Interviews &
Clips
Photos
News
Awards &
Nominations

Josephine Baker

:

Overview

Avg.User Rating: 
3 Ratings
Rate this person:
Composer (Music Score), Actor, Featured Music, Songwriter
Born:
June 3, 1906 in St. Louis, MO
Death:
April 12, 1975 in Paris, France
Biography:Seductive, talented, and notorious, "Josephine Baker" rose from being a St. Louis street performer to become the toast of Paris for decades. The daughter of musician Eddie Carson and laundress Carrie McDonald, Baker began performing on the St. Louis streets as a child and then became a chorine in musicals. When she was 15, she married Pullman porter William Howard Baker (according to some sources she first married a foundry worker at age 13). Tired of the racial discrimination the African-American beauty encountered in St. Louis, Baker abandoned her husband at age 17 and moved to Paris where the exotic young singer and dancer became the star of La Revue Negre. Word of her sexy singing, sinuous dances, and charisma spread and soon she was performing to packed houses. In the mid-'20s, she joined an all-black revue with the Follies Bergere where she gained notoriety for her somewhat salacious banana... Full Biography
advertisement