From stage siren to secret spy: the story of Josephine Baker
Josephine Baker knew that when she entered the room, everyone noticed, and no one else was worth noticing. Whether she was in movies, on stage or on records, she had a star power which has now become extinct.
Despite being born in St Louis, Missouri, and making her name in the theatrical revues of Harlem, New York, Baker’s big break came in France. Like many African-American performers, she found that Paris was a more accepting, cosmopolitan alternative to the restrictive cities she knew.
It also helped that the slightly more lascivious edge of Paris‘ theatre scene let her show off her undeniable sex appeal. This is, after all, a woman who became a megastar by wearing nothing more than a string of pearls and a skirt made of bananas.
Earnest Hemingway once called her “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw,” and Pablo Picasso even painted her. The French movie industry courted Baker, and by the 1930s, she was having motion pictures made for her to star in. Despite all that, her home country never took her in, and Baker made France her home country, becoming a naturalised French citizen by marrying the industrialist Jean Lyon in 1937.
One can only imagine what Baker must have been going through when, in World War II, her country fell to the invading Nazis. Only the truly callous and stupid would have begrudged her from departing. After all, her country was now under the control of a regime that didn’t even view her as human. However, Baker was as brave as she was charismatic, and while her country fell in 1940, it turned out that she had been proactive about the whole thing.
She’d been working for the French intelligence service since the outbreak of the war in 1939.
How did Baker get involved with the French Resistance?
Alongside her performing commitments in Paris, Baker also had a busy touring schedule that took her all over Europe. The Deuxième Bureau had contacted her at the outbreak of World War II and asked if she could use performing for foreign dignitaries to her advantage, charming them into giving her secrets the French could use in the fight against the Reich. Since she was travelling so much, Baker was also able to traffic secret messages without arousing any suspicion.
After the fall of her country, she remained as one of the lynchpins of the French Resistance. She literally opened up her home to resistance fighters and Jewish refugees while continuing to undertake dangerous intelligence missions under the guise of concert tours. Despite the mounting risks and serious health problems, Baker managed to avoid detection, surviving the war and being awarded multiple medals of honour for her bravery and cunning.
Her bravery during the war made Baker an international celebrity, and she was finally able to return to her country of birth as a successful singer. However, she was more than a celebrity now. She was Josephine Baker, who fought oppression wherever she saw it, and thus, she became an outspoken supporter of the Civil Rights Movement in America. Baker didn’t just walk at the march on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr, she spoke at the event, dressed in her Free French uniform emblazoned with her medals of honour.
After all, this was just another battle. She’d seen fiercer. She’d seen scarier, and there were few things she couldn’t put right by opening her mouth, as she said on that fateful day, “When Josephine opens her mouth, they hear it all over the world”.