Josephine Baker

She danced the Charleston, dressed in ostrich feathers, on a drum; she danced at the Follies Bergeres clad in bananas; she saw a pregnant woman disembowelled; she won the

Croix de Guerre.
AN ENCHANTING child opens the door, gravely extends her hand and says “ Bonjour Monsieur”.  She isn’t more than 10, her hair curly and long, skin a pale porcelain brown, a delicate vivacious face which will outlast beauty, and inexhaustible energy that keeps her jumping on the bed as if it were a trampoline, until her mother, Josephine Baker, finishes her telephone call.

Miss Baker isn’t that easy to describe. Her head is covered with a blue polka dot turban and huge plastic rimmed dark glasses mask her face from eyebrow to lower cheek. The rest of her is swathed in a dressing gown. Though her eyes remain hidden, occasionally the sun penetrates the glass gloom to reflect a spark as she glances away. The rest of her body makes it very obvious that she is tired.  She leans back into the deep couch and continually keeps adjusting the pillows to make herself as comfortable as possible. It’s a task that never quite succeeds for her tiredness doesn’t appear short termed.  It’s deeper than that.

“The past? People seem to love talking about the past. Are you nostalgic as well, but you’re too young.”  Miss Baker talks in gentle murmurs sometimes in French, sometimes in English and at times making them sound the same. “No. I didn’t get my first break on Broadway. I was only in the chorus in ‘Shuffle Along’ and ‘Chocolate Dandies.’” She appeared in two stereotype coloured musicals when she was 16. She is now vaguely 70.

“I became famous first in France in the twenties. I just couldn’t stand America and I was one of the first coloured Americans to move to Paris. Oh, yes, Bricktop was there as well. Me and her were the only two, and we had a marvellous time, Of course, everyone who was anyone knew Bricky.” And they got to know Miss Baker as well.

She appeared in a show, “La Revue Negro,” in which she danced the Charleston on top of a drum dressed in ostrich feathers, and became a huge star. The French press went wild and said she was “ Nefertiti and the Queen of Sheba anti Cleopatra , her eyelids twinkling with sequins, her fingers, wrists, throat and ears aglow with diamonds. . . She is the most radiant of all temptresses ever to grace the Paris stage. . . A sinuous idol who enslaves and incites all mankind.”

Miss Baker sweeps the adjectives away as if they were cheap plastic baubles. “It’s all passé, mon cher. America was evil then. There were two evil countries. America and South Africa. America is changing, it is getting better, South Africa is the only evil left. Yes. I always remember East St Louis. It had a terrible effect on me, it was…”  She doesn’t complete the sentence. A habit of hers; maybe she just forgot what she was saying.

She was born in East St Louis and her mother was a washerwoman. Her memory of that city is bitter. On July 2 and 3, 1917, whites rioted for two days burning black homes, slaughtering, disembowelling and lynching. At the end, 6.000 blacks had been driven from the city and Miss Baker’s family were among those who found relative safety in St Louis. Struggling with thousands of other blacks across Eades Bridge, she saw one of her father’s friends’ face shot away and pregnant women disembowelled.

Paris, with her feast of friends, young Hemingway who spent hours sitting with her, Picasso who drew her often, Cocteau, and countless worshippers who made her the highest paid entertainer in pre-war Europe, helped erase some of those memories. She moved to the Follies Bergéres where she danced dressed in strategically arranged bananas in front of angled mirrors that revealed just about all.

In 1937, she became a French citizen. “During the war I worked with the French Resistance and I drove an ambulance. It was exciting. The French Government gave me the Croix de Guerre, the Legion of Honour. She trails off again. “I told them why give it to me. A didn’t do much. Others deserve it more. But …” The medal and her deeds are also brushed aside with a flick of her wrist in spite of having De Gaulle himself pin it on her.

 She returned to America after the war and in 1951 began adopting children of many races. She drew enormous criticism for daring to intermingle the races, and the American right wing detested her for her outspoken views on racialism. America was never a very happy experience for her and when McCarthyism took hold she, like Paul Robeson, became a subject of the witch-hunt.

“The oldest boy is now In Geneva University and she “—Miss Baker calls the child who runs in to be more formally introduced — “she is my youngest. She’s on holiday: that’s why she’s with me. I believe people have got to mix, otherwise there’s no hope for us. Of course I think man is intelligent enough to realise this…he can’t survive unless he learns to live with his fellow men. My 12 children get on very well together. . . Too well, because they gang up on me.” She laughs and sends the child out

It is the children which keep Miss Baker on that long road. On returning to France, after her American visit, she bought a fourteenth-century chateau, Les Milandes, in the Dordogne. She retired from show business and turned the chateau into a tourist attraction with swimming pool, gift shop and hotel. It had everything—the Josephine Baker museum, with the bananas on display, African huts, cabaret, zoo. She even charged admission for tourists to see her children at play. Alas, Miss Baker was no businesswoman and by 1969 she was bankrupt. The castle with its 700 acres of parkland, maidservants, tutors for the’ children had to be disposed of and Miss Baker returned to the stage. She survived on her earnings and the charity of friends. Princess Grace provided a villa in Monaco and Marshal Tito a summer place on the Adriatic. However, she left Les Milandes as traumatically as she did East St Louis. Eight young men were paid 10,000 old francs to throw her, her children and her pets out of the chateau. With her luck, of course, it was raining.

Somewhere in the clutter of adopted children, the East St Louis tragedy, the two husbands (the second a French bandleader whom she doesn’t mention), successes and failures there must be a philosophy which keeps her on the move. “I am totally optimistic,” she says. “I believe in only the future. I’m not interested in the past. After London, I’ve got concerts in Israel, then in Paris and a return to New York. Man lives for the future.”

In December, Josephine Baker opens in an extravagant revue in Paris. “I forget, you don’t know what a revue is,” she exclaims and leans forward on her cushions. It is…it is.. . – a big show with a big cast, and costumes, and dances. We used to have them before the war, but it became too expensive afterwards. I’ve always been wanting to do another revue and I managed to get backers. We put it on in Nice and it was a great success. Now we charge quite high for the seats so that we can cover its costs. I’m in it the whole way. It’s called ‘Josephine’ and it’s based on my life. Bits of it anyway.”

She falls back in the settee and stays silent for a long time. Maybe behind those glasses she is remembering those bits of her past which will earn her a living in the future. Quite abruptly, she stands up and holds out a slim cool hand, “Thank you. I have to get ready and …“ she gestures vaguely and the press officer leads me out explaining how Miss Baker is doing two shows a day and needs a lot of rest.

When I’ve moved a few yards down the corridor, the door opens. “Monsieur, monsieur,” the child runs out barefoot and holds out her hand. “Au revoir,” she says, darts back, and shuts the door.