Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowry and the first time I ever heard of Josephine Baker are subject for today. I was in middle school and I was reading an old film book of my dad's that had lots of film stills in it, and they're in the middle was this almost completely naked woman who's only wearing pretty much bananas around her waist. And being a Catholic schoolgirl, I was completely scandalized and yet intrigued. And that's how a lot of people felt about Josephine Baker, and that image of her wearing the bananas around her waist is probably the most famous. But there's a lot more to Josephine Baker than just that, And besides being an extravagant, provocative stage star, she's also a French spy, a civil rights agitator, and the mother of twelve children, so obviously we've got a lot to talk about here. As far as her early life, she was born Frieda J. McDonald June third, nineteen o six in St. Louis. Her family was very poor. There wasn't a dad around, and she was working by the time she was eight years old. She went on tour as a dancer at sixteen, moved to New York City in nineteen three, and while it was the Harlem Renaissance there, it was still a really tough time to be black in the United States, thought Josephine. So she went to Paris in and she joins a black American vaudeville troupe Lau Review Negra at the Teatra Deschans Liz and does the dance avage in Feathers, which is another thing that she's pretty well known for. And this is where she found freedom in Paris. There was a marked difference between being a black woman in New York City and a black woman in Paris. Here she was, you know, this ex pat and jazz age Paris Lisianna forle the crazy years after World War One, where jazz was wonderful, nudity was okay, brothels were okay, the dollar was strong, there wasn't prohibition. It sounds like a lot of fun, to be honest. So Josephine becomes a star at the fully Beer Jaire. This is where the g string with bananas comes into play, which is designed by no one other than Jean Cocteau, and her dancing is passionate and intense and gathers a lot of attention. Her act involved nudity, cross dressing, a lot of overt sexuality, and you have to ask the question of whether she was in control by manipulating her own image or was it more subjugating herself by buying into this idea of the sexual savage. Either way, she made a lot of waves and a nineteen thirty two she performed in white face at the Casino de Paris and a blonde wig and skin lightner and sang a song called cieg blanche if I were white, which was yeah, she's so over the top. Two she's I mean off stage as well. She's got a cheetah Chiquita, who does perform with her in a diamond collar. She has a chimp named Ethel and a goat named to Toot, among many other animals, and people worship her. Crowds follow her around, people clamor for her autograph. She's offered flowers and presents and dinners. So she's this huge celebrity in in glamorous Paris at Picasso writes that she has tall, coffee skin, ebony eyes, legs of paradise, a smile to end all smiles. Supposedly, Hemingway said she was the most sensational woman anybody ever saw or ever will, So there's no hope for the rest of us. According to Hemingway and called Er made wire sculptures of her. So she started getting into other things besides just being this stage dancer. She collaborated on biographies of herself. She wrote a novella in nineteen thirty one, and she began singing professionally in nineteen thirty and appearing in silent films in nineteen thirty four. You can find clips some of them on YouTube if you look. And by nineteen thirty seven she makes an important decision to become an official French citizen. This is sort of renouncing her her American past and the the trouble she faced when she lived in America. She thought the US was very racist, and she made a lot of comments about this throughout the rest of her life. But during World War Two she was banned by the Vichy government from performing and she started working with a Red Cross and also the French Resistance which is so cool. She was a spy and no one thought she would be a spy. With someone like Julia Child, it's, you know, she's the last perm likely back character, somebody who's so you can't ever imagine them flipping away unnoticed. Their presence is so so huge. But that's why it's right in plain sight. She ended up getting the Quadi Guer and the Legion of Honor with the rosette of the Raisy Staunts after the war. But during the war she performed for troops in Africa in the Middle East, passing messages. So she went along too important people and very vocally advocated integration in the army. So her post war life is markedly different from the stuff that we've been talking about leading out to this. She buys an estate in the door don Chateau de Miland, and she starts adopting children. She adopts twelve kids beginning in nineteen fifty, and she calls them her Rainbow Tribe. They are boys and girls from all over the world and I mean we mean everywhere, and um. She goes from being a sex object to a madonna surrounded by all of her children. It's a really interesting transformation, which reminded us a lot of Angelina Jolie, and it's something she did very consciously. First she cultivated this image of herself as a sex object, and then she cultivated just as hard as this image of herself as a mother. She also dreamed of opening an international education institute, which she planned to call the College of Universal Brotherhood, and she basically quit the State age, but with money troubles. She ended up performing throughout the rest of her children well occasionally, both in the United States and in Europe. But things were tough for her in the US. Yeah, the nicer hotels wouldn't even receive her. So she's on top of the world in Paris, this huge star, but back in the United States, she's a black girl in Jim Crow rules, So it's a it's a tough shift for her that she is not going to take it anymore, and she made United States theaters desegregate her audiences. She regularly caused a ruckus with authorities over treatment of blacks and the lack of opportunities, and she also said that if a city's best hotel wouldn't take her, then she simply would not perform in that city. So there go your revenues. I like her here she's this racial barrier breaker, but this diva performer too kind of amazing. I love her. There was a famous incident at the Stork Club in nineteen fifty one, which of course was the plan used to be in New York, but Sherman Billingsley didn't admit Blacks. Being Josephine Baker and being wildly popular, he decided he would let her in, but then none of the waiters would serve her. They claimed they were out of every single item that she offered, or at least this is according to Josephine's version of the tale. She also said that Walter Winchell, who was a very influential gossip columnist, was a witness to everything that happened, and that he didn't do a darn thing to help her, and he was incensed by this portrayal, and she presses the matter, and Winchell says it's absolutely not true, but she won't let go of her version of the story, so he ends up calling her a communist and also saying she's anti Semitic and anti African American, and also talks to the FBI about her, which resulted in a seventeen year FBI investigation. Sarah said he reminded her of Press Hilton earlier today, kind of the scary gossip her. But he had a big effect on her career. He started calling her ms Josephony Baker in his column and a lot of her bookings were canceled because of this rift. And she also comes to the US for a lot of civil rights demonstration, So I mean her her experiences performing give you a pretty good idea of why she would be invested in this. She speaks at the March in Washington in nineteen sixty three. But she does have money trouble. She likes to spend. She has all these children, and um she loses the chateau. But who comes to the rescue Princess of Great Monico. I wish would come to my rescue on a regular basis. So we're nearing the end of her life. And in nineteen seventy five, there is a Josephine retrospective in Paris. It's marking her debut there fifty years earlier, and it was hugely popular. All the celebrities are there. But during its run, she dies of a stroke and the story is that she has this hemorrhage when she's in bed, surrounded by the newspapers with blowing reviews exactly telling the story of just how wonderful she is, which I think she probably liked a lot. And she's buried in Monte Carlo and twenty thousand people came to her funeral, So um, this is not not your typical story of a famous stage presence who weighs away an obscurity. She's famous to the end. But Sarah and I were talking earlier about this switch from being this sexual object to being the madonna, and people often wonder which image was more her, because of course we have the urge to categorize and stick her in one or the other. But we have an interesting biography to talk about, which is by Jean Claude baker Um, who she considered her adopted son even though he was never legally adopted, and he wrote a biography called Josephine the Hungry Heart. In it, he said that she was sexually abused, and also that she had had an affair with a middle aged man when she was thirteen. She also had several marriages that weren't entirely legal because she never ended the ones before them, and she got married when you was thirteen, and that she had affairs with both men and women, white and black. He also claims that she got into vaudeville through a sexual relationship with a woman, a blue singer. And we have a quote from a woman named maud Russell who met Josephine when they were working in Philadelphia, and she said, often we girls would share a boarding house room because of the cost. Well, many of us have been kind of abused by producers, directors, leading men if they liked girls and the girls needed tenderness. So we had girl friendships, the famous lady lovers. But lesbians weren't well accepted in show business. They were called bull dykers. I guess we were bisexual and what you would call us today. So going back to that earlier argument, which is more her this Madonna image or the um crazy sexualized dancer. And it's easy enough to see how the Madonna image is partly created, you know, it's partly an image that she creates and assumes later in life. But I think by saying that doesn't necessarily mean the earlier sexualized image is Josephine Baker's true self. It could be something that has been created in part two, and then something um that she's forced to assume. This uh, you know, affair with the middle aged man when she's thirteen, these marriages when she's a teenager. It seems like some of this um she just it was forced upon her almost. So let us know what you think. Email us at History Podcast at house to aff Works dot com, and we'd like to end with a quote from Jean claus book trying to explain why people love her so much. He said she was burning in hell from all the pain and abuse, but she was able to shut up her feelings within herself and give it back to people in a majestic and generous way. She was one of those exceptional people who know how to break down barriers to reach and touch the body the soul of anyone. So if you want to learn more about jazz and the jazz age, you should go to our home page ww of you dot how stuff Works dot com and search for how Jazz Worked. You should also try following us on Twitter because we write about all kinds of interesting Josephine Baker facts and everybody we're researching. We're at missed in history and Twitter For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the stuff you missed in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot com home page

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Katie Lamber and I'm Sarah Dowry and the first time I ever heard of Josephine Baker are subject for today. I was in middle school and I was reading an old film book of my dad's that had lots of film stills in it, and they're in the middle was this almost completely naked woman who's only wearing pretty much bananas around her waist. And being a Catholic schoolgirl, I was completely scandalized and yet intrigued. And that's how a lot of people felt about Josephine Baker, and that image of her wearing the bananas around her waist is probably the most famous. But there's a lot more to Josephine Baker than just that, And besides being an extravagant, provocative stage star, she's also a French spy, a civil rights agitator, and the mother of twelve children, so obviously we've got a lot to talk about here. As far as her early life, she was born Frieda J. McDonald June third, nineteen o six in St. Louis. Her family was very poor. There wasn't a dad around, and she was working by the time she was eight years old. She went on tour as a dancer at sixteen, moved to New York City in nineteen three, and while it was the Harlem Renaissance there, it was still a really tough time to be black in the United States, thought Josephine. So she went to Paris in and she joins a black American vaudeville troupe Lau Review Negra at the Teatra Deschans Liz and does the dance avage in Feathers, which is another thing that she's pretty well known for. And this is where she found freedom in Paris. There was a marked difference between being a black woman in New York City and a black woman in Paris. Here she was, you know, this ex pat and jazz age Paris Lisianna forle the crazy years after World War One, where jazz was wonderful, nudity was okay, brothels were okay, the dollar was strong, there wasn't prohibition. It sounds like a lot of fun, to be honest. So Josephine becomes a star at the fully Beer Jaire. This is where the g string with bananas comes into play, which is designed by no one other than Jean Cocteau, and her dancing is passionate and intense and gathers a lot of attention. Her act involved nudity, cross dressing, a lot of overt sexuality, and you have to ask the question of whether she was in control by manipulating her own image or was it more subjugating herself by buying into this idea of the sexual savage. Either way, she made a lot of waves and a nineteen thirty two she performed in white face at the Casino de Paris and a blonde wig and skin lightner and sang a song called cieg blanche if I were white, which was yeah, she's so over the top. Two she's I mean off stage as well. She's got a cheetah Chiquita, who does perform with her in a diamond collar. She has a chimp named Ethel and a goat named to Toot, among many other animals, and people worship her. Crowds follow her around, people clamor for her autograph. She's offered flowers and presents and dinners. So she's this huge celebrity in in glamorous Paris at Picasso writes that she has tall, coffee skin, ebony eyes, legs of paradise, a smile to end all smiles. Supposedly, Hemingway said she was the most sensational woman anybody ever saw or ever will, So there's no hope for the rest of us. According to Hemingway and called Er made wire sculptures of her. So she started getting into other things besides just being this stage dancer. She collaborated on biographies of herself. She wrote a novella in nineteen thirty one, and she began singing professionally in nineteen thirty and appearing in silent films in nineteen thirty four. You can find clips some of them on YouTube if you look. And by nineteen thirty seven she makes an important decision to become an official French citizen. This is sort of renouncing her her American past and the the trouble she faced when she lived in America. She thought the US was very racist, and she made a lot of comments about this throughout the rest of her life. But during World War Two she was banned by the Vichy government from performing and she started working with a Red Cross and also the French Resistance which is so cool. She was a spy and no one thought she would be a spy. With someone like Julia Child, it's, you know, she's the last perm likely back character, somebody who's so you can't ever imagine them flipping away unnoticed. Their presence is so so huge. But that's why it's right in plain sight. She ended up getting the Quadi Guer and the Legion of Honor with the rosette of the Raisy Staunts after the war. But during the war she performed for troops in Africa in the Middle East, passing messages. So she went along too important people and very vocally advocated integration in the army. So her post war life is markedly different from the stuff that we've been talking about leading out to this. She buys an estate in the door don Chateau de Miland, and she starts adopting children. She adopts twelve kids beginning in nineteen fifty, and she calls them her Rainbow Tribe. They are boys and girls from all over the world and I mean we mean everywhere, and um. She goes from being a sex object to a madonna surrounded by all of her children. It's a really interesting transformation, which reminded us a lot of Angelina Jolie, and it's something she did very consciously. First she cultivated this image of herself as a sex object, and then she cultivated just as hard as this image of herself as a mother. She also dreamed of opening an international education institute, which she planned to call the College of Universal Brotherhood, and she basically quit the State age, but with money troubles. She ended up performing throughout the rest of her children well occasionally, both in the United States and in Europe. But things were tough for her in the US. Yeah, the nicer hotels wouldn't even receive her. So she's on top of the world in Paris, this huge star, but back in the United States, she's a black girl in Jim Crow rules, So it's a it's a tough shift for her that she is not going to take it anymore, and she made United States theaters desegregate her audiences. She regularly caused a ruckus with authorities over treatment of blacks and the lack of opportunities, and she also said that if a city's best hotel wouldn't take her, then she simply would not perform in that city. So there go your revenues. I like her here she's this racial barrier breaker, but this diva performer too kind of amazing. I love her. There was a famous incident at the Stork Club in nineteen fifty one, which of course was the plan used to be in New York, but Sherman Billingsley didn't admit Blacks. Being Josephine Baker and being wildly popular, he decided he would let her in, but then none of the waiters would serve her. They claimed they were out of every single item that she offered, or at least this is according to Josephine's version of the tale. She also said that Walter Winchell, who was a very influential gossip columnist, was a witness to everything that happened, and that he didn't do a darn thing to help her, and he was incensed by this portrayal, and she presses the matter, and Winchell says it's absolutely not true, but she won't let go of her version of the story, so he ends up calling her a communist and also saying she's anti Semitic and anti African American, and also talks to the FBI about her, which resulted in a seventeen year FBI investigation. Sarah said he reminded her of Press Hilton earlier today, kind of the scary gossip her. But he had a big effect on her career. He started calling her ms Josephony Baker in his column and a lot of her bookings were canceled because of this rift. And she also comes to the US for a lot of civil rights demonstration, So I mean her her experiences performing give you a pretty good idea of why she would be invested in this. She speaks at the March in Washington in nineteen sixty three. But she does have money trouble. She likes to spend. She has all these children, and um she loses the chateau. But who comes to the rescue Princess of Great Monico. I wish would come to my rescue on a regular basis. So we're nearing the end of her life. And in nineteen seventy five, there is a Josephine retrospective in Paris. It's marking her debut there fifty years earlier, and it was hugely popular. All the celebrities are there. But during its run, she dies of a stroke and the story is that she has this hemorrhage when she's in bed, surrounded by the newspapers with blowing reviews exactly telling the story of just how wonderful she is, which I think she probably liked a lot. And she's buried in Monte Carlo and twenty thousand people came to her funeral, So um, this is not not your typical story of a famous stage presence who weighs away an obscurity. She's famous to the end. But Sarah and I were talking earlier about this switch from being this sexual object to being the madonna, and people often wonder which image was more her, because of course we have the urge to categorize and stick her in one or the other. But we have an interesting biography to talk about, which is by Jean Claude baker Um, who she considered her adopted son even though he was never legally adopted, and he wrote a biography called Josephine the Hungry Heart. In it, he said that she was sexually abused, and also that she had had an affair with a middle aged man when she was thirteen. She also had several marriages that weren't entirely legal because she never ended the ones before them, and she got married when you was thirteen, and that she had affairs with both men and women, white and black. He also claims that she got into vaudeville through a sexual relationship with a woman, a blue singer. And we have a quote from a woman named maud Russell who met Josephine when they were working in Philadelphia, and she said, often we girls would share a boarding house room because of the cost. Well, many of us have been kind of abused by producers, directors, leading men if they liked girls and the girls needed tenderness. So we had girl friendships, the famous lady lovers. But lesbians weren't well accepted in show business. They were called bull dykers. I guess we were bisexual and what you would call us today. So going back to that earlier argument, which is more her this Madonna image or the um crazy sexualized dancer. And it's easy enough to see how the Madonna image is partly created, you know, it's partly an image that she creates and assumes later in life. But I think by saying that doesn't necessarily mean the earlier sexualized image is Josephine Baker's true self. It could be something that has been created in part two, and then something um that she's forced to assume. This uh, you know, affair with the middle aged man when she's thirteen, these marriages when she's a teenager. It seems like some of this um she just it was forced upon her almost. So let us know what you think. Email us at History Podcast at house to aff Works dot com, and we'd like to end with a quote from Jean claus book trying to explain why people love her so much. He said she was burning in hell from all the pain and abuse, but she was able to shut up her feelings within herself and give it back to people in a majestic and generous way. She was one of those exceptional people who know how to break down barriers to reach and touch the body the soul of anyone. So if you want to learn more about jazz and the jazz age, you should go to our home page ww of you dot how stuff Works dot com and search for how Jazz Worked. You should also try following us on Twitter because we write about all kinds of interesting Josephine Baker facts and everybody we're researching. We're at missed in history and Twitter For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the stuff you missed in History Class blog on the how stuff works dot com home page