Chasing a Rainbow: The Life of Josephine Baker

On April 15th 1975 thousands of Parisians came out onto the streets to witness the passing of one of the best loved artists in front. This was the funeral of Josephine Baker. Until then perhaps no one had quite understood the depth of love and admiration in which she was held throughout her adopted country in spite of the 21 gun salute. In spite of being the very proud vote of the Legion of Honor and the medal of the resistance. Josephine Baker was not French. Her roots lay in the very heart of Black America. A A. In the summer of 1917 an illegitimate black girl or a feminist

tempy. Witness the scene she never forgot. In Josephine's hometown of St. Louis. The rumor spread that a white girl had been raped. A mob descended on New record of the town clamoring for revenge. Within hours 50 people lay dead. In a pool of smoke rising above the city. One terrified little girl thought she saw the white flag of God watching over. There were reasons enough to be afraid. Everywhere in America where there was a black community of any size an atmosphere of terror prevailed. Carefully nurtured by the Ku Klux Klan. Lynchings were frequent. The local police did little to prevent. There were even some who wore their police uniforms by day. And the uniform of the Klan by night.

If the Negro community kept in its place if a long day's work in the cotton fields was followed by the simple pleasures of singing and dancing. Then there need be no trouble. But heaven help the black man who wanted more than this. Appalled by the prospect of a life spent in her home town. Josefina began to look for a way of escape. She quickly followed up and down the country troupes of black entertainers travel from town to town gathering audiences where they could. Josephine was soon on the road with a Dixie step. She traveled all over the southern states and eventually know the liveliest black community in the world. Harlem. Took a good deal of courage to live alone in the heart of the 20s.

Every girl who found her place in the sun would be a dozen that she was forced into a life of degradation and vice. And for all its verve and vitality. Harlem was a place of terrible poverty. Let was scarce Bishan was info's mobster's flourished in the other crowded streets. Many months on the road with the you step up to do the thing the ways of the world are still in its 15 yet somehow managed to marry and then mislay not one husband but two. The second was a railway porter who used his name for the rest of her life. He was called Willy Baker in many ways the black people of New York were just as exploited as their brothers and sisters in the south. They could protest. They marched. They organized.

This was the silent protest of 1922 to the demonstration by the people of Harlem. But given the opportunity they could easily match their white neighbors in dignity and civilized values. And in one respect the out shown them complete. The. This was the golden plum the height of the jazz age. The black renaissance. Led by such artists as Duke Ellington jam Kellaway and Adelaide hall. The audience was all right no blacks at all blacks really weren't allowed one to allow two to come in and we knew that a free worked under those conditions. We didn't like that one bit. But what can we do. Few places anywhere have seen such a flowering of musical talent as Harlem in the early twenties. Clubs and news schools were opening all over town. Whenever she could. Josephine found a way of getting in to absorb the artistry of performers like with great Bojangles

Robinson. The. It was the songwriting team of Cecil and Blake who first set Josephine on the road to stardom or something. And this rare piece of sound film. Here they are with one of their own compositions Eubie Blake Sissel and Blake were about to achieve a long held ambition to mount the first all black musical comedy to be seen on Broadway. The. Financial aid was a modest little show but with hit songs that are still played today

shuffle along was to find its place in the great legend of Broadway. By sheer Garland perseverance Josephine somehow wormed her way into the cost and once scene she was unstoppable. Stuck on one end of the chorus line she stole the loft by pulling faces and horsing around. The other girl called her a monkey but the audience loved her. The performance was delightful. Of course the audience when she would do these funny things naturally they were attractant and they would applaud the things that she was doing. Love the dancing and everything but Josephine was most outstanding because she'd have eyes crossed one minute and for her Bulwa head the next minute and she was all over the place. She'll go out of the line. Maybe come forward and do a few steps then run back home alive. She is good at comedienne. No she wasn't a dancer and she wasn't but you could say she wasn't beautiful but she was fascinating

the with her unique sense of rhythm and self-deprecating humor. She put her own personality into everything she did critics and audiences began to recognize that here was an original talent that owed little to other performers the just as New Yorkers began to take Josephine to their hearts.

She was gone. The. Late summer of 1925 Josephina woke up to find herself in Paris lined up a rich American wife of a diplomat decided to bring over a group of musicians she wanted to show the French what the Jazz Age was all about. And deciding to join the cost of luck. Josephine made the biggest decision of her life. I think of that period. Paris was really artistically speaking the center of the world. It began like a storm. It was like a storm also because the economics were good. It was a boom that would stop in 1930 after a big crack in Wall Street. So there was money and there was desire to entertain. Then there was also all the artists that. Gathered in Paris all the Evelyn Galv. Cubist where there really isn't a Dada was

there. The major painters sculptors musicians artists of all over the world lived all past or visited Paris. The. Paris was really a crazy city the. In less than two weeks the show was due to open the day traditional IT EASY. Cold concrete edifice worlds away from the smoke and sweat of the Cotton Club. And since the very nature of jazz is improvisation no one had given much thought to the structure of the show. Josephine and her fellow performers believed in talent not discipline. And soon everybody saw that there was no director and that it was a complete mess. All these crazy black and that they know

as messing around with no real idea of what the show was going to be. So the people. From that day are called up on Jack Shaw to direct the show to design that they call. And that's how it was built. It wasn't the style of the show. All the Tubby blues singer who got the design is our young girl at the end of the chorus line with limbs that seem to be made of rubber more than anyone Plekhanov can truly claim to have launched Josephine on her astonishing career. The poster he designed for Nagle became almost as famous as the show with Josephine prominently displayed the poster and the original program have survived. Unfortunately no cameras were there to record the performance itself only a tantalizing glimpse of Josephine filmed that about the same time. Instantly it became a hit and instantly it

influence the whole scene and even Baker being the star of the show became instantly a star. Everybody was in love with the first night because she had done nothing because that is so wonderful way she had so naturally she was just like any mom knows how to move he has got to think about how to move. Like I said. It was a beautiful half tame creature from the jungle. Now chose to perceive the Josephina was more than willing to oblige. In her exuberant naifs. She saw nothing racist or degrading poses such as these. And Paris loved her for it. I painted her again and again. For time that became lovers. He was the ideal escort into the world of poets actors and musicians that now opened its doors to my. Painters and sculptors guest saw and from among them he was as a model.

A fashionable artist demanded several sketches of. This. Sculpture by Alexander Calder. For semiliterate black from the slums of St. Louis. These were heady days. But there was one impulse Josephina always followed to keep on the move. In the winter of 1926 she set out with negative for the hidden delights of Berlin. The wall had left its stars but unlike Parisians Berliners were recovering not from victory from defeat. He's had broad chronic political instability and a wave of inflation so bad

that it took a boatload of money to buy a loaf of bread. The streets were bustling. The lights were bright. The Bullen's mosque of Gateway was paper thin. In a city where Democratic politics had never really taken root. There were times in the early twenties when orderly daily life looked as if it might break down altogether. Because brownshirts were beginning to flourish like rats in a sewer. To them this dusky visitor was not exactly a fair. Blue eyed symbol of their immaturity. They began to denounce Streatfeild in their literature. But she had little interest in such things. She had come to immerse ourselves in that other side of life for which the city was notorious. The hallmark of Paris nightlife was infectious gate. The third take

its place is rather differently and physis was often on the more than that for us. To Josephina it Hardyman. She wanted to experience everything no matter how bizarre. And she was more than willing to contribute to the fun. When a newspaper reporter asked her to describe the ideal world she replied one in which we can all go naked as in paradise. One night at a party after the show. She met the famous theater director Max Steinhart. The intensity of his gaze she said. It was like a bank fire glowed with an inner light. Reinhard tried to persuade her to stay in the lane and study in his acting academy. In the end it became a tug of war between Rhinehart and the director of the jail. But Death Valley in Paris already had Josephina signature on a contract but

it was not the threat of legal action that brought her back. It was a thought of twelve hundred Benue cost costume and the music of Irving Berlin. She was the oldest and grandest music born in Paris. The first review had been staged in 1869. The first new of the 40s. The right of call it appeared in 1907 in those early days the Footies had been gradually creating an exotic and dream world of its own a world of soft white some fantastic headdresses which offered an hour to escape from the tawdry realities of ordinary life. This was in charge of a garden which now opened its gates to Joseph. But an institution like the BBC doesn't change to suit its

artists. They have to change frillies we're not really interested in developing her comic talents. The natural rapport with an audience they wanted to turn her into just one more. Queen of the music all bamboozles and all of us. Josephine didn't mind. She considered her body to be a best set. So the smaller the costume the better. On one occasion back in America the dress she was wearing on stage brushed against the candle and caught fire. It was a nasty experience. Besides in that first show the footage are a true gift's was still on display. Ostrich feathers all over and she had beautiful long legs and she was a lovely color. You know cufflink color. And she was very slim and very graceful and she sang in broken French which still went into delight. She was just wonderful.

Footy's you was to become famous for another reason. This was the review in which Josephine appeared for the first time in her famous girdle of Bernanos. It was the trademark which stayed with for the rest of her career. The hand painted version of the famous banana dolls recent They came to light in America. It was probably shown to cinemagoers as a short film before the main feature. Since saw to it that Josephine was best all the more modestly than she was with Paris audiences. But the setting is exactly the same.

This is Josephine Baker on the stage of the footy dancing. At a moment of musicor history. She was still only 20 years old the large Dione educated. And without much grasp of the language yet. For a growing number of French women Josephine was becoming a kind of champion a symbol of the new freedom they felt was within that grass. As the roaring 20s gave way to what one historian called a hiking Thirty's the women of France began to step out of their corsets. Healthy exercise in the open that took over from the power and pain of. Some traditional Frenchman accustomed to the attentions of willing mistresses.

Indosat lives. Again to see that world turned upside down. There were those who said a Josephina an interloper and an upstart. Yet still dominated the ring uncrowned queen of the French musical and determined to remain so. She knew as Joseph did not that beneath the surface glitter France was still a society of rigid convention. In the eyes of most French bourgeois. And musicor performers especially shifted and the new would always be part of the Damone ripe for adventure never respectable.

This lie the Newble coloured girl from the American Midwest might be the toast of the town. She would never be taken home and introduced to mother. Despite her fame Josephina was still an insecure kid alone in a fun night into the emotional vacuum at the center of her life. That stepped the man with a past much more than her own. He claimed to be a consummately zippy Teano. Actually he was more probably at Pena's gigolo. She got him bit beat up and wherever she went in the next few years his scheming face was never far away. Taking charge of her career. His first move was to sign up with the rival music that nobody there. She was presented with a young Lippard called Chiquita who became part of her

act. She took him out on the Boulevards between shows prison said they were never quite sure which end of the leash held the wild animal. And from the cousin of Bahi she received another more lasting gift. A song called Judo's am. I have two loves my country and Paris. It will be associated with Josephine for the rest of her life and when she sang of her country she still meant America. Odah able to believe that luck. The couple now moved into one of the leafy suburbs of Paris live isn't it that. She couldn't marry the bita.

Somehow the little matter of divorcing her railway porter back in the states had slipped to mind. But in this ostentatious house they lived as man and wife. And began to map out even greater heights. Josefina Pito was in no doubt it had to be the movies. First then show was a silent picture called The less trendy clubs. Josephine plays a West Indian girl who spends the early part of the picture trying to escape the attentions of a local. She longs for Paris and with nothing but beads for her though fear decides to become a stowaway. The scene is set for a series of comic humiliations which end predictably with Josephine caught taking a bath in the captain's cabin. Paris naturally takes it to its heart. And in case anyone has missed the obvious comparison it Peko himself plays her film score. No doubt he drew three

salaries as a manager producer and leading man. The was scathing about last year and the following year broke off a faltering film career to take the lead in a production of often box Retta that chaotic. Miss Finback really want me. She was blissfully ignorant. He'd been dead for 40 years. And. This short film sequence. But if the sound is old that survives of chaos.

But it was all the true talents of Joseph a singing of clowning inimitable sense of comic timing. It. Wasn't enough of the Pito he wanted to transform Josephina into an international star. There was only one way to achieve that. The new Talking Pictures. On. Princess 22:00 was the most ambitious film Josephine Baker ever made. An attempt to emulate the sumptuous musicals that were beginning to come out of Hollywood. Unfortunately homegrown talent was almost smothered by false cutting and

synthetic Connectionism. Plays. Yet another child of nature caught up in the tentacles of high prison society. Of course the embers of a savage heart still glow waiting to be fanned into life by the drums of native land. And all the men go wild. Frigid wives. Is that his approval. But Princess tenpin decides that civilization is not. Back home where she belongs but that donkey is waiting for her. And he knows just what to do with 2000 years of progress. Josephine made just one other film. This is a comedy with a great young Gebre.

She plays a Bridget as a laundress who delights in rescuing birds from their cages. It was popular enough in France but it flopped in the United States. The truth was she might be the biggest star in Europe. American distributors remain stony faced. It will be many years before a new age of colored star would be seen on the cinema screens of America. Josephine might sing of two lovers but one of them still rejected her completely. Her film career was over but her fateful public in France were not to know it. She was their star Nuckols of the scene and whatever the event she could be counted on to make an entrance. Even a fervent and nationalistic events like the Tour de Force. It was the theme was the popular choice. The BE2 was not impressed. His eyes were still on the gold at the end of the American

Rainbow. If Hollywood refused to accept. Why not try New York. Together they began to lay plans for a new overseas tour. There were hats and outfits to be chosen and born Schoeman that he was a Peter decreed that nothing should be done in private that might possibly take place before the public gaze. One of the feeling that Josephine would have been quite happy to try on lazily in the middle of the line. If it was a required offer. A In. Fact. A.

Novel. In the early weeks of 1936 the newly launched Normandy drive to France as much and fleet steamed into New York Harbor. It was 11 years since Josephine had seen her native America a long time to be cut off from your cultural roots showbusiness in New York had moved on. A. Bit too had booked her to appear in the new Ziegfeld Follies. It was a big broad show that owed little to Harlem and the black on the sauce the top of the bill was shared by the veteran singer Fanny Brice. And a promising new

comedian Bob Hope. As for Josephine's performance. Variety magazine pronounced its verdict. She has a sinuous body but the vital spark is missing in a high reedy voice she sings the most lamentable song. The critic for the Americans said she had a voice like a cracked bell with a padded Clapper. All they wanted me to do was be a half naked she complained. I had no chance to be myself. It was hardly the homecoming she'd dreamed of. No. For obvious reasons. Because what made her a star in Paris in the way of your nagging 19:25 beings of first black entertainer was of course not true on Broadway. Where they where many of them and I think that when she came back to the states as she had been an intruder who succeeded in Paris she was again an intruder on the New York stage.

But this time she couldn't make it because they were far too many other entertainers in the world. She rounded on Pepito unaware that he was dying of cancer. She came back to you alone. It was only one thing she needed now and that was her beloved Paris. I guess Jean became what you do not do any of the the director of the day. Well father was waiting to meet her with a brand new contract accepted it gratefully. In spite of appearances she was close to despair. Even her taste in animals seemed to have suffered a setback. Instead of a leopard on a leash she now had to pay for. A.

To hide. Or perhaps bury her happiness. Josephina flung herself into all kinds of new activities with press and public watching every get change. She doesn't drive a car. Peters early that seemed to make Frank vaguely aware of her own mortality. In a short space of time she met married and divorced the millionaire playboy called Jonti before they parted he told her to fly his private plane. Knowing her love of horses even persuaded her to take part in a special race at her calmly. She displayed all her natural athleticism. In spite of all this. Paris was not it say something poisonous and.

Still standing between Josephina ultimate ambition was a legendary figure. Ms. This thing it was well over 50. The precise age was a closely guarded secret and anyone who inquire too closely got a taste for vicarious Tom because it she had a great reputation for a meanness to worlds of artists. She took the belittling Josephina whenever she could and on one famous occasion you spat at each other in public. Made me. Miss Thing get older and she was 30 years at least and she was. The

star of Barry's. Mistake Gach was everything and suddenly that little black girl appearing and beginning to compete with her and to compete successfully with her can be easily understood. Sad for me it was a little girl from Paris who certainly was like many French people. Not very happy to see a foreigner coming. Especially the final being a black person. So I it was certainly not kind to her and of it was an old friend of his dad and was more or less of the same type. Be gay but it. Was. Sad that part of the game the Josephina should be drawn into the rivalry with her fellow stars. A few things to watch you were to become extremely bitter. It

was a great artist she said. A small human being. Within weeks of course of their lives would diverged never. In. The spring of 1914. The false security of the Maginot Line was about to be exposed as a myth. That's Panzer Divisions swept past its northern flank. Was based itself for the coming struggle. It was young men set off from the French high command already knew that efforts to defend the city were late. This is not Joseph's as well. That would have been time enough to get back to the United States but never for a moment across her mind. As soon as the field hospitals began to fill with wounded. She was desperate in comfort and good cheer. On this occasion with young pupils from the ballet school. On the 13th of June 1940 Hitler's arm is road into Paris.

Resistance would have been shoot down. None was offered. And the city was safe from destruction. Even the invading Germans were surprised that the speed with which the city would turn to something like normality. A large proportion of the artistic community including me think it should. And it was soon that Midway cafés and cabarets it was almost business as usual even if the clients have thought they were buying Germans. The. Josephine Baker was nowhere to be seen. Years later the world learned that she had already been recruited into the resistance and was operating somewhere in southwest France.

One section of the resistance didn't want her at all. The soul is another matter. Hari others thought she was ideal for the role of an international courier. Special agents were already gathering intelligence about German units pinned down by the activities of the Maquis Josephine could carry this written on of a sheet music in invisible ink. The neutral city of Lisbon. That. Time she even appeared in uniform. It was all most confusing. But now she was bound for an even stranger destination North Africa. If ever there was a paradise the agents agents traitors and spies of every shade it was Morocco in the early days of the war.

Officially ruled by the Vichy government under its control. In practice the local pop shops were quite a bit to conspire with anyone. Josephine was soon living under the protection of Busha I'll gladly cash the most powerful of all the local chiefs to her. He was a figure of glabra and chalmer subject. She was a sadistic tyrant. According to legend. One slip from the ground saddled with one bound at the same time striking off the head of the unfortunate slave holding a steerer in his palace. He was said to have 365 bedchambers in which he kept a different concubine every night of the year. But whatever his little foibles al-Balawi was a shrewd politician. Had already decided that the future lay with the hour. In November 1942 American troops landed at Casa Blanca. Three days later. They were parading through the streets.

There was a moment Josephine had been praying for. The first of her two great loves coming to the rescue of the second. But she herself was in no position to enjoy. For months she had been gravely ill with her tonight. There were rumors that she was already dead. Weak as she was she insisted on getting up from her sick bed to watch the parade from a rooftop. The destruction caused by the arrival of an American arm in a backward Muslim country was colossal. But in addition the Army had problems of its own rather the background isn't. There was trouble in North Africa and between white America and black American soldiers. There were seven tails. Irritated and irritated we would need to claim explosive

and therefore not bizzarro to be associated with the purpose that was at all a sexual background. There are some American whites. The other one European girls and the culture that they were picked up for feel that they would be raped or otherwise mistreated. Improve the situation Sidney Williams was given the task of organizing a center where black and white soldiers could meet on equal terms. It was to be called the Liberty club. Searching around for celebrities for his opening night he suddenly heard about the feeling she wasn't dead. She was actually in the rock. She was black. She was American and she was a star. She was. It was a challenge. Josephine had said. That she met her parents from the

second floor. Down she wrote on Tuesday. And as she descended down stairs she sang the song a dozen more. That. The. House. Had him hanging from the sandhills. And she did something that I never saw a person do before. She converted a song on putting the song into a prayer. Generalisable as she calls it out. She was put down on me and my hands clasped in front of her. It was one. And. The freshmen stood up in that chair. Very dramatic. It.

Was. The 15th 1944. Allied forces side by side with three French units landed on the desert. All across France as the enemy rolled back in towns and villages. The people turned out to check and channel them out when they saw tanks and trucks painted with a cross of Lorraine. Resume's took to the streets erected barricades again liberating their own city before the Allied columns arrived. At. All we

want. You know we do it all day. We. Responded on Monday. Jill Joanie all over. Again. This was the to with Joseph. Now it's. No longer just a bump in a but a national hero. Like many others she had little pity for girls like these. Their heads shaved for consorting with Germans. And in those first weeks of liberation the stigma of collaboration hung over more famous heads as well. There is something. I'd like to make clear to you. At the end of 1941. That's for

propaganda. Made. The people of France and of the whole world. Believe that it was an out piece that I had made a tour. Of Germany. During the war. The German occupation in Iraq. I want to say that it is absolutely untrue. I have never made a tour of Germany whatsoever. I just accepted to go. And see you know. In Germany. The French where I had been a prisoner myself in the last war. I just sat there one afternoon to cheer up the bodies. And I never saw them get anywhere. I don't think so that they don't do that. So I'm always win them. Those who can get you to ride on the chin and them. And so I shout to everybody wanted to find your place in

the red ball sweeping the Josephina herself had no need for folding explanations. First she was awarded the most highly coveted of decorations the medal of the resistance. Then some years later she was made a member of the Legion of Honor one of France's highest awards. Generally given to xed new dawn service from the day. When the memorials of the French resistance at the mill Valley was consecrated. Joseph was among the distinguished guests waiting to greet one minister and president to rule himself. What exactly had she done during the war. Was it really so secret. That she said something I'm not at liberty to talk about it. Anymore.

She was now so famous and revered that the Beatles were delighted to make her the star of the new show and all that once she found someone new to bitches. And in that great empty void which was her personal life puppet a band leader who ironically had worked in Paris during the war years. His name was Ubu. That's some Jubilee on his end Todd and I went into the woods on a logging expedition that is sensibly they took a film camera with them. With. Many.

Not just a wink pose gossip's had always said of Joe that he was not the marrying kind. They were wrong. The wedding took place at the beginning of June in 1947. It was Joe's first and Josephina for. Typically show the baker It should have never happen. But she was in love with him. She fell in love with him. And when you fell in love of course there is no need to explain no need to explain that Jonathan Baker had been on the side of the Fonz on the side of the Gore and that you'll be on like many Frenchmen. I've been a collaborator so of course here again since I know newspaper and television audiences love the little gossip and in love. I can go to sleep of course meaning Nagor said that marriage was a sin to try to escape the complication. He could have had

I been a collaborator when his towards Josephine's marriage to Joe. You had one great practical advantage that could go on overseas tours together and sometimes arrange to be on the same billing. In 1951 she decided to try again in the one country soon where she had never been fully accepted. She longed to be loved by him. But this time it was going to be on her own terms. No sooner had she landed in New York she announced that she would not appear before in a segregated audiences and if any restaurant refused to serve her she would confront racism home. In Harlem. Went on a special Sunday was designated beach day and it seemed as if the entire black community came out from the streets to welcome her. But. On the other side of Manhattan the reception was very different.

The world famous dog club an incident took place which made headlines all over Europe as well as America. At the center of the storm were two well-known New Yorkers on the right Sherman Billingsley. The clubs were Bonta determined to prevent the store from becoming Multi Racial. The famous newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. There was another newspaper columnist in the club that night Jack O'Brien Walter Winchell and I we met there frequently around midnight. I finished my column and he would finish his column and my wife and myself and Walter were having a late supper in the club room which is the same sanctorum that where all of the celebrities gathered and we saw Josephine Baker come in with her husband Joseph Young was to call him Joe snoop around on Broadway and that came out that they had had three drinks which Josephine Baker admitted they had three rounds of drinks and then they ordered it after they were there 10 15 minutes they ordered steak sandwiches and they

weren't delivered to the table for 35 minutes which she considered an insult. Well fellows like myself Walter Winchell and myself you know we had we were popular members of the gang around there. We often if we order a steak might take an hour and a half an hour but she being highly conscious of it and being pretty much militant about her blackness and discrimination and for proper reasons I think that she jumped at a conclusion. Other witnesses were convinced that it was Sherman Billingsley who personally orchestrated the whole affair by instructing his wages not to serve Josephine as one paper put it still provides for the whole steak on eBay. They went after Sharmin villainously Sharmin believes it was an old prohibition bootlegger and a skin as thick as a star clubs was. And no matter what they wrote about him he didn't care. Instead of attacking Billingsley he turned to have real the powerful figure of Walter Winchell for refusing to come to the aid.

The whole thing turned into a vendetta which Walter then declared a counter vendetta and as I've always said about Walter and to his face he only knew one way to fight and that was unfair because I told him his motto was never above the belt. He was able to dig up facts or at least information from France about Josephine Baker. As I left liberal when she was a liberal of course and he either felt sure that he was right and accusing her of either communism or pro-communist I didn't know. So I never said I didn't get into this simply because I wasn't that important. There was someone else in the store that night who never forgot the incident and doubted whether she herself would ever have had Josephina courage. A young film actress Grace Kelly in the years ahead Josephine would have reason to be grateful she was there. Disillusioned with America. To off to Argentina. And

the bombastic simplicities of President her on. All her life she'd been prone to certain political life the years before when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia to the had described it as a crusade to free the slaves. Now she declared the squalid regime in Argentina a vast improvement on the United States but flirting with Peron was only a digression. A true destiny lay in the peaceful area of southern France where she had bought a shop at a place called Leave me alone here. She planned to install her famous rainbow tribe. Children of different ethnic backgrounds from all over the world unable to have any of her own. She proposed to adopt at least 12. It was to be a living practical example of human brotherhood in action. And brothers they all were until Josephina heard

about a little orphan girl safe from the Algerian War. The population of an entire village had been massacred except some babies hidden in a sack of potatoes. One of them was Malyon. I remember when I was younger that I was very very courteous and I asked my mother why she was black and I was white and my boss was all in the color and she told him that she asked me why I asked to see a difference between deals us and. When I can answer she told me that I was adopted and. It was a good thing. Happy new news for me. Another baby hidden in that same sack of potatoes was Brian and Josephine instead of a childhood spent in the heat and dust of the Sahara. He found himself here looking like the young prince in a fairy tale castle.

Because I had nine Plaza's. We could play games like cowboys and Indians sports. Even as a child of the light brigade I remembered we we we played out of desire and of course we didn't realize how lucky we were compared with all that Cintron. But the things that we didn't like was to be watched by Tories or the Czar. And that was very unnatural for us. We really hate that because it was like watching a zoo with Josephine often away on tour earning the money to keep up the chateau. Much of the mothering as well as the fathering had to be done by the long suffering Jew. He was a big man for me because you always try to do what everything what my want to do. And

when my mother talked to us here adopts as to two and he tried to give us a good way of speaking and it was very hard because my mother had a big personality and my most. My father in France was a big man too. Nevertheless when yet another baby arrived this time from Venezuela Joe decided he would stop no more than years of marriage at times. Happy ones for both of them ended in mutual recriminations. For the first time Josephine had to face the double burden of supporting both the chateau and the rainbow tribe alone. Worse still she brought over several members of her own family from St. Louis and they too had to be paid for grand ideas and extravagant gestures were no substitute for sound management and debts began to mount. To make matters

worse Milone was beginning to have its detractors. Why was it necessary for the children to have their own kaso. There were those who said it was nothing more than a gigantic publicity stunt and the 12 young lives were being exploited for the greater glory of one. When you have ever seen you do always be so. Of course it looks like. I'm pretty sure she was villain so maybe she really believes in the possibility of day. If either way it was out of town. Like. Once in your life to a black man. I'd. Like. Should believe that Joyce told me twice. I mean. When we. Talk. With her. You could not believe one said that she was. Not. A. Christmas was one of the few times when the tribe could count on having Josephina into themselves

she'd appear loaded down with absurdly lavish gifts and try to compensate for every hour she'd been away with a great outpouring of love. I don't remember one day without kisses and she wanted to be alone with us and she always regrets to have to leave to to to have some money for us. And sometimes she took me with. We heard her travel and I was very very proud to see everybody looking at her. It was my mother. It was also Josephine Baker. Who was now approaching 60 but daunting days might be nearly over. But she was singing better than ever.

So. You. See. MY. So we. Made. The fateful public still adored her but among her fellow artists and those who had to work with her behind the scenes her reputation could be all different. You see. A blaze of Joe she had in New School. More like a grown up son than anything else. So it went everywhere with us. Of course like all famous actors. So she was no exception. And define OKto as a wonderful definition for those people and most are the only monster Angelica was one that excels

in many many time with the people working close to I was a pure monster. And I don't know why now. Only because she's not safe anymore. If one talk about St. Josephine Holly I think you know that we're very sad if she had been on your scent how boring you would have been. And let me tell you what. One minute I looked at his cabin feeling like the sun. We need the sun on the house. What about for the trees and for human beings. But the closer you go to the sun you may die out of digitization and burning. And so what if in Baker if you were to cross to her everyone has been bad then I can take her. That's why she was so fabulous on a stage when the public was protected by dorkus topit. Gonzalo you got to wonder when and when the sun is shining she has not too hot not too cold. Purity for.

All. The hops her greatest gift was her ability to make each member of her audience feel that she was performing for them and them alone. Who saw. That this extraordinary bond with the audience had its effect on the film too. She simply could not believe that the world would ever let her down. Even as she sang of a village now hopelessly in debt. She was planning to convert the loan into a college of brotherhood costing millions of francs. The people from many different countries would come to study. I. Live.

On. All. Over. His face. He. Is. Wise. Yea. Yea. You

say. He should do. Do. You. Need me say. All. The. Way from the footlights harsh reality was waiting. Leave me alone. Tradesmen were choosing to deliver goods to the chateau until their bills were settled. She claimed she was being exploited but with no proper management she had no way of finding out. As for the tribe there was scarcely

enough money for food and clothing that patience exhausted her creditors gathered at the Chateau de an effort to convince her that there was only one way out. The Meillard must be sold. It was the spring of 1960. Outside the Olympia Theater in Paris students were demonstrating in the streets doggedly defiantly. She sang on. Believing that Providence would come to the aid. On a. High. The. Next day she joined the demonstration in the streets forty years earlier.

One might have found her on the side of the students on the radical Josephina political reactions tended to be unpredictable. Now she was marching up the shelves and easies to both stop apparently flagging fortunes of a beloved father figure President Schauder Gaulle. But even Josephine's indomitable spirit was beginning to break. She'd suffered a slight heart attack already. Doctors and friends warned her that if she didn't stop driving herself so relentlessly she was bound to suffer another. The decision would wait no longer. She resolved to go back to leave me alone around a big square table. My mother used to house has. Had a big decision and won. I will never forget what the season was when she announced as we were leaving this castle forever. That was.

Very traumatic for her especially and after well see she she went around the table in brazed us. Cry and in fact I remember we were half sad half happy sad because we are leaving of all but happy because we are going to Paris. On a wet winter morning bedraggled and exhausted. The rainbow tribe arrived at the Gounder streets in Paris like a mother hen and rounding up the chicks Josephina push them into the buffet. The plan was simple. The children would be cared for by her friend might speak to the wife of a pianist while she herself would go back and quite literally fight for her beloved chatter. Even now she had no feelings of bitchiness. And after she'd like to. I felt peace. And then she moved on

keys because she was your flagmen to you. Wow and M.F. all of us could be the building and watching you know that when we left she said she'd easy she's all said. You should plan and befriend them if you feel something you should plan on Josephina grasp on reality had finally slipped the Milhaud had already been sold at auction. This was the place where the chorus girl had become a queen. For a few brief years. The things many people dream about had actually come true.

In her mind. The loan had become a kind of shrine. And these are the steps. Where my mother sobbed for many many hours. Here. There is a famous photo of her. Right here Satan. And dressing gown and nightcap. And they was terrible as she wouldn't move. She refused that they had to hire some kind of

hooligans. The local town and the hooligans were forced to treat her badly because it went really terrible and comes out. She had a heart attack and had to go directly to to hospital. She was homeless penniless and now very ill. There was outrage all over France. The outrage stopped short of action. Princess Grace of Monaco was the one person to come to her rescue. She had never forgotten Josephine's courage that night in the stock Club 17 years before. As soon as Josephina was well enough the Red News invited the entire rainbow tribe to Monte-Carlo where they were given a royal reception. At the small resort of the rugbyleague. Just along the coast. Princess Grace put a villa at the disposal. Here. The children would be cared for while Josephina regain

her strength. And it wasn't long before there were plans to rebuild her career. You don't. The distinguished stage and costume designer all of us asked her to star in a gala performance of the Monaco sporting club. The first show was so successful that he started to plan a second one this time based on the story of her own life in a beat up in New York. Poppy Barfi. Yes there's been an additional day that I die a little bit. You saw that plenty. It's got to feel funny. Is it the doctor says. Well. It's just the nature of sin. But I don't at first Josephine was reluctant after all she was now 68. But gradually the conviction grew that this was the show that would take her back and try to her beloved Paris the great musicals like because you know the first day of Zeya politely but firmly turned her down

a popular theatre on the left than aboutness offered her welcome. It was cold you know keep dancing Monto the more you do it. I. Said. Show. Why. She. Said they actually got porgies you actually legally started to swell all this time. I mean you would expect that that would be a nice idea and mandated by the. So you know on your take a space which you see it in live laserjet guy LFA on

idea that photography was really valuable to waste on public property and foolish people figure it out to do you also have a box and he comes out and tell us to go after the show. Dozens of celebrities Princess Grace herself Sophia Loren Ulladulla on your head doc among them gathered to do her on the following night. There was another party this time for members of the cost. If tired. Certainly not. She went to bed later than any of them and never woke up. Doctors diagnose the cause of death as a cerebral hemorrhage but a friend said I think she died of joy. For.

Me. As.

The preceding program was made possible by this and other public television stations. It's. Been.

An. S. S. S. S.

S. Say.

A Long. Long. Time.

Today we hardly think twice when we make a photocopy. In fact we make

three billion copies a day. But it wasn't always so easy. It used to be an expensive time consuming process to get one readable copy that was before Chester Carlson invented xerography 50 years ago. At first few people thought xerography would be a success but it revolutionized our society. Watch reinvention. No one wanted