friendlier and more accepting nature, was an attractive proposal where she could blossom, and she did.
Her first job was in La Revue Nègre at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, where she immediately made an impression on French audiences with her Danse Sauvage, wearing no more than a feather skirt. Though the jazz revue La Revue Nègre failed, her comic ability and Jazz
dancing drew the attention of The Folies-Bergère’s director. It was there, in 1925, that she first performed her famous Banana Dance, a new, exotic and bold performance, including a costume of fake bananas strung into a skirt.
Baker was an overnight sensation, catapulting her to celebrity stardom, and making her, by 1927, the best paid entertainer in Europe. Baker was known for her versatile style and for incorporating elements of Jazz in her singing repertoire, reinforcing the sensual images coming out of the Harlem Renaissance in America. She was nicknamed "Black Venus," "Black Pearl" and "Creole Goddess,” and attracted admirers bearing marriage proposals and gifts of diamonds and cars. Cultural figures such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Christian Dior claimed her as their muse.
Baker was also the first black woman to star in major motion pictures: Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934) and Princesse Tam Tam (1935), and much later, Fausse Alerte in 1940.
Despite her popularity in France, Baker never reached stardom in America. Her performance in the Ziegfield Follies, in 1936, was met with apathetic audiences, who disliked the idea of a rich, powerful and sophisticated black woman. The New York Times even called her a "Negro wench.” She was replaced by Gypsy Rose Lee, and Josephine returned to Europe heartbroken. Back in Paris, she married a Jewish Frenchman, Jean Lion, in 1937, and became a French citizen. They would divorce in 1940.
Back to the US
Josephine,
The Animal
Lover
She loved animals, and she was known to go around Paris and to her shows with Chiquita, her pet cheetah, which had been given to her to use as part of her dance show. Chiquita would often escape and end up in the orchestra pit; thus, terrorizing the musicians to the grea-test amusement of the audience. Baker loved the animal so much, it stayed with her. The big cat traveled with Baker,
rode in her car and slept in her bed. She also owned at one time a chimpanzee (Ethel), a pig (Albert), a snake (Kiki), a goat, a parrot, parakeets, fish, three cats and seven dogs.
43 | Ceres Magazine | Oct/Nov 2015
Josephine pictured in her most famous outfit - the legendary 'girdle of bananas,' 1926 by Walery.
(Below) Josephine Baker walking Chiquita in the streets of Deauville, France, in 1930. Bettmann photo collection.