Tonight, Josephine...

By Patrick O'Connor

(01/10/06)– Starting today at the National Film Theatre in London is a season of selected films starred by the first female black superstar, Josephine Baker, to celebrate her hundredth birthday. Kamera's editor, Antonio Pasolini, had a chat with the curator of the season and Baker specialist, Patrick O'Connor, who wrote with Bryan Hammond the book Josephine Baker. Below is an edited extract of the conversation.

"I have always been interested in the history of the music hall and cabaret. Although I only saw Baker perform once (during her last season in London in 1974) she had always held a fascination for me. I wrote a biography of her (published by Jonathan Cape in 1988, and by Little Brown in the USA in 1991), which is illustrated by 300 pictures compiled from his collection by Bryan Hammond.

For the NFT season we have chosen the three best feature films. In my presentation on the 5th October, I am hoping to be able to show something of her influence over artists and choreographers, as well as discussing her commitment to racial harmony. La Sirène des Tropiques (Ed: a pre-Le Chien Andalou Luis Bunuel worked as director's assistant on this film)is a silent adventure, very loosely based on the idea of Josephine's arrival in Paris, and her rise to stardom. ZouZou, which co-stars Jean Gabin, is a story about a young girl who succeeds in saving her childhood sweetheart from wrongful arrest. In the course of it, she too becomes a star, fails to get her man, and has to keep on singing. Princess Tam-Tam is a variation on the Pygmalion story, the character Josephine plays is launched on Parisian society as a foreign princess. Josephine Baker was the first black actor to star in an international feature film, La Sirène des Tropiques(1927). It was shown all over the world. Although there had been black performers in American cinema, never before had a black star been so promoted. Her later films are good examples of French cinema of the time, comedy dramas with opportunities for singing and dancing. No black actor in Hollywood until much later, was given the full star status.

The facts of Josephine's life are simple. She was born in St Louis in 1906. Her mother worked as a washer-woman (something the American press never failed to mention), her father was a musician. She went on the stage from a young age, possibly as young as 11, but gained her first recognition in the touring version of the Sissle and Blake show Shuffle Along, and its successor, Chocolate Dandies, when she was billed as 'That Comedy Chorus Girl'. She was married four times, her last husband the French band-leader Jo Bouillon. Like all other glamorous stars, she was always said to have had relationships with every man she was ever photographed with. However, it is certainly true that in the 1920s she had affairs with Ernest Hemingway, Georges Simenon and Le Corbusier, the architect. The great passion of Baker's life, though, was the battle for racial equality. During World War II she succeeded in bringing her message of universal brotherhood to allied troops, and later she adopted twelve children of different nationalities, which she called 'My rainbow tribe'. The whole of the later part of her life was channelled towards caring for this family, and confronting racism and prejudice wherever she went. She was not a complicated person, her ideas were very straightforward, but, like her dancing, much in advance of the times.

Josephine has often been called the First Black Superstar, and this is not an exaggeration. She arrived in Paris at just the right moment, in the year of the Art Deco Exhibition (1925). Her dancing created a sensation, as she brought a mixture of sensuality and comedy that seemed to blend exactly with the African-influenced Cubist-inspired decorative arts. Jazz became the rage in Paris, and then throughout Europe, and Josephine, in company with such great musicians as Sydney Bechet, Claude Hopkins and Spencer Williams (the composer of Basin Street Blues) performed La Revue Nègre in Paris, Brussels and Berlin. Returning to Paris, Josephine became a fixture in the nightlife there, starring in a series of shows at the Folies-Bergère and Casino de Paris, opening her night-club Chez Joséphine, and then later having her own band, the 16 Baker Boys (Oscar Aleman on guitar, among other fine players). The French certainly took to jazz in a big way, and Baker, Bechet, Miles Davis and all the others, found life in France to have more opportunities and freedom than in the USA at the time. There had long been a fashion for African art in France. Jazz in some way seemed to go with it. Josephine would have had no chance to perform in the way she did in the USA. "They would make me sing 'Mammy' songs", she said. When she did return to the USA, her performance in a ballet choreographed by Balanchine (5 am) was greeted with hostility; it was the first time a black women had been seen dancing on stage with white men. The Americans couldn't take it while in France it seemed quite natural. Despite a good deal of racism in France, it has to be remembered that there had always been members of the National assembly who were black, a Creole Empress (Josephine), and one of France's most beloved novelists, Alexandre Dumas, was of mixed race. Josephine showed the way, opened the door, for glamorous black stars, she became, literally, an icon, portrayed in paintings, sculpture and graphic arts. Today, because of her many recordings, she is remembered more as a singer, but in the 1920s and 1930s, it was her dancing that created the biggest stir."

The Josephine Baker season at the National Film Theatre starts today. Please follow links provided for more details.