Josephine Baker

Paris, 1925. Over the course of a single evening, the Mississippi-born dancer Josephine Baker (1906-1975) becomes the darling of the Roaring Twenties. Some audience members in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees are scandalized by the African American's performance in La Revue Negre, but the city's discerning cultural figures--among them Picasso and Cocteau--are enchanted by her exotic, bold, and uninhibited style. When her adopted country grants her citizenship in 1939, Baker sees her fame as a means of helping the French Resistance. She takes advantage of her globe-trotting lifestyle to pass on messages and gather information. A decade later, installed in a palatial 15th century chateau, she adopts 12 children from different ethnic backgrounds. Josephine Baker paints a glorious portrait of a spirited, principled, and thoroughly modern woman.

Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was nineteen years old when she found herself in Paris for the first time in 1925. Overnight, the young American dancer became the idol of the Roaring Twenties, captivating Picasso, Cocteau, Le Corbusier, and Simenon. In the liberating atmosphere of the 1930s, Baker rose to fame as the first black star on the world stage, from London to Vienna, Alexandria to Buenos Aires. After World War II, and her time in the French Resistance, Baker devoted herself to the struggle against racial segregation, publicly battling the humiliations she had for so long suffered personally. She led by example, and over the course of the 1950s adopted twelve orphans of different ethnic backgrounds: a veritable Rainbow Tribe. A victim of racism throughout her life, Josephine Baker would sing of love and liberty until the day she died.