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This week’s heroine is: Josephine Baker (1906 – 1975)

Also known as: The ‘Creole Goddess,’ ‘Black Pearl’ and ‘Bronze Venus.’

Our heroine’s social scene: 1920 Parisian music halls

Famous for: Flamboyant, controversial costumes such as the ‘banana skirt’; popularising vaudeville and jazz in Europe; her journey from New York chorus girl to Parisian erotic dancer to iconic entertainer. When she died more than twenty thousand people mobbed the streets of Paris to watch the funeral procession.

Infamous for: Being accompanied onstage by her diamond-collared pet leopard, Chiquita, who often made an escape into the orchestra pit to terrorize the musicians. Other pets included a chimpanzee named Ethel and a snake called Kiki.

Reason she’s a heroine: Both femme fatale and freedom fighter, Josephine Baker was the first woman of African American descent to have a leading role in a motion picture. A lifelong civil rights activist, she adopted twelve children from an array of ethic backgrounds, and was asked to lead the movement after Martin Luther King’s assassination.

Any famous friends/lovers? Love affairs with some of the era’s most celebrated women, including infamous French novelist Collette and influential Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, as well as three husbands and numerous other lovers. Just days before her death, she performed a retrospective celebrating fifty years in showbiz, funded by Jackie O and attended by celebs including Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey and Sophia Loren.

If she were alive today she’d be: Angelina Jolie

Posted in: Books & Art, Exclusives, Music |