Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowry and the first
Speaker 1: time I ever heard of Josephine Baker are subject for today.
Speaker 1: I was in middle school and I was reading an
Speaker 1: old film book of my dad's that had lots of
Speaker 1: film stills in it, and they're in the middle was
Speaker 1: this almost completely naked woman who's only wearing pretty much
Speaker 1: bananas around her waist. And being a Catholic schoolgirl, I
Speaker 1: was completely scandalized and yet intrigued. And that's how a
Speaker 1: lot of people felt about Josephine Baker, and that image
Speaker 1: of her wearing the bananas around her waist is probably
Speaker 1: the most famous. But there's a lot more to Josephine
Speaker 1: Baker than just that, And besides being an extravagant, provocative
Speaker 1: stage star, she's also a French spy, a civil rights agitator,
Speaker 1: and the mother of twelve children, so obviously we've got
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about here. As far as her
Speaker 1: early life, she was born Frieda J. McDonald June third,
Speaker 1: nineteen o six in St. Louis. Her family was very poor.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a dad around, and she was working by
Speaker 1: the time she was eight years old. She went on
Speaker 1: tour as a dancer at sixteen, moved to New York
Speaker 1: City in nineteen three, and while it was the Harlem
Speaker 1: Renaissance there, it was still a really tough time to
Speaker 1: be black in the United States, thought Josephine. So she
Speaker 1: went to Paris in and she joins a black American
Speaker 1: vaudeville troupe Lau Review Negra at the Teatra Deschans Liz
Speaker 1: and does the dance avage in Feathers, which is another
Speaker 1: thing that she's pretty well known for. And this is
Speaker 1: where she found freedom in Paris. There was a marked
Speaker 1: difference between being a black woman in New York City
Speaker 1: and a black woman in Paris. Here she was, you know,
Speaker 1: this ex pat and jazz age Paris Lisianna forle the
Speaker 1: crazy years after World War One, where jazz was wonderful,
Speaker 1: nudity was okay, brothels were okay, the dollar was strong,
Speaker 1: there wasn't prohibition. It sounds like a lot of fun,
Speaker 1: to be honest. So Josephine becomes a star at the
Speaker 1: fully Beer Jaire. This is where the g string with
Speaker 1: bananas comes into play, which is designed by no one
Speaker 1: other than Jean Cocteau, and her dancing is passionate and
Speaker 1: intense and gathers a lot of attention. Her act involved nudity,
Speaker 1: cross dressing, a lot of overt sexuality, and you have
Speaker 1: to ask the question of whether she was in control
Speaker 1: by manipulating her own image or was it more subjugating
Speaker 1: herself by buying into this idea of the sexual savage.
Speaker 1: Either way, she made a lot of waves and a
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty two she performed in white face at the
Speaker 1: Casino de Paris and a blonde wig and skin lightner
Speaker 1: and sang a song called cieg blanche if I were white,
Speaker 1: which was yeah, she's so over the top. Two she's
Speaker 1: I mean off stage as well. She's got a cheetah Chiquita,
Speaker 1: who does perform with her in a diamond collar. She
Speaker 1: has a chimp named Ethel and a goat named to Toot,
Speaker 1: among many other animals, and people worship her. Crowds follow
Speaker 1: her around, people clamor for her autograph. She's offered flowers
Speaker 1: and presents and dinners. So she's this huge celebrity in
Speaker 1: in glamorous Paris at Picasso writes that she has tall,
Speaker 1: coffee skin, ebony eyes, legs of paradise, a smile to
Speaker 1: end all smiles. Supposedly, Hemingway said she was the most
Speaker 1: sensational woman anybody ever saw or ever will, So there's
Speaker 1: no hope for the rest of us. According to Hemingway
Speaker 1: and called Er made wire sculptures of her. So she
Speaker 1: started getting into other things besides just being this stage dancer.
Speaker 1: She collaborated on biographies of herself. She wrote a novella
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty one, and she began singing professionally in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty and appearing in silent films in nineteen thirty four.
Speaker 1: You can find clips some of them on YouTube if
Speaker 1: you look. And by nineteen thirty seven she makes an
Speaker 1: important decision to become an official French citizen. This is
Speaker 1: sort of renouncing her her American past and the the
Speaker 1: trouble she faced when she lived in America. She thought
Speaker 1: the US was very racist, and she made a lot
Speaker 1: of comments about this throughout the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: But during World War Two she was banned by the
Speaker 1: Vichy government from performing and she started working with a
Speaker 1: Red Cross and also the French Resistance which is so cool.
Speaker 1: She was a spy and no one thought she would
Speaker 1: be a spy. With someone like Julia Child, it's, you know,
Speaker 1: she's the last perm likely back character, somebody who's so
Speaker 1: you can't ever imagine them flipping away unnoticed. Their presence
Speaker 1: is so so huge. But that's why it's right in
Speaker 1: plain sight. She ended up getting the Quadi Guer and
Speaker 1: the Legion of Honor with the rosette of the Raisy
Speaker 1: Staunts after the war. But during the war she performed
Speaker 1: for troops in Africa in the Middle East, passing messages.
Speaker 1: So she went along too important people and very vocally
Speaker 1: advocated integration in the army. So her post war life
Speaker 1: is markedly different from the stuff that we've been talking
Speaker 1: about leading out to this. She buys an estate in
Speaker 1: the door don Chateau de Miland, and she starts adopting children.
Speaker 1: She adopts twelve kids beginning in nineteen fifty, and she
Speaker 1: calls them her Rainbow Tribe. They are boys and girls
Speaker 1: from all over the world and I mean we mean everywhere,
Speaker 1: and um. She goes from being a sex object to
Speaker 1: a madonna surrounded by all of her children. It's a
Speaker 1: really interesting transformation, which reminded us a lot of Angelina Jolie,
Speaker 1: and it's something she did very consciously. First she cultivated
Speaker 1: this image of herself as a sex object, and then
Speaker 1: she cultivated just as hard as this image of herself
Speaker 1: as a mother. She also dreamed of opening an international
Speaker 1: education institute, which she planned to call the College of
Speaker 1: Universal Brotherhood, and she basically quit the State age, but
Speaker 1: with money troubles. She ended up performing throughout the rest
Speaker 1: of her children well occasionally, both in the United States
Speaker 1: and in Europe. But things were tough for her in
Speaker 1: the US. Yeah, the nicer hotels wouldn't even receive her.
Speaker 1: So she's on top of the world in Paris, this
Speaker 1: huge star, but back in the United States, she's a
Speaker 1: black girl in Jim Crow rules, So it's a it's
Speaker 1: a tough shift for her that she is not going
Speaker 1: to take it anymore, and she made United States theaters
Speaker 1: desegregate her audiences. She regularly caused a ruckus with authorities
Speaker 1: over treatment of blacks and the lack of opportunities, and
Speaker 1: she also said that if a city's best hotel wouldn't
Speaker 1: take her, then she simply would not perform in that city.
Speaker 1: So there go your revenues. I like her here she's
Speaker 1: this racial barrier breaker, but this diva performer too kind
Speaker 1: of amazing. I love her. There was a famous incident
Speaker 1: at the Stork Club in nineteen fifty one, which of
Speaker 1: course was the plan used to be in New York,
Speaker 1: but Sherman Billingsley didn't admit Blacks. Being Josephine Baker and
Speaker 1: being wildly popular, he decided he would let her in,
Speaker 1: but then none of the waiters would serve her. They
Speaker 1: claimed they were out of every single item that she offered,
Speaker 1: or at least this is according to Josephine's version of
Speaker 1: the tale. She also said that Walter Winchell, who was
Speaker 1: a very influential gossip columnist, was a witness to everything
Speaker 1: that happened, and that he didn't do a darn thing
Speaker 1: to help her, and he was incensed by this portrayal,
Speaker 1: and she presses the matter, and Winchell says it's absolutely
Speaker 1: not true, but she won't let go of her version
Speaker 1: of the story, so he ends up calling her a
Speaker 1: communist and also saying she's anti Semitic and anti African American,
Speaker 1: and also talks to the FBI about her, which resulted
Speaker 1: in a seventeen year FBI investigation. Sarah said he reminded
Speaker 1: her of Press Hilton earlier today, kind of the scary
Speaker 1: gossip her. But he had a big effect on her career.
Speaker 1: He started calling her ms Josephony Baker in his column
Speaker 1: and a lot of her bookings were canceled because of
Speaker 1: this rift. And she also comes to the US for
Speaker 1: a lot of civil rights demonstration, So I mean her
Speaker 1: her experiences performing give you a pretty good idea of
Speaker 1: why she would be invested in this. She speaks at
Speaker 1: the March in Washington in nineteen sixty three. But she
Speaker 1: does have money trouble. She likes to spend. She has
Speaker 1: all these children, and um she loses the chateau. But
Speaker 1: who comes to the rescue Princess of Great Monico. I
Speaker 1: wish would come to my rescue on a regular basis.
Speaker 1: So we're nearing the end of her life. And in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, there is a Josephine retrospective in Paris.
Speaker 1: It's marking her debut there fifty years earlier, and it
Speaker 1: was hugely popular. All the celebrities are there. But during
Speaker 1: its run, she dies of a stroke and the story
Speaker 1: is that she has this hemorrhage when she's in bed,
Speaker 1: surrounded by the newspapers with blowing reviews exactly telling the
Speaker 1: story of just how wonderful she is, which I think
Speaker 1: she probably liked a lot. And she's buried in Monte
Speaker 1: Carlo and twenty thousand people came to her funeral, So um,
Speaker 1: this is not not your typical story of a famous
Speaker 1: stage presence who weighs away an obscurity. She's famous to
Speaker 1: the end. But Sarah and I were talking earlier about
Speaker 1: this switch from being this sexual object to being the madonna,
Speaker 1: and people often wonder which image was more her, because
Speaker 1: of course we have the urge to categorize and stick
Speaker 1: her in one or the other. But we have an
Speaker 1: interesting biography to talk about, which is by Jean Claude
Speaker 1: baker Um, who she considered her adopted son even though
Speaker 1: he was never legally adopted, and he wrote a biography
Speaker 1: called Josephine the Hungry Heart. In it, he said that
Speaker 1: she was sexually abused, and also that she had had
Speaker 1: an affair with a middle aged man when she was thirteen.
Speaker 1: She also had several marriages that weren't entirely legal because
Speaker 1: she never ended the ones before them, and she got
Speaker 1: married when you was thirteen, and that she had affairs
Speaker 1: with both men and women, white and black. He also
Speaker 1: claims that she got into vaudeville through a sexual relationship
Speaker 1: with a woman, a blue singer. And we have a
Speaker 1: quote from a woman named maud Russell who met Josephine
Speaker 1: when they were working in Philadelphia, and she said, often
Speaker 1: we girls would share a boarding house room because of
Speaker 1: the cost. Well, many of us have been kind of
Speaker 1: abused by producers, directors, leading men if they liked girls
Speaker 1: and the girls needed tenderness. So we had girl friendships,
Speaker 1: the famous lady lovers. But lesbians weren't well accepted in
Speaker 1: show business. They were called bull dykers. I guess we
Speaker 1: were bisexual and what you would call us today. So
Speaker 1: going back to that earlier argument, which is more her
Speaker 1: this Madonna image or the um crazy sexualized dancer. And
Speaker 1: it's easy enough to see how the Madonna image is
Speaker 1: partly created, you know, it's partly an image that she
Speaker 1: creates and assumes later in life. But I think by
Speaker 1: saying that doesn't necessarily mean the earlier sexualized image is
Speaker 1: Josephine Baker's true self. It could be something that has
Speaker 1: been created in part two, and then something um that
Speaker 1: she's forced to assume. This uh, you know, affair with
Speaker 1: the middle aged man when she's thirteen, these marriages when
Speaker 1: she's a teenager. It seems like some of this um
Speaker 1: she just it was forced upon her almost. So let
Speaker 1: us know what you think. Email us at History Podcast
Speaker 1: at house to aff Works dot com, and we'd like
Speaker 1: to end with a quote from Jean claus book trying
Speaker 1: to explain why people love her so much. He said
Speaker 1: she was burning in hell from all the pain and abuse,
Speaker 1: but she was able to shut up her feelings within
Speaker 1: herself and give it back to people in a majestic
Speaker 1: and generous way. She was one of those exceptional people
Speaker 1: who know how to break down barriers to reach and
Speaker 1: touch the body the soul of anyone. So if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more about jazz and the jazz age,
Speaker 1: you should go to our home page ww of you
Speaker 1: dot how stuff Works dot com and search for how
Speaker 1: Jazz Worked. You should also try following us on Twitter
Speaker 1: because we write about all kinds of interesting Josephine Baker
Speaker 1: facts and everybody we're researching. We're at missed in history
Speaker 1: and Twitter For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to
Speaker 1: check out the stuff you missed in History Class blog
Speaker 1: on the how stuff works dot com home page