When you think of Josephine Baker, the first image that pops into your mind is probably that of a Jazz Age performer who rarely dances in a skirt made of fake bananas. After all, it is one of the most enduring images of the Roaring Twenties. But there is so much to Baker’s life story that it’s hard to think of a person more overdue for a modern biopic treatment. (A television film starring Lynn Whitfield aired on HBO in 1991, and we may soon see both FKA Twigs And Janelle Monae stepped into the role in two separate projects.) Born into poverty in St. Louis in 1906, Aiken made her professional debut as a teenage vaudeville performer, and accumulated a lifetime’s worth of experience before her death in 1975. To name just a few highlights: She gained immense fame. Francespied for the resistance, bought a castle, adopted 12 children, spoke at the March on Washington, and had a muse. Alexander Calder, Le Corbusier, Paul Collin, MetisAnd Adolf Loos.
Born Freda Josephine Macdonald, the eldest daughter of a laundry worker and an absentee father of competing identities, Baker began working here. Only eight years old As a live-in maid. At 13, she found work as a waitress and was Married briefly To a steel worker in his 20s. Two years later, in 1921, she married again while touring with a vaudeville troupe in Philadelphia, this time to a 23-year-old railroad worker named William Baker, whose name she kept for the rest of her life (they were officially divorced in 1925, a few years after they last saw each other). By then, Baker had made a name for himself by performing in chorus lines in two Broadway revues. New York cityof the Harlem Renaissance. In the fall of 1925, she traveled to perform Pariswhere she was propelled to stardom.
Although she had a very successful public career, you could also tell that Baker loved her home life. Once she became an established star, she surrounded herself gardenPets and her children spend most of her time and money transforming the dilapidated estate into a lavish home and tourist destination. Below, we’ve rounded up photos from Baker’s offstage life.
