{"id":4182,"date":"2023-12-25T09:35:07","date_gmt":"2023-12-25T09:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/?page_id=4182"},"modified":"2023-12-26T04:42:37","modified_gmt":"2023-12-26T04:42:37","slug":"josephine-baker","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/josephine-baker\/","title":{"rendered":"Josephine Baker"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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JOSEPHINE BAKER<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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An Interview<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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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<\/p>

Croix de Guerre.
AN ENCHANTING child opens the door, gravely extends her hand and says \u201c Bonjour Monsieur\u201d.\u00a0 She isn\u2019t 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.<\/span><\/p>

Miss Baker isn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 She leans back into the deep couch and continually keeps adjusting the pillows to make herself as comfortable as possible. It\u2019s a task that never quite succeeds for her tiredness doesn\u2019t appear short termed.\u00a0 It\u2019s deeper than that.<\/p>

\u201cThe past? People seem to love talking about the past. Are you nostalgic as well, but you\u2019re too young.\u201d\u00a0 Miss Baker talks in gentle murmurs sometimes in French, sometimes in English and at times making them sound the same. \u201cNo. I didn\u2019t get my first break on Broadway. I was only in the chorus in \u2018Shuffle Along\u2019 and \u2018Chocolate Dandies.\u2019\u201d She appeared in two stereotype coloured musicals when she was 16. She is now vaguely 70.<\/p>

\u201cI became famous first in France in the twenties. I just couldn\u2019t 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.\u201d And they got to know Miss Baker as well.<\/p>

She appeared in a show, \u201cLa Revue Negro,\u201d 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 \u201c 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.\u201d<\/p>

Miss Baker sweeps the adjectives away as if they were cheap plastic baubles. \u201cIt\u2019s all pass\u00e9, 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\u2026\u201d\u00a0 She doesn\u2019t complete the sentence. A habit of hers; maybe she just forgot what she was saying.<\/p>

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\u2019s 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\u2019s friends\u2019 face shot away and pregnant women disembowelled.<\/p>

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 Berg\u00e9res where she danced dressed in strategically arranged bananas in front of angled mirrors that revealed just about all.<\/p>

In 1937, she became a French citizen. \u201cDuring 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. \u201cI told them why give it to me. A didn\u2019t do much. Others deserve it more. But \u2026\u201d 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.<\/p>

\u00a0She 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.<\/p>

\u201cThe oldest boy is now In Geneva University and she \u201c\u2014Miss Baker calls the child who runs in to be more formally introduced \u2014 \u201cshe is my youngest. She\u2019s on holiday: that\u2019s why she\u2019s with me. I believe people have got to mix, otherwise there\u2019s no hope for us. Of course I think man is intelligent enough to realise this\u2026he can\u2019t 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.\u201d She laughs and sends the child out<\/p>

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\u2014the 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\u2019 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.<\/p>

Somewhere in the clutter of adopted children, the East St Louis tragedy, the two husbands (the second a French bandleader whom she doesn\u2019t mention), successes and failures there must be a philosophy which keeps her on the move. \u201cI am totally optimistic,\u201d she says. \u201cI believe in only the future. I\u2019m not interested in the past. After London, I\u2019ve got concerts in Israel, then in Paris and a return to New York. Man lives for the future.\u201d<\/p>

In December, Josephine Baker opens in an extravagant revue in Paris. \u201cI forget, you don\u2019t know what a revue is,\u201d she exclaims and leans forward on her cushions. It is\u2026it 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\u2019ve 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\u2019m in it the whole way. It\u2019s called \u2018Josephine\u2019 and it\u2019s based on my life. Bits of it anyway.\u201d<\/p>

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, \u201cThank you. I have to get ready and …\u201c 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.<\/p>

When I\u2019ve moved a few yards down the corridor, the door opens. \u201cMonsieur, monsieur,\u201d the child runs out barefoot and holds out her hand. \u201cAu revoir,\u201d she says, darts back, and shuts the door.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JOSEPHINE BAKER \u00a0 An Interview 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4182","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4182"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4253,"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4182\/revisions\/4253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/websprintersdemo.in\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}