chão ao lado de seu veículo para evitar minas terrestres.
Após a libertação de Paris, ela voltou à cidade que amava em outubro de 1944, após uma ausência de quatro anos. Vestida com seu uniforme azul de tenente auxiliar aéreo pontuado com dragonas de ouro, Baker andava na parte de trás de um automóvel enquanto as multidões ao longo da Champs-Élysées jogavam suas flores. Não mais apenas uma estrela de revista glamorosa, Baker era uma heroína patriótica.
Ela vestiu seu uniforme mais uma vez em 1961 para receber duas das maiores honras militares da França, a Croix de Guerre e a Legião de Honra, em uma cerimônia em que detalhes de seu trabalho de espionagem foram revelados ao mundo. Uma Baker com os olhos marejados disse a seus conterrâneos: “Tenho orgulho de ser francesa porque este é o único lugar no mundo onde posso realizar meu sonho”.
LEIA MAIS: O decifrador feminino que arrebentou os anéis de espionagem nazistas
Página de apreciação de Josephine Baker
Acabei de pesquisar um pouco sobre a história de vida de Josephine Baker. Ela era uma mulher incrível e resistente, muito mais do que a bela estrela das críticas em Paris. Ela passou por uma vida difícil no scrabble e foi premiada com uma medalha por seu trabalho na Resistência Francesa. Ela estava determinada em seu ativismo pelos direitos civis.
Aqui estão alguns parágrafos da página da Wikipedia sobre ela. Vale a pena ler a página inteira e acho que sua história precisa ser revisada. Percebo que há tópicos antigos sobre a Sra. Baker, mas acho que ela merece mais atenção.
Ela era conhecida por ajudar a Resistência Francesa durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. [3] Após a guerra, ela foi condecorada com a Medalha de Resistência pelo Comitê Francês de Libertação Nacional, a Croix de guerre pelos militares franceses, e foi nomeada Cavaleira do Légion d'honneur pelo General Charles de Gaulle. [4] Baker disse uma vez: & quotEu tenho dois amores, meu país e Paris. & Quot [5]
Baker se recusou a se apresentar para audiências segregadas nos Estados Unidos e é conhecida por suas contribuições ao movimento pelos direitos civis. Em 1968, ela recebeu a liderança não oficial do movimento nos Estados Unidos por Coretta Scott King, após o assassinato de Martin Luther King Jr. Depois de pensar sobre isso, Baker recusou a oferta devido à preocupação com o bem-estar de seus filhos. [6][7]
Lilgreyrab
Vovó Excessivamente Abraçada
Lista de leituras de Josephine Baker. Não tenho ideia se vale a pena ler estes livros, mas pensei em divulgar a informação. Se alguém os leu, as críticas seriam ótimas. Os livros podem ser uma mistura tão misturada, e qualquer opinião seria excelente. Aqui está o primeiro que encontrei.
Josephine Baker e # 039s Last Dance de Sherry Jones - Livros no Google Play
Lilgreyrab
Vovó Excessivamente Abraçada
‘Josephine Baker in Art and Life’ (publicado em 2007)
Lilgreyrab
Vovó Excessivamente Abraçada
Não tenho certeza se esse título me atraiu. A vida de Josephine Baker provavelmente atrai todos os tipos de escritores. Então, novamente, você não pode julgar um livro pela capa.
Lilgreyrab
Vovó Excessivamente Abraçada
Aqui está um livro de Josephine Baker que chamou minha atenção. Gosto do fato de ser voltado para os jovens.
Em versos exuberantes e imagens emocionantes, Patricia Hruby Powell e Christian Robinson criam um retrato extraordinário para os jovens da artista apaixonada e defensora dos direitos civis Josephine Baker, a mulher que trabalhou seu caminho desde as favelas de St. Louis até os palcos mais grandiosos do mundo. Meticulosamente pesquisada pelo autor e pelo artista, a poderosa história de luta e triunfo de Josephine é uma inspiração e um espetáculo, assim como a própria lenda.
Josephine
Bjorkish
ISaySeaux
Musa de john michael
Lilgreyrab
Vovó Exageradamente Abraça
Josephine Baker e a Tribo Rainbow
Josephine Baker e a tribo do arco-íris - Matthew Pratt Guterl
Criando uma sensação com seu ato ousado de boate e passeios pela Champs Elysées, com a chita de estimação a reboque, Josephine Baker vive na memória popular como a sereia com saia de banana da Era do Jazz de Paris. Em Josephine Baker e a Tribo do Arco-íris, Matthew Pratt Guterl traz à tona um lado pouco conhecido da personalidade célebre, mostrando como suas ambições de anos posteriores foram ainda mais ousadas e subversivas do que as façanhas juvenis que a tornaram a primeira estrela afro-americana.
Com seus dias de atuação contados, Baker estabeleceu-se em um castelo do século XVI que ela chamou de Les Milandes, no sul da França. Então, em 1953, ela fez algo completamente inesperado e, no contexto de uma época racialmente sensível, ultrajante. Adotando doze crianças de todo o mundo, ela transformou sua propriedade em um parque temático, completo com passeios, hotéis, uma fazenda coletiva e canto e dança. A principal atração era sua Tribo Arco-íris, a família do futuro, que exibia crianças de todas as cores de pele, nações e religiões convivendo em harmonia. Les Milandes atraiu um público apaixonado, ansioso por gastar dinheiro em uma visão utópica e por adorar aos pés de Josefina, a mãe do mundo.
Alertando os leitores sobre algumas das contradições no cerne do projeto da Tribo Arco-Íris - sua ressaca de exploração infantil e megalomania em particular - Guterl conclui que Baker era uma ativista séria e determinada que acreditava que ela poderia fazer uma diferença positiva criando uma família a partir de o material problemático da raça.
Lilgreyrab
Vovó Exageradamente Abraça
Isso fornece uma breve biografia de Josephine Baker. Encontrei mais informações na entrada da Wikipedia.
Josephine Baker
www.biography.comLilgreyrab
Vovó Exageradamente Abraça
E aqui estão algumas informações sobre Zou-Zou, cortesia da, novamente, wikipedia. Não me sinto confortável lendo a sinopse do filme, por tantos motivos.
Zouzou (filme) - Wikipedia
Zouzou é um filme francês de Marc Allégret lançado em 1934. [1] Como estrela, Josephine Baker foi a primeira mulher negra a estrelar um grande filme.
Quando crianças, Zouzou e Jean são emparelhados em um circo itinerante como gêmeos: ela é morena, ele é claro. Depois que crescem, ele a trata como se fosse sua irmã, mas ela está apaixonada por ele. Em Paris, ele é eletricista de music hall e ela uma lavadeira que entrega roupas íntimas limpas para o hall. Ela o apresenta a Claire, sua amiga do trabalho, e o casal se apaixona. Jean conspira para tirar a estrela do show da cidade e para que o gerente do teatro veja a animada dança de Zouzou. Quando Jean é acusada de um assassinato testemunhado por Zouzou, ela precisa de dinheiro para montar sua defesa. Ela implora para subir ao palco, onde seu canto e dança são um triunfo. Durante sua estreia, ela vê uma foto no jornal do assassino, que foi preso por um assalto a banco, então ela corre para a delegacia para identificá-lo. Jean é libertado da prisão e se reencontra com Claire. Zouzou continua a desejá-lo, apesar de sua carreira de sucesso no palco.
MellowYellow92
F * ck the Bucks 2021
Lilgreyrab
Vovó Exageradamente Abraça
Ok, só mais um. Aqui, em 2021, quando li os enredos do filme, estou incomodado em vários níveis, alguns com os quais ainda nem entrei em contato. No entanto, lembro que é preciso olhar os tempos em que os filmes foram feitos e a cultura em que Josephine Baker viveu. Acho que precisaria de um diploma em sociologia para descobrir tudo o que era necessário para uma mulher de cor ser no negócio do entretenimento, então. Caramba, qualquer mulher no negócio do entretenimento tinha um problema difícil.
Siren of the Tropics foi seu primeiro filme, o que levou a outros. Novamente, da wikipedia
Siren of the Tropics - Wikipedia
Sereia dos trópicos (Francês: La Sirène des tropiques) é um filme mudo francês de 1927 estrelado por Josephine Baker. Dirigido por Mario Nalpas e Henri Étiévant e ambientado nas Índias Ocidentais, o filme conta a história de uma nativa chamada Papitou (Baker) que se apaixona por um francês chamado André Berval (Pierre Batcheff).
O filme se passa em uma colônia fictícia chamada Monte Puebla. Monte Puebla incorpora muitos estereótipos coloniais, com o nome sugerindo que poderia ser uma colônia espanhola, as saias e telhados de grama sugerindo uma influência polinésia e as roupas sendo uma mistura de múltiplas culturas. [1] A história começa quando um homem rico parisiense chamado Marquês Sévéro deseja se divorciar de sua esposa e se casar com sua afilhada, Denise, mas Denise está apaixonada por um engenheiro chamado André Berval. Para se livrar de Berval, o marquês Sévéro o envia para as Índias Ocidentais como garimpeiro, prometendo que pode se casar com Denise assim que voltar. Depois de chegar às Índias Ocidentais, Berval conhece uma mulher chamada Papitou. Papitou rapidamente se apaixona por ele, sem saber que planeja se casar com Denise quando voltar a Paris. Quando Berval deixa as Índias Ocidentais para voltar para casa, Papitou o segue, apesar de ele ter um noivo. Assim que chega a Paris, Papitou aceita que Berval ama apenas Denise e descobre sua verdadeira vocação como intérprete de music hall.
Antes do lançamento do filme, artigos de jornal detalhando a viagem de Baker pela Europa despertaram o interesse público. [2] Após a estreia do filme em dezembro de 1927 em Estocolmo, ele recebeu críticas positivas quase unânimes dos críticos de cinema. O filme foi exibido de dezembro de 1927 a julho de 1928, período considerado excepcionalmente longo. A maioria dessas análises positivas focalizou o corpo de Baker, comparando seus movimentos ágeis aos dos animais. Após sua recepção positiva em Siren of the Tropics e aumento do interesse público em torno dela, Baker publicou uma autobiografia chamada & quotLes mémoirs de Josephine Baker. & Quot Após a estreia de muito sucesso do filme, Baker também teve uma boneca feita à sua imagem e vendida em Estocolmo, e estrelou um comercial de pasta de dente. [3] Essa recepção positiva do filme de estreia de Baker preparou o terreno para seus papéis principais nos filmes Zouzou (1934) e Princesse Tam-Tam (1935).
À parte, Princesse Tam-Tam, a empresa de lingerie (batizada com o nome de seu filme de 1935), que estava na moda e forte para mim há muitos, muitos anos, ainda tem uma loja - que se eu estivesse no Instagram, eu saberia -Ah bem…
Mulher & # 039s lingerie online - Trajes de banho e Homewear | Princesse tam.tam
www.princessetamtam.comVocê está bem
Uma dor genética no azz
Lista de leituras de Josephine Baker. Não tenho ideia se vale a pena ler estes livros, mas pensei em divulgar a informação. Se alguém os leu, as críticas seriam ótimas. Os livros podem ser uma mistura tão misturada, e qualquer opinião seria excelente. Aqui está o primeiro que encontrei.
Josephine Baker e # 039s Last Dance de Sherry Jones - Livros no Google Play
As resenhas pareciam misturadas neste livro. A maioria das resenhas neste livro foi positiva, e eu vi apenas uma resenha de duas estrelas:
Embora este fosse um livro interessante, o autor ignorou continuamente grandes períodos de tempo e depois falou sobre eles em um ou dois parágrafos. Houve um tempo em que ela estava na América e decidiu deixar seu homem, o conde. De repente, foi dois anos depois. Resumidamente, o autor mencionou que ela se casou e se converteu ao judaísmo. Por que o autor pulou esse tempo? Além disso, houve uma breve menção sobre a adoção de crianças e depois nada. E quanto ao tempo que ela passou adotando e criando filhos? O livro foi bem escrito, no entanto, pulou muitos eventos importantes. A Wikipedia me deu mais informações sobre alguns períodos de sua vida do que este livro. No geral, um busto.
Você está bem
Uma dor genética no azz
‘Josephine Baker in Art and Life’ (publicado em 2007)
Este livro parece promissor. Embora a autora Bennetta Jules-Rosette seja fã, ela também é professora de sociologia e especialista em semiótica, sua homenagem vem com muitas notas de rodapé. não é estritamente uma biografia. A história da vida está aqui, é claro, mas não necessariamente em ordem cronológica. Em vez disso, os temas da vida de Baker e a arte que ela usou para fazer suas muitas personas no palco e na vida real são examinados, mostrando como ela deliberadamente manipulou papéis sexuais e raciais para formar os temas de sua vida e performance.
De um dos comentários:
Baker nasceu em 1903 e cresceu em St. Louis, se apresentando nas ruas e se mudando para o vaudeville. Ela se tornou um membro do elenco de críticas como _Shuffle Along_ e _Chocolate Dandies_, tocando para críticas entusiasmadas em Nova York quando ela fez suas rotinas de quadrinhos. Entre as muitas fotos incluídas neste volume estão as de Baker em traje de palhaço, incluindo sapatos enormes, mas também, estranhamente, em preto. Foi apenas a primeira de suas manipulações de papéis raciais. Em seu primeiro filme em 1927, ela interpretou uma passageira clandestina que & quotis perseguida por membros da tripulação e chocou as matronas da sociedade ao cair em uma caixa de carvão, ficando preta, e depois em uma caixa de farinha, ficando branca. & Quot Ela foi para Paris em 1925, e foi uma sensação, admirada por Picasso e Hemingway. Alexander Calder fez esculturas dela. Ela estava acostumada a se apresentar em cenários primitivos ou surrealistas, e foi o próprio Jean Cocteau quem desenhou a saia banana. Suas apresentações impressionaram Paris, mas às vezes não iam bem quando Baker viajava. Em Viena, em 1928, padres e políticos tentaram banir sua ameaça à moralidade pública e tocaram sinos como um aviso para limpar as ruas quando ela entrasse na cidade. Baker fez apresentações em palco durante toda a vida, mas tinha coisas mais importantes em mente. Durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial, ela ajudou a Cruz Vermelha e a Resistência Francesa. Após a guerra, ela começou a adotar crianças, doze delas de diversas origens étnicas e nacionais. Esta foi a sua & quotRainbow Tribe & quot, instalada em seu castelo em Les Milandes. Por causa das finanças superotimistas, ela perdeu o castelo (e ela e a tribo foram resgatadas, entre outros, pela princesa Grace de Mônaco). Quando Baker fez uma turnê pelos Estados Unidos, ela forçou os donos de teatros a abandonar a segregação quando ela se apresentou. Houve um famoso incidente em 1951 no Stork Club que não admitia negros, mas Baker conseguiu uma admissão, apenas para ser ignorado pelos garçons. O colunista Walter Winchell estava presente e Baker chamou-o para testemunhar o incidente, mas em vez disso ele a atacou em seu programa de rádio e escreveu para J. Edgar Hoover solicitando uma investigação do FBI sobre as atividades políticas de Baker, e é claro que Hoover concordou.
Baker morreu em 1975, tendo acabado de receber críticas entusiasmadas de uma retrospectiva em Paris. Milhares assistiram à procissão e Paris parou. Jules-Rosette analisa sua influência contínua sobre camaleões como Madonna, Grace Jones e Michael Jackson. Baker foi uma verdadeira original, porém, formada por seus tempos, mas deliberadamente se formando e assumindo papéis para se transformar artisticamente, com o objetivo maior de transformar o mundo. Foi uma vida inteira de performances brilhantes dentro e fora do palco, e totalmente digna das dissecações intelectuais que Jules-Rosette reuniu em um volume legível e divertido.
Você está bem
Uma dor genética no azz
Não tenho certeza se esse título me atraiu. A vida de Josephine Baker provavelmente atrai todos os tipos de escritores. Então, novamente, você não pode julgar um livro pela capa.
Um dos autores deste livro, Jean Claude Baker, é um acréscimo não oficial aos 12 filhos adotivos de sua órfã "tribo do arco-íris". Com isso em mente, ele nos dá o que é bom e o que é mau.
De um dos comentários:
Jean Claude relata o começo pobre de Tumpy (um apelido de infância) em St. Louis até sua morte como superstar mundial em Paris.
As coisas boas primeiro, ela era uma dançarina intocável e talentosa que continuamente inspirou dançarinos de todas as gerações, mesmo após sua morte. Sua voz, um instrumento estridente e cadenciado, cresceu quase até a altura de Sarah Vaughn.
Apesar de seu talento, Josephine pode ser uma mulher egoísta e ofensiva. Ela teve o problema de mentir durante toda a vida. Ela nunca conheceu seu pai, mas em um minuto ela diria que ele era um advogado negro de sucesso em Chicago e no próximo ele era um simples homem judeu. Toda a sua infância em St. Louis seria invertida e revirada por capricho dela, a ponto de relatos publicados se contradizerem.
Felizmente, Jean Claude entrevistou as pessoas que a conheciam melhor e deu relatos verdadeiros de sua personalidade. Ela também foi extremamente promíscua no final da adolescência. Ela passou por amantes masculinos e femininos como roupa íntima e não hesitou em usar os outros quando isso beneficiaria sua carreira. Até mesmo sua lendária Rainbow Tribe foi criada por pura publicidade (grite para o Octomom). Ela mal passava tempo com as crianças e as deixava sob os cuidados constantes de babás.
Ela também tinha uma tendência a esbofetear as pessoas de quem estava com raiva e seus filhos não eram exceção. Ela até mandou um de seus meninos para um colégio interno quando o pegou com outro menino, apesar de sua própria história sexual de distorção de gênero.
Embora Josephine pudesse ser francamente má, Jean Claude também revela seu lado engraçado e amoroso. Ela fazia um esforço para sufocar as crianças com amor quando tinha tempo para ficar com elas e tinha um raciocínio rápido.
Embora a atitude negativa de Josie seja amplamente discutida, Jean Claude não está entrando no território de & quottell all & quot. Ele obviamente a amava, deixando todas as falhas de lado. Ele só queria criar um retrato mais humano de uma mulher cuja vida foi envolta em mitos e mistérios.
Lilgreyrab
Vovó Excessivamente Abraçada
O seguinte, de Christopher Klein, parece o enredo de um filme de dinamite. Eu me pergunto por que Josephine Baker não teve um super-herói modelado a partir dela.
A vida dupla ousada de Josephine Baker como espiã da Segunda Guerra Mundial
Usando a fama como disfarce, o glamoroso artista espionou para a Resistência Francesa contra os nazistas.
Enquanto os tambores de guerra reverberavam pela Europa em 1939, o chefe do serviço de inteligência militar da França recrutou uma espiã improvável: a mulher mais famosa da França - Josephine Baker.
Jacques Abtey passou os primeiros dias da Segunda Guerra Mundial recrutando espiões para coletar informações sobre a Alemanha nazista e outras potências do Eixo. Normalmente, o chefe do serviço secreto procurava homens que pudessem viajar incógnitos. Então, novamente, nada era típico quando se tratava de dançarina e cantora nascida nos Estados Unidos.
Nascido na pobreza em St. Louis em 1906, Baker cresceu sem pai em uma série de choupanas infestadas de ratos. Ela teve apenas uma escolaridade esporádica e se casou pela primeira vez aos 13 anos. Picada pela discriminação em Jim Crow America com base na cor de sua pele, ela deixou aos 19 anos para se apresentar como uma dançarina burlesca nos music halls de Paris, onde seu ousado as rotinas de dança vestidas com pouco mais do que um colar de pérolas e uma saia banana de borracha fizeram dela uma sensação da Era do Jazz. Depois de se dedicar ao canto e atuação em filmes, ela se tornou a artista mais bem paga da Europa.
Uma celebridade da estatura de Baker feita para um candidato a espião mais improvável, já que ela nunca poderia viajar disfarçadamente, mas isso é exatamente o que a tornava uma perspectiva tão atraente. A fama seria seu disfarce. Abtey esperava que Baker pudesse usar seu charme, beleza e estrelato para seduzir segredos dos lábios de diplomatas bajuladores em festas da embaixada.
Tendo encontrado na França a liberdade que a América prometia em pergaminho, Baker concordou em espionar para seu país adotivo. “A França me fez o que sou”, disse ela a Abtey. “Os parisienses deram-me o seu coração e estou pronto para lhes dar a minha vida.”
Os gritos de “Volte para a África!” ela tinha ouvido falar de fascistas enquanto se apresentava em toda a Europa também alimentou sua decisão. “É claro que eu queria fazer tudo o que pudesse para ajudar a França, meu país adotivo”, disse ela à revista Ebony décadas depois, “mas uma consideração primordial, o que me impulsionou tão fortemente quanto o patriotismo, foi meu ódio violento à discriminação em alguma forma."
Baker usa o poder das estrelas para aprender segredos
Baker começou sua carreira de espionagem participando de festas diplomáticas nas embaixadas italiana e japonesa e reunindo informações sobre os poderes do Eixo que possivelmente entrariam na guerra. Sem medo de ser pega, a espiã neófita escreveu notas do que ouviu nas palmas das mãos e nos braços sob as mangas. "Oh, ninguém pensaria que sou um espião", disse Baker com uma risada quando Abtey a advertiu do perigo.
Semanas depois que as forças alemãs invadiram a França, Baker continuou suas apresentações noturnas em Paris, cantou para soldados na frente de guerra pelo rádio e confortou refugiados em abrigos para desabrigados. Quando os invasores cercaram Paris no início de junho de 1940, Abtey insistiu que ela partisse, então Baker carregou seus pertences, incluindo um piano de ouro e uma cama que já foi propriedade de Maria Antonieta, em vans e partiu para um castelo a 300 milhas a sudoeste . Enquanto as tropas nazistas desciam a Champs-Élysées e ocupavam sua casa em Paris, Baker escondeu refugiados e membros da Resistência Francesa em seus novos aposentos.
Em novembro de 1940, Abtey e Baker trabalharam para contrabandear documentos para o general Charles de Gaulle e o governo da França Livre no exílio em Londres. Sob o pretexto de embarcar em uma turnê pela América do Sul, a artista escondeu fotos secretas sob o vestido e carregou partituras com informações sobre os movimentos das tropas alemãs na França escritas em tinta invisível. Com todos os olhos fixos na estrela enquanto eles cruzavam a fronteira com a Espanha a caminho de Portugal neutro, o chefe da segurança francês, que se passou por secretário de Baker, recebeu pouca atenção dos oficiais alemães. O holofote que Baker atraiu permitiu que Abtey viajasse nas sombras.
Em Portugal e na Espanha, Baker continuou a colher detalhes sobre os movimentos de tropas do Eixo nas festas da embaixada. Esquivando-se nos banheiros, a agente secreta fez anotações detalhadas e as prendeu ao sutiã com um alfinete de segurança. “Minhas anotações teriam sido altamente comprometedoras se tivessem sido descobertas, mas quem ousaria revistar Josephine Baker até a pele?” ela escreveu mais tarde. “Quando eles me pediam papéis, geralmente queriam dizer autógrafos”.
Baker continua espionando mesmo quando está doente
Ordenado ao Marrocos em janeiro de 1941 para estabelecer um centro de ligação e transmissão em Casablanca, Abtey e Baker cruzaram o Mar Mediterrâneo. O artista trouxe 28 bagagens e um zoológico de macacos de estimação, ratos e um Dogue Alemão. Quanto mais visível a viagem de Baker, menos suspeitas ela gerou.
No Norte da África, ela trabalhou com a rede da Resistência Francesa e usou suas conexões para garantir passaportes para judeus que fugiam dos nazistas na Europa Oriental até que ela foi hospitalizada com peritonite em junho de 1941. Ela passou por várias operações durante uma hospitalização de 18 meses que a deixou tão doente que o Chicago Defender publicou por engano seu obituário, escrito por Langston Hughes. Ele escreveu que Baker foi “tão vítima de Hitler quanto os soldados que hoje caem na África lutando contra seus exércitos. Os arianos expulsaram Josephine de sua amada Paris. ” Baker corrigiu rapidamente o registro. “Houve um pequeno erro, estou ocupada demais para morrer”, disse ela ao Afro-Americano.
Mesmo com a convalescença de Baker, o trabalho de espionagem continuou enquanto diplomatas americanos e membros da Resistência Francesa se reuniam ao lado de sua cama. De sua varanda, ela viu as tropas americanas chegarem ao Marrocos como parte da Operação Tocha em novembro de 1942. Depois que ela foi finalmente dispensada, Baker visitou os campos militares aliados de Argel a Jerusalém. Durante o dia, ela viajava em jipes pelos desertos escaldantes do Norte da África. À noite, ela se agasalhava e dormia no chão ao lado de seu veículo para evitar minas terrestres.
Após a libertação de Paris, ela voltou à cidade que amava em outubro de 1944, após uma ausência de quatro anos. Vestida com seu uniforme azul de tenente auxiliar aéreo pontuado com dragonas de ouro, Baker andava na parte de trás de um automóvel enquanto as multidões ao longo da Champs-Élysées jogavam suas flores. Não mais apenas uma estrela de revista glamorosa, Baker era uma heroína patriótica.
Ela vestiu seu uniforme mais uma vez em 1961 para receber duas das maiores honras militares da França, a Croix de Guerre e a Legião de Honra, em uma cerimônia em que detalhes de seu trabalho de espionagem foram revelados aos
mundo. Uma Baker com os olhos marejados disse a seus conterrâneos: “Tenho orgulho de ser francesa porque este é o único lugar no mundo onde posso realizar meu sonho”.
Josephine Baker e rsquos Hungry Heart
LINDA, charmosa, talentosa e celebrada, o brinde da Europa e da América do Sul durante o apogeu de sua carreira, Josephine Baker nasceu em uma favela negra de St. Louis em 1906. Ela cativava o público em Paris como apresentadora do meados da década de 1920 e alcançou aclamação como o primeiro símbolo sexual feminino negro internacional do século 20 em meados da década de 1930. Ela se deleitou com sua sedução no palco e fora dela, vivendo uma vida que era a própria matéria de lenda e boato. Mesmo hoje, mais de trinta anos após sua morte em 1975, seu nome ainda evoca uma sensação de glamour e traça uma aura de sexualidade.
Pôster para La Sirene des Tropiques (filme mudo), 1927
Este ano centenário de seu nascimento é um momento adequado para olhar para trás, para a mulher e a vida que juntos constituem a lenda de La Baker - e é especialmente adequado examinar a lenda em um contexto estranho. Uma afro-americana de nascimento que se sentia mais em casa na França do que nos Estados Unidos, uma pessoa praticamente sem educação formal, cuja ambição e habilidades inatas lhe permitiram passar da obscuridade e da pobreza para a riqueza e a fama, uma lésbica famosa por suas façanhas com homens - esses foram apenas alguns dos contrastes e contradições na vida fantástica de Josephine Baker. Both her friends and her public recognized the talent, ambition, and sexual provocativeness, but few seemed to see her life as the queer dialogue it was with the world around her. For make no mistake: Josephine Baker led one queer life. It’s not just that she was lesbian or bisexual, although her sexuality was an important part of it it’s the fact that nearly everything she did expressed desires and needs that deviated significantly from the prescribed social norms of her times. What’s more, to live life on her own terms, she was always willing to transgress those norms at every turn.
Summarizing Baker’s life is no easy matter. It sprawled over seven decades, several continents, many cities, a number of husbands, the adoption of twelve children, numerous performances onstage and in several movies, participation in the French resistance during World War II, and work on behalf of black civil rights after the War, to name a few of her activities. As for her queer life—well, most of the biographies, including her own memoirs (ghost-written by others) and the 1991 HBO film bio The Josephine Baker Story, starring Lynn Whitfield, simply ignore it. The huge exception is Jean-Claude Baker’s 1993 book Josephine: The Hungry Heart.
Jean-Claude knew Josephine well. As explained in his biography, he first met her in Paris in 1957, when he was fourteen years old, and later became a close friend and confidant. After her death, he spent eighteen years working on his meticulously researched biography. Although never formally adopted by her, she considered him one of her own. He loved her deeply enough to change his original last name (Tronville-Rouzaud) by legally adopting hers, and in 1986 he opened Chez Josephine, a bistro located on New York City’s Theater Row that he still runs, which is named after Josephine’s own bistro of 1920’s Paris.
The major sources for this article are Jean-Claude’s biography, comments by him (taped with his permission) at a talk he gave in 1994 at New York City’s LGBT Community Services Center, and two subsequent interviews I conducted with him over the years. I’ll be returning to his views as an authentic touchstone of insight into the woman he still calls his “second mother.”
A Life Lived
To begin at the beginning, then, Josephine Baker was born on June 3, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri, and, because her mother Carrie McDonald wasn’t married at the time, was given the name Freda J. McDonald at birth. (It’s not known what the “J” stood for. She began to be called “Josephine” some time in her childhood, perhaps because her godmother was Josephine Cooper, the owner of a laundry where Carrie worked.) Already at birth, Josephine had several strikes against her: she was born black in a racist society, she was poor, and she was female. She was put to work at an early age to bring in money, mostly as a domestic in the homes of white families. This meant that by age seven her childhood was over. It also meant that she was placed in a position where she was vulnerable to the sexual advances of predatory white males in the households where she worked, and predations weren’t long in coming.
The full consequences of the sexual abuse Josephine suffered will never be known, but one thing is clear: even as a youngster, it put her in touch with her sexuality in what can only be called an adult way. By age thirteen she was “playing house” with a fifty-year-old steel foundry worker known as “Mr. Dad” who ran an ice cream and candy parlor on the side. The arrangement was a neighborhood scandal, and Josephine’s mother soon ended it. But clearly Josephine had discovered one way of escaping poverty, and she was not averse to pursuing it. Then a few months after the Mr. Dad episode, she married. The fact that she was underage—at thirteen years old so far underage that not even parental consent was sufficient to make it legal in Missouri—seems to have occurred to no one. On December 22, 1919, she became Mrs. Willie Wells, with the blessings of her family, family friends, and the minister who performed the ceremony.
It was not a marriage made in heaven and was soon at an end (though there was no divorce). But if playing the role of housewife was not to Josephine’s liking, she had already discovered one that was: performing onstage, with its attendant right to be the center of attention while you pretend to be something you’re not. She had been fascinated for years by all things theatrical, and in November 1920 her dreams at last converged with reality when Josephine Wells was hired as a chorus girl by Bob Russell of the Russell-Owens Company to tour the black vaudeville circuit with one of his companies. Josephine had secured the job through the influence of Clara Smith, one of Russell’s star blues singers. She became Clara Smith’s protégée—Smith’s “lady lover” in the contemporary lingo of black vaudeville. The implications were as sexual as they sound, according to Jean-Claude Baker’s informants, so people connected with the show knew exactly what was going on.
Once on the road, Josephine’s professional life quickly blossomed. In 1921, she left Russell-Owens to join the resident performing company at the Standard Theatre in Philadelphia. By February 1922, she had joined the road show of the all-black Broadway musical hit Shuffle Along, with music and song lyrics by Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle. And on September 1, 1924, she opened on Broadway as one of the leads in the new Blake-Sissle musical, The Chocolate Dandies. Along the way, she made another big change. On September 17, 1921, she married a young man named Billy Baker, the son of a prominent black Philadelphia restauranteur. By the time she left for Europe in September 1925, she had shed the marriage to Billy (without divorcing him) but not the surname. For the next fifty years, she would be known as Josephine Baker.
As a performer, everything was subordinated to Josephine’s ambitions. The people who worked with her found her temperamental, manipulative, devious, and relentless in the pursuit of her goals, but they all agreed that she loved everything about being onstage.
No doubt some of the joy she felt at being part of the entertainment world also lay in discovering the institution of “lady lovers.” The facts are all there, if somewhat hidden in the mad whirl that was becoming Josephine’s life by the early 1920’s. Of course, the effort to hide these facts was an institution unto itself, at least to the extent that one could hide one’s sexual activities in the black performing community of the time. In his biography, Jean-Claude explains the concept of “lady lovers” through the words of Maude Russell, who first met Josephine when both worked at the Standard Theatre in Philadelphia and who later appeared with her in Shuffle Along: “Often … we girls would share a [boardinghouse]room because of the cost. … Well, many of us had been kind of abused by producers, directors, leading men—if they liked girls. … And the girls needed tenderness, so we had girl friendships, the famous lady lovers, but lesbians weren’t well accepted in show business, they were called bull dykers. I guess we were bisexual, is what you would call us today.” These comments make lady lovers sound like little more than some kind of healing program for sexually abused women performers—one way of deflecting attention from the facts of what was going on. But they point to a subset of black performers, both male and female, whose sexual orientation was directed toward their own sex.
So where did Josephine Baker fit into this picture? Her love life involved several marriages and multiple lovers of both sexes, in relationships that varied from one-night and one-afternoon stands to longer-term affairs that went on concurrently both with each other and with her marriages. In the U.S., her lovers and husbands seem to have been exclusively black in Europe, her lovers were white as well as black, and her husbands were exclusively white. More was known publicly about her male lovers than her female lovers partly because heterosexual behavior was socially acceptable, while queer behavior was not, but also because, as a sex symbol, she had much to gain professionally by the rumors—and sometimes the public acknowledgment—of her liaisons with men. As for female lovers, if Josephine had seen any career advantage to announcing them to the world, no doubt she would have done so. But because she could see no upside to it, she kept quiet about her affairs with women.
Just how many lesbian affairs Josephine engaged in, and with whom, will probably never be known with any certainty. Jean-Claude’s biography mentions six of her women lovers by name: Clara Smith, Evelyn Sheppard, Bessie Allison, and Mildred Smallwood, all of whom she met on the black performing circuit during her early years onstage in the United States along with fellow American black expatriate Bricktop and the French novelist Colette after she relocated to Paris. Bricktop in particular served as an early mentor who showed her the ropes around Paris for the first few months after her move to Europe.
That move came about when Josephine was hired by a white American named Caroline Dudley Reagan (a confessed bisexual) to star in Reagan’s Paris extravaganza La Revue Nègre. The show premiered on October 25, 1925, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. It was an immediate hit, and Josephine herself was an instant sensation. Josephine “conquered Paris,” in Jean-Claude’s words, for two reasons: her ability to project an intense sexuality onstage, and the color of her skin. Equating blackness with sexuality is as much a form of racism in France as it is in the U.S., but in 1920’s Paris it worked completely to Josephine’s advantage. She was showered with presents and love letters, and taken out for expensive meals by admirers. She wore the skimpiest of costumes onstage each evening, but was deluged with dresses by Paris fashion designers to wear by day. Crowds followed her in the streets asking for her autograph.
From Paris La Revue Nègre moved next to Brussels, then to Berlin, where Josephine became the darling of café society and was soon partying with the likes of German publisher and art collector Count Harry Kessler, playwright Karl Vollmoeller, and theater director Max Reinhardt. In Berlin we can discern another strand in her queer life. Although Jean-Claude describes the following incident in his biography, I quote here from the published diaries of Count Harry Kessler, who was himself homosexual:
Saturday, 13 February 1926 Berlin. At one o’clock … a telephone call from Max Reinhardt. He was at Vollmoeller’s and they wanted me to come over because Josephine Baker was there and the fun was starting. So I drove to Vollmoeller’s harem on the Pariser Platz. Reinhardt and [the other male guests]were surrounded by half a dozen naked girls. Miss Baker was also naked except for a pink muslin apron, and the little Landshoff girl [Vollmoeller’s mistress] was dressed up as a boy in a dinner-jacket. Miss Baker was dancing solo with brilliant artistic mimicry and purity of style. … The naked girls lay or skipped among the four or five men in dinner-jackets. The Landshoff girl, really looking like a dazzlingly handsome boy, jazzed with Miss Baker to gramophone tunes.
Vollmoeller had in a mind a ballet for her [Josephine], a story about a cocotte [kept woman], and was proposing to finish it this very night and put it in Reinhardt’s hands. By this time Miss Baker and the Landshoff girl were lying in each other’s arms, like a rosy pair of lovers.
Josephine Baker and Jean-Claude Baker, 1971
At some point in the Berlin run of La Revue Nègre, and just three months after arriving in Europe, Josephine broke her contract with Caroline Reagan and returned to Paris to headline in a new show at the Folies-Bergère. It was there that she donned her most famous costume: a belt of bananas (and little else). It wasn’t long before she was taking lessons in French and thinking about becoming a French citizen.
In 1926, a gigolo named Giuseppe Abatino, nicknamed Pepito, entered her life as both mentor and lover. With Pepito’s help, and her own flair for the grandiose, Josephine began to transform herself from a popular entertainer into an international legend whose stature eclipsed that of Mistinguette, reigning queen of French musicals, and eventually rivaled that of Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, her contemporaries on the stage and screen. Her own movies included the silent film Siren of the Tropics in 1927 and the talkies Zou Zou in 1934 and Princess Tam Tam in 1935. Even the Great Depression had little effect on her fortunes: the 1930’s were mostly spent performing in Paris and on international tours, buying homes, making movies, running her Paris nightclub Chez Josephine, and making—and spending—a great deal of money.
In 1935 she ended her relationship with Pepito. On her own once more, she set out in earnest to find herself a French husband, which she succeeded in doing so that on November 30, 1937, she wed the (white) French businessman Jean Lion (without, it should be noted again, having divorced either Willie Wells or Billy Baker). This marriage, like its predecessors, didn’t last long, but it accomplished one all-important goal: as the wife of a Frenchman, she could now claim French citizenship under French law, and within four days of the wedding she had obtained her French passport.
Josephine and Lion were formally divorced in April 1941. In the meantime, World War II intervened. Such circumstances test the mettle of every citizen, and by all accounts Josephine acquitted herself well as part of the French Resistance, first in France during the “phony war” before the Germans actually invaded her new homeland, and later in North Africa. When she returned to Paris in October 1944, after its liberation, she was greeted by throngs of people on the Champs-Élysées welcoming her home. She was also awarded the Medal of Resistance and eventually the Légion d’Honneur by France in recognition of her wartime work. She also met and became involved with Jo Bouillon, a (white) French jazz bandleader, whom she married on June 3, 1947, her forty-first birthday. This marriage was no more legal than those that preceded it, and no less troubled, but it lasted a great deal longer—to the end of Josephine’s life nearly thirty years later.
The durability of this marriage was due in part to a crusade against racial discrimination that Josephine had undertaken after “rediscovering her race” (in Jean-Claude’s words) during World War II. Over the years she gave talks on the subject, challenged segregation laws when in the American South, and marched for civil rights with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the historic March on Washington in 1963. She was so vociferous in her denunciations of American racism at various international forums that the FBI compiled a dossier on her activities and the CIA kept tabs on her. But arguably her most public activity was an experiment in racial harmony that she undertook at Les Milandes, a château in southern France that she bought after the War. There she assembled what she called her “Rainbow Tribe” of twelve children that she and Jo Bouillon adopted from different parts of the world. (Because of a congenital malformation of the uterus, Josephine was unable to have children herself.) All the children were given Bouillon’s last name, and they were the glue that kept the marriage contract itself in force long after the couple’s spousal relationship had come to an end.
By all accounts race relations were harmonious enough at Les Milandes. However, personal relations were anything but peaceful, especially between Josephine and Jo Bouillon. Much of the problem could be traced to Josephine’s impulsiveness, extravagance, and need to control all aspects of life at the château. Her experiment would have been an expensive undertaking under any circumstances, but her own temperament and inability to handle money gave rise to much friction. The situation wasn’t helped by Josephine and Jo’s differing sexual needs. Bouillon never hid his homosexuality from Josephine. At times he even seemed to flaunt it as a way of asserting his independence from a wife whose imperious personality and demands continually overwhelmed him. Josephine, for her part, flaunted her affairs with women. In his biography, Jean-Claude quotes a French informant as saying: “Josephine and Jo … used to fight in the streets of Castelnaud [a village near Les Milandes]. She would scream ‘Faggot!’ [and]he would yell ‘Dyke!’ They weren’t hiding anything. Jo would come to our house with another man, their arms linked, Josephine would find happiness with a girl from a Paris ballet company.” In Josephine’s last years, according to another informant, she “surrounded herself with women, nurses, secretaries. A lot of young girls were in her entourage, so people talked, but by then they had seen so much that nothing could surprise them.”
In 1960, Jo Bouillon decamped (without divorcing Josephine) to Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he established a new life as a restauranteur. In 1968, creditors foreclosed on Les Milandes. Josephine was still performing onstage, but the money no longer flowed as freely as before. She was perpetually in debt, and she and her children were increasingly dependent on the generosity of benefactors like Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco.
In bad health for years, Josephine finally collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage in Paris on April 10, 1975, the day following a triumphant stage comeback, and died two days later without regaining consciousness. Three funerals were held in her honor, one in Paris and two in Monte Carlo. At the behest of Princess Grace, she was buried in Monaco—a great distance both in miles and in circumstances from her humble origins in St. Louis nearly 69 years before.
A Life Examined
Parsing Josephine Baker’s queer life is problematic. It’s true that by age fifteen she was already participating in what would prove to be a lifelong string of affairs with other women. Yet she was always careful to hide these liaisons from her public. Moreover, according to Jean-Claude, although she had many gay friends, on occasion she exhibited a real streak of homophobia. Case in point: the one lesbian experience she was willing to put on record was an incident she described in her 1935 memoir, Une Vie de Toute les Couleurs, as having occurred in 1925 while she was appearing at the Plantation supper club in midtown Manhattan. According to Jean-Claude’s biography, she and three other “cabaret girls” were invited to dine at the home of a famous (but unnamed) New York actress. When she discovered that the actress expected a sexual five-way as the dessert course, Josephine says she “was furious and created such a ruckus that I was thrown out.” Did the incident actually occur? Probably—but perhaps not in quite the way Josephine described it. She was always good at covering her tracks when she wanted to, or even creating false tracks if she thought the situation warranted it. Against the libertine reputation she had acquired in Europe by the 1930’s, she’s seen here as trying to project an image of herself as sexually naïve.
As a second example, several years after Jo Bouillon moved to Argentina, she exiled one of her Rainbow Tribe sons to Buenos Aires to live with his “faggot father” after discovering he was having sex with another young man. Her excuse: she didn’t want him “contaminating” his brothers.
Of course, Josephine lived in a highly homophobic era that left most GLBT people, especially those in the public eye, little wiggle room when it came to protecting themselves from antigay bigotry and harassment. But that doesn’t excuse her own homophobia. It was an ugly part of her character, and it could certainly be damaging to those, like her son, who felt its effects personally. She was, at any rate, no queer role model. Still, something in her performances and even in her personal life spoke to her gay admirers, especially gay men, who were always drawn to her. Indeed, by the late 1960’s, according to Jean-Claude, gay people made up “eighty percent of her faithful audience.”
You don’t have to go far to see why. Her life pulsated with needs and desires that can only be called “queer,” animated by a queer energy that reached her audiences regardless of how carefully she tried to keep the gay aspects of her life hidden. One reason for this: by late in Josephine’s career, her performances had something of the camp about them. “Onstage she looked like a drag queen,” said Jean-Claude in an interview. “A badly made-up drag queen—glitter over her makeup, too much mascara, extravagant gowns that exaggerated the feminine, extravagant gestures. Nobody else performing in Europe during the 1930’s moved like she did. Later, here in the U.S., it would be called ‘vogueing.’” Another reason she connected with gay audiences is that she challenged the rules of acceptable sexual behavior in public, something that would have been a big draw for those whose sexuality was stigmatized as socially unacceptable or even criminal.
On top of that, much like Judy Garland and Billie Holiday, Josephine communicated with audiences from a vulnerable part of herself, a part that had been hurt and was still suffering, connecting with them as a survivor of abuse and helping them to realize that they could survive their own traumas. In Jean-Claude’s words: “She was burning in hell from all the pain and abuse, but she was able to shut up her feelings within herself and give it back to people in a majestic and generous way. She was one of those exceptional people who know how to break down barriers to reach and touch the body, the soul of anyone.”
Jean-Claude subtitled his biography “The Hungry Heart.” But Josephine’s was also a hungry queer heart, aching all her life for the love and acceptance she felt denied her as a poor, abused, black child in St. Louis. She couldn’t heal herself, but when she sang as a survivor, it was a message welcome to gay people’s ears. No wonder the legend of La Baker is still alive and well. For gay audiences, it will probably live on for many years to come.
Note: All three movies starring Josephine Baker were released as DVDs in 2005 by Kino Video.
Baker, Jean-Claude, and Chris Chase. Josephine: The Hungry Heart. Random House, 1993.
Baker, Jean-Claude. Author interviews, February 28, 1995, and May 17, 2006.
Baker, Jean-Claude. Talk at New York City’s LGBT Community Services Center, September 13, 1994.
Dudley (Reagan), Caroline. Detail: La Révue Nègre (unpublished manuscript, used with permission of Caroline’s daughter Sophie Reagan Herr).
Kessler, Harry. Berlin in Lights: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler (1918 –1937). Grove Press, 2000.
Rivollet, André. Joséphine Baker: Une Vie de Toutes les Couleurs. B. Arthaud (Grenoble, France), 1935.
All art for this piece courtesy of the Jean-Claude Baker Foundation.
Lester Strong is special projects editor for A&U magazine and a regular contributor to OUT magazine.
Mary Anning
Now immortalised by Kate Winslet in the film Ammonite, Mary Anning was a determined and clever woman who became known as the "Princess of Palaeontology" and the greatest fossil hunter who ever lived.
Mary&rsquos hometown of Lyme Regis was a good place for Mary to cultivate an interest in geology and palaeontology, as fossils were &ndash and are still &ndash found in abundance there. When she was 12, in 1811, she had her first big find &ndash a skeleton of an ichthyosaur (a prehistoric sea reptile), the first of its kind ever found. Many more discoveries followed, including, when she was 24, that of a plesiosaur, a type of marine reptile.
This discovery put Mary on the map as far as the scientific community was concerned but, even so, her gender and social class prevented her from receiving significant financial gain from her work, and proper recognition of her discoveries only came after her death. However, her memory lives on, as Kate Winslet&rsquos film epitomises, as also does her recognition by the Royal Society of Science, in 2010.
Pessoas que viram isto também viram
I didn't realise that this was written by a renowned biographer until I started reading. I am fascinated by the resistance in WW II. The drama, suffering, tragedy and excitement is gripping. It's also shocking and sobering as well as intensely moving. Often when witting on this subject other authors will not make much of the infighting and internal politics from this period (within the resistance itself). This is not the case with this biography. We've all heard of Odette but Virginia Hall was unknown to me. What a remarkable women. It's humbling to think of what these people went through for the love of freedom and the fight against injustice.
I was so impressed that I looked into the author and realised who it was. Sonia Purnell has written a number of biographys and is probably best known for her writting on Boris Johnson. I can't recommend this wonderfully researched book enough.
Having read a number of books on the history of espionage, and espionage in the Second World War in particular, I can say that this may be the most interesting and illuminating account of operations in Occupied and Vichy France ever written in English. I would say that it “reads like a novel,” except no, it reads much better than a novel.
Also a very important corrective to the lack of appreciation of female intelligence operatives during the Second World War. It is not really surprising, but nevertheless infuriating, to see how badly female agents were treated by the men in charge of Allied intelligence operations. Eventually, after her skill and heroism became so evident, SOE and OSS, and the French, did come around to recognizing Virginia Hall’s contribution. But I have to suspect that there were many other women, making great sacrifices, who were never recognized. (And then there was the shameful treatment of Josephine Baker, who was recognized by the French, but ignored by her own country because of racism as well as sexism.) A Woman of No Importance is straight history, and no feminist rant. But in the course of telling this story, Sonia Purnell has made a real contribution to feminist history.
Josephine Baker’s Daring Double Life as a World War II Spy
As war drums reverberated across Europe in 1939, the head of France’s military intelligence service recruited an unlikely spy: France’s most famous woman—Josephine Baker.
Jacques Abtey had spent the early days of World War II recruiting spies to collect information on Nazi Germany and other Axis powers. Typically, the secret service chief sought out men who could travel incognito. Then again, nothing was typical when it came to the American-born dancer and singer.
Born into poverty in St. Louis in 1906, Baker had grown up fatherless in a series of rat-infested hovels. She had only sporadic schooling and married for the first time at age 13. Stung by discrimination in Jim Crow America based on her skin color, she left at the age of 19 to perform as a burlesque dancer in the music halls of Paris where her risqué dance routines while clad in little more than a string of pearls and a rubber banana skirt made her a Jazz Age sensation. After branching out into singing and acting in films, she became Europe’s highest-paid entertainer.
A celebrity of Baker’s stature made for a most unlikely spy candidate since she could never travel surreptitiously—but that’s exactly what made her such an enticing prospect. Fame would be her cover. Abtey hoped Baker could use her charm, beauty and stardom to seduce secrets from the lips of fawning diplomats at embassy parties.
Having found in France the freedom that America promised on parchment, Baker agreed to spy for her adopted country. “France made me what I am,” she told Abtey. “The Parisians gave me their hearts, and I am ready to give them my life.”
The cries of “Go back to Africa!” she had heard from fascists while performing across Europe also fueled her decision. “Of course I wanted to do all I could to aid France, my adopted country,” she told Ébano magazine decades later, “but an overriding consideration, the thing that drove me as strongly as did patriotism, was my violent hatred of discrimination in any form.”
Josephine Baker's Daring Double Life as a World War II Spy
On April 12, 1975, Josephine Baker, American French revue artist, French Resistance fighter, and civil rights activist, died at the age of 68. From the article:
"Josephine Baker's Daring Double Life as a World War II Spy
Using fame as a cover, the glamorous entertainer spied for the French Resistance against the Nazis.
As war drums reverberated across Europe in 1939, the head of France’s military intelligence service recruited an unlikely spy: France’s most famous woman—Josephine Baker.
Jacques Abtey had spent the early days of World War II recruiting spies to collect information on Nazi Germany and other Axis powers. Typically, the secret service chief sought out men who could travel incognito. Then again, nothing was typical when it came to the American-born dancer and singer.
Born into poverty in St. Louis in 1906, Baker had grown up fatherless in a series of rat-infested hovels. She had only sporadic schooling and married for the first time at age 13. Stung by discrimination in Jim Crow America based on her skin color, she left at the age of 19 to perform as a burlesque dancer in the music halls of Paris where her risqué dance routines while clad in little more than a string of pearls and a rubber banana skirt made her a Jazz Age sensation. After branching out into singing and acting in films, she became Europe’s highest-paid entertainer.
A celebrity of Baker’s stature made for a most unlikely spy candidate since she could never travel surreptitiously—but that’s exactly what made her such an enticing prospect. Fame would be her cover. Abtey hoped Baker could use her charm, beauty and stardom to seduce secrets from the lips of fawning diplomats at embassy parties.
Having found in France the freedom that America promised on parchment, Baker agreed to spy for her adopted country. “France made me what I am,” she told Abtey. “The Parisians gave me their hearts, and I am ready to give them my life.”
The cries of “Go back to Africa!” she had heard from fascists while performing across Europe also fueled her decision. “Of course I wanted to do all I could to aid France, my adopted country,” she told Ebony magazine decades later, “but an overriding consideration, the thing that drove me as strongly as did patriotism, was my violent hatred of discrimination in any form.”
Baker Uses Star Power to Learn Secrets
Baker started her espionage career by attending diplomatic parties at the Italian and Japanese embassies and gathering intelligence about the Axis powers possibly joining the war. Showing no fear of being caught, the neophyte spy wrote notes of what she overheard on the palms of her hand and on her arms under her sleeves. “Oh, nobody would think I’m a spy,” Baker said with a laugh when Abtey warned her of the danger.
In the weeks after German forces roared into France, Baker continued her nightly performances in Paris, sang to soldiers on the warfront over the radio and comforted refugees in homeless shelters. When the invaders closed in on Paris in early June 1940, Abtey insisted that she leave, so Baker loaded her possessions, including a gold piano and a bed once owned by Marie-Antoinette, into vans and departed for a chateau 300 miles to the southwest. As Nazi troops goose-stepped down the Champs-Élysées and occupied her Paris home, Baker hid refugees and French Resistance members in her new quarters.
In November 1940, Abtey and Baker worked to smuggle documents to General Charles de Gaulle and the Free French government in exile in London. Under the guise of embarking on a South American tour, the entertainer hid secret photographs under her dress and carried along sheet music with information about German troop movements in France written in invisible ink. With all eyes transfixed on the star as they crossed the border to Spain on their way to neutral Portugal, the French security chief, who posed as Baker’s secretary, garnered little notice from German officials. The limelight that Baker attracted allowed Abtey to travel in the shadows.
In Portugal and Spain, Baker continued to harvest details about Axis troop movements at embassy parties. Squirreling away in bathrooms, the secret agent made detailed notes and attached them to her bra with a safety pin. “My notes would have been highly compromising had they been discovered, but who would dare search Josephine Baker to the skin?” she later wrote. “When they asked me for papers, they generally meant autographs.”
Baker Continues Spying Even When Ill
Ordered to Morocco in January 1941 to set up a liaison and transmission center in Casablanca, Abtey and Baker sailed across the Mediterranean Sea. The performer brought along 28 pieces of luggage and a menagerie of pet monkeys, mice and a Great Dane. The more conspicuous Baker’s travel, the fewer suspicions it generated.
In North Africa she worked with the French Resistance network and used her connections to secure passports for Jews fleeing the Nazis in Eastern Europe until she was hospitalized with peritonitis in June 1941. She underwent multiple operations during an 18-month hospitalization that left her so ill that the Chicago Defender mistakenly ran her obituary, penned by Langston Hughes. He wrote that Baker was “as much a victim of Hitler as the soldiers who fall today in Africa fighting his armies. The Aryans drove Josephine away from her beloved Paris.” Baker quickly corrected the record. “There has been a slight error, I’m much too busy to die,” she told the Afro-American.
Even as Baker convalesced, the spy work continued as American diplomats and French Resistance members convened at her bedside. From her balcony she watched as American troops arrived in Morocco as part of Operation Torch in November 1942. After she was finally discharged, Baker toured Allied military camps from Algiers to Jerusalem. By day, she rode in jeeps across the scorching deserts of North Africa. At night, she bundled up and slept on the ground next to her vehicle to avoid land mines.
Following the liberation of Paris, she returned to the city she loved in October 1944 after a four-year absence. Dressed in her blue air auxiliary lieutenant’s uniform punctuated with gold epaulettes, Baker rode in the back of an automobile as the throngs along the Champs-Élysées tossed her flowers. No longer just a glamorous revue star, Baker was a patriotic heroine.
She donned her uniform once again in 1961 to receive two of France’s highest military honors, the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor, at a ceremony in which details of her espionage work were revealed to the world. A teary-eyed Baker told her countrymen, 'I am proud to be French because this is the only place in the world where I can realize my dream.'”
The Double Life of Josephine Baker
We remember Josephine Baker as a singer and dancer, who had to leave her native country to find freedom and fame. What fewer know is that when Nazism threatened that freedom she so treasured, Baker also turned her talents toward defending it — as a spy.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1906, Baker began her career as a teenage vaudeville performer, but rose to fame after she joined an all-Black troupe traveling to Paris in 1925. Baker marveled at the freedoms she experienced in France — for example, sitting wherever she wished on a train car. She gained wealth and fame, first as an erotic dancer, then in film and opera.
Soon, Baker’s fame presented a new opportunity. After World War II began in September 1939, a French intelligence agent named Jacques Abtey came to her home and asked her to become part of his network. She immediately agreed. “The Parisians gave me their hearts,” she said, “and I am ready to give them my life.”
Baker attended events and parties, socializing with the Axis elite, eavesdropping all the while. She would report her findings back to Abtey. Sometimes she would even take notes on her arm or the palm of her hand, secure in the conviction that no one would ever suspect her of being a spy.
Even so, Baker epitomized the Nazis’ definition of a threat. She was a successful, Black, bisexual performer, who, in 1937, married a Jewish man (she and Jean Lion divorced after several years of marriage).
With the Nazi invasion of France in May 1940, Baker fled Paris and entered into a new relationship with her adopted country. Knowing she could be in danger, Baker sought refuge in the south — which was administered by the collaborationist Vichy regime — rented a chateau, and offered refuge to others fleeing the Nazis.
From southern France, Baker continued her intelligence work. To make contact with British agents, Abtey disguised himself as her ballet instructor, and the two embarked on a tour of Portugal. They smuggled information written in invisible ink on the back of Baker’s sheet music and photographs pinned to the inside of her dress. With her natural charm and immense fame, they made it across the border without being searched, and the documents successfully made their way into the hands of British intelligence officers.
Baker also put her artistic talents to use helping the Allied cause. Starting in 1943, she toured North Africa performing for Allied soldiers, raising more than three million francs for the Free French Army. For her courageous service, the women’s auxiliary of the French air force made her an officer. She wore her air force uniform at appearances for the rest of her life — including the 1963 March on Washington, where she was one of the only women speakers.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Baker returned to the city. She discovered the dire conditions people there had been living in and sold her own valuables to help supply food and coal to those in need. In 1945, General Charles de Gaulle awarded her two prestigious honors, the Croix de Guerre e a Rosette de la Résistance. He also named her a Chevalier de Légion d’honneur, the highest order of merit for military and civil action.
After years in her adopted country, Baker never forgot her original home and the struggles of Black Americans. At the 1963 march, she said, “I want you to know … how proud I am to be here today, and after so many long years of struggle fighting here and elsewhere for your rights, our rights, the rights of humanity, the rights of man, I’m glad that you have accepted me to come. … The world is behind you.”
Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase, Josephine: The Hungry Heart (New York: Cooper Square Press, 2001).
Meredith Hindley, Destination Casablanca: Exile, Espionage, and the Battle for North Africa in World War II (New York: Public Affairs, 2017).
Tina L. Ligon and Christina Violeta Jones, “Let Freedom Ring. Honoring the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” Rediscovering Black History (blog) (National Archives, August 20, 2013).
Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time (New York: Doubleday, 1989).
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Baker’s birthplace, which is St. Louis, Missouri.
6. There are Celebrities Among Their Ranks
At first glance, a career in the spotlight would appear to appear to be the polar opposite of the covert work of espionage. However, there are some famous people who have worked as spies, both before and after they became famous.
Before her career in the kitchen, chef Julia Child worked as a typist, then research analyst for the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the US intelligence agency during WWII. She earned the “Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service” for her work. Before becoming a US Supreme Court Justice, Arthur Goldberg also served in the OSS, where his work involved organizing European labor unions and dissident groups to resist the Nazis. Children’s author Roald Dahl earned a reputation as a ladies’ man during his undercover work with the British embassy in Washington D.C., as part of the British campaign to draw the US into WWII.
While, for obvious reasons, there are more spies who later became famous than celebrities who later became spies, there are still several famous people who also worked as secret agents. Jazz Age performer Josephine Baker used her travel schedule and position as a star to support the French Resistance during WWII. She reported on the identities of French Nazi supporters, conversations she overheard from German officers in her audiences, and even smuggled secret documents written in invisible ink on her music sheets.
US baseball catcher Moe Berg was known for being one of the smartest men to ever play the game. A Princeton graduate, Berg spoke 8 languages and had passed the bar before turning to baseball and joining the Washington Senators. Berg’s intelligence career began when he traveled to Japan as part of an all-star baseball exhibition tour. During his tour, he took home movies of Tokyo’s skyline and shipyards, which were reportedly used to help plan US bombing raids during WWII. After leaving baseball, Berg joined the OSS, where his work included parachuting into Yugoslavia to evaluate resistance groups and evaluating Nazi progress towards a nuclear weapon.
