‘La Baker’: Saint or Sinner?

Before Beyoncé and Madonna, there was “La Baker” — Josephine Baker, a sizzling sex symbol with a penchant for scandal as well as showmanship. Born to a St. Louis laundry woman in 1906, “La Baker,” as the French called her, captivated Europe in the 1920s and ’30s with her exotic dances and stripteases. Back home, though, Americans were less prepared for a black performer of her flamboyance — she danced at the Folies Bergère wearing only a skirt made of loosely strung bananas — and she never equaled her Parisian success in her native country.Now, on the anniversary of her 100th birthday, Baker is finally getting her due in America. Her centenary, which until now has gone relatively unmarked, will be celebrated next week, when Barnard College and Columbia University will pay tribute to the outspoken champion of civil rights with a colloquium beginning September 29, featuring speakers from universities like Princeton, Yale, the University of California, Tulane, and Rutgers.Kaiama Glover, a co-organizer of “Josephine Baker: A Century in the Spotlight” and a professor of French and Africana studies at Barnard, described Baker as a template for understanding European and American society in the years surrounding World War II, a woman whose views and public speeches sprang from the bitter experiences of her impoverished childhood.“We’ll hold her up as a mirror in which the entirety of the 20th–century trans-Atlantic world is reflected,” Ms. Glover said.Ms. Glover said she became fascinated by Baker as a student, and spent three months in Paris studying her role in European society. She saw Baker as a revolutionary with radical and subversive ideas, she said, but also as someone willing to make a commodity of her body. “She was a sexy, primitive creature who used this status to manipulate situations that she felt were important while also being manipulated herself,” Ms. Glover said.In 1951, Baker created a small tempest in New York when she became involved in an incident at the Stork Club, a hot spot in Manhattan, claiming that she was refused service. The columnist Walter Winchell became involved in a dispute with Baker that grew out of the incident, later supplying to the FBI letters he received saying that she hobnobbed with communists. A Senate internal security subcommittee subsequently monitored her speeches and interviews, in which she was often critical of the American government.“In the country where I was born, they continue to speak of ‘democracy’ and ‘civilization’ while Negroes are sent to die in Korea,” she once said. But the FBI found no reason to investigate her.Today, Ms. Glover said, black intellectuals “don’t know how to insert her into African-American history.” Baker’s civil rights activities ranged from speaking in defense of a black man accused of raping a white woman in Mississippi, to lecturing on racial discrimination in places like Buenos Aires and Mexico City. She refused to perform in any setting that was not integrated, and succeeded in breaking the color barrier in many clubs and theaters.But, Ms. Glover also said, “There is discomfort with how she performed and used her body, with the fantasies that were projected onto her body, and that she allowed it.” Racism was more subtle in France than in America at the time, which allowed Baker, with her dark skin, to be viewed as the “beautiful other.” “It’s not lynching, but it’s still using race as a prejudging qualifier,” Ms. Glover said. And because Baker worked to erase distinctions between the races, she would not easily fall into any of today’s political movements. “She wasn’t politically correct,” Ms. Glover said. “There wasn’t a black power bone in her body.”Baker bears scrutiny for her multi-faceted celebrity as a singer, comedian, and movie actress, who appeared in films like “Princess Tam Tam” (1935). After becoming a French citizen in 1937, she served France during World War II by performing for the troops and slipping messages written in invisible ink on her sheet music to members of the French Resistance. She was also a sublieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, and later won service awards from the French government. Upon her death by a cerebral hemorrhage in 1975, she was given a funeral with military honors in France, and was buried in Monaco.A quick glance at the conference lineup shows the scope of Baker’s impact. Her influence on ideas of femininity, sexuality, choreography, transnational cinema, and patriotism — all will receive ample discussion.But Baker’s interest in diversity and experimentation was not limited to her professional career. Besides marrying four times, she adopted 12 children of different races, calling them her “Rainbow Tribe” to demonstrate the possibilities of brotherhood.Jean-Claude Baker, a restaurateur in Manhattan whom Josephine unofficially adopted when he was a 14-year-old Parisian bellhop, recalled his mother as a complex, difficult personality. “I loved her and hated her — hated her because she would be absolutely self-destructive from time to time.” Mr. Baker, whose 20-year-old restaurant, Chez Josephine, is steeped in the atmosphere of 1930s Paris, also described his mother as a “monstre sacré,” which he translated as “holy monster.” Mr. Baker recounted his relationship with his mother in his 1993 biography, “Josephine: The Hungry Heart,” which was written with Chris Chase. He will speak at the conference before a screening of “Zou-Zou,” a 1934 film in which Baker starred. He chose the film, he said, because the story, about “a little girl working in a laundry,” reflects Baker’s beginnings. “You have to put her back in the context of the time,” he said. “Was she a saint or a sinner?”In his book, Mr. Baker quotes George Balanchine, who knew Josephine Baker in the ’30s. “She is like Salome,” Balanchine said of Baker. “She has seven veils. If you lift one, there is a second, and what you discover is even more mysterious, and you go to the third and you still don’t know where you are. Only at the end, if you keep looking faithfully, will you find the true Josephine.”“Josephine Baker: A Century in the Spotlight,” between September 29 and October 1 (3009 Broadway, at 117th Street, 212-854-5262). For more information, visit www.josephinebaker2006.com.

‘La Baker’: Saint or Sinner?

‘La Baker’: Saint or Sinner?

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