Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Josephine Baker: Jazz Age Superstar to WW2 Spy

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

Josephine Baker was one of the most extraordinary people of the 20th century - and the first black woman honoured in the French Panthéon in 2021.From an early life of poverty in St. Louis, America, to being a superstar singer, actress and dancer, to being a spy as part of the resistance against the Nazis. For today’s episode, we’re sharing an episode from our sister podcast Dan Snow’s History Hit, where Dan is in conversation with Monique Y. Wells to discuss the life of Josephine Baker. Monique is the co-founder of Entrée to Black Paris and a contributor on Paris’ Black history and culture. This podcast was edited by Stuart Beckwith and Dougal Patmore. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Oh, my lovely betwixters, it's me, Ked Lister. I am here. You are here, which is the really important thing. But before you and I can go any further with this podcast, I need to give you the fair do's warning. Here it is.

This is an adult podcast, spoken about adulty things in an adultery way, and there's a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And now that we've got that little lot out of the way, You have been forewarned. Forewarned is forearmed. Fair do.

You can't say fairer than that. On with the show. The news from France is very bad. And I grieve for the gallant French people who have fallen into this terrible misfortune. The year is 1940. We are in the midst of World War II and Hitler and the Nazis have just occupied.

France. We're on a steam train heading to Spain. Sat in a chair looking out the window is a glamorous woman in expensive furs and she is sitting with her assistant, a blonde man with a moustache and thick-rimmed glasses. This woman is one of the most famous people in the world. The first black female superstar, one of the most photographed people on the planet and Europe's highest paid entertainer. Since the war broke out, she often performs for troops, providing a glimmer of glamour in an endless gloom of war. Today, she is heading to Portugal as part of her plan tour, and she carries with her music scores in a briefcase. She travels from country to country with little trouble, thanks to her fame and her well-known job as an entertainer. But unbeknown to the Nazis,

this celebrity is living a double life as a spy for the ally. On her music scores is intelligence information written in invisible ink, and she has hidden photographs and documents in her underwear. And her assistant? He is in fact a French intelligence officer. This is the story of Josephine Baker, superstar turned spy. What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course.

You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning enough and pushing the slice. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I'm beautiful done. Goodness had nothing to do with it, Terry. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society.

With me, Kate Lister. Josephine Baker was a world-famous singer turned World War II spy. And if that wasn't impressive enough, she also devoted most of her life to fighting racism and became the first black woman to be immortalized in France's pantheon, mausoleum of outstanding historical figures, joining people like Marie Curie and Victor Hugo.

Today, we are going to be hearing all about her extraordinary life on an interview from our sister podcast, Dan Snow's History Hit, where Dan speaks to Monique Wells all about the iconic entertainer. Enjoy. Monique, thanks so much for coming on the show. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Where's the story of Josephine Baker begin? Where does she spend her first few years. She was born in St. Louis, Missouri, East St. Louis. She was quite poor, extremely poor, in fact. We're talking, eating out of garbage cans, poor. And she, very early on, was sent to work

by her mother in domestic capacity. So she would be a live-in housekeeper or made for people. There was a lot of trouble with that. So she was doing that just as much as she was living under her own, family roof. Missouri was not a good place to be an African-American in the early part of the 20th century. Not at all, no. In fact, you could probably say fairly that just about anywhere in the United States, it was not good for you to be an African-American at that time. It was extremely difficult. One of the things that she experienced very early on in her life was the East St. Louis race riot across the river from St. Louis. So St. Louis, Missouri, East St. Louis, Illinois.

Let me make that distinction. But a lot of people believe that the race right actually took place in St. Louis. It took place mostly in East St. Louis. And then some people came across the bridge to St. Louis. But that was a very traumatic and horrific experience with regard to race hatred in the United States. So she was no stranger to that. She was no stranger to poverty. She married at a very early age, an illegal marriage to a man named Willie Wells.

She was only 13. It was not a legal marriage. It did not last very long. But this was just one of the ways that she was trying to escape the huge difficulties that she had as a child. And she did not do well in school. She was frequently truant. She loved the theater. She learned that early on. She developed a desire to perform. And she started performing just on the street, actually, to earn a little bit of money at a very early age. And so, I mean, that gives you a good idea of just the horrific situation. that she grew up in in St. Louis. And does theatre, does performance give her that ticket out of her? Absolutely. She started going to a theater called the Bookerty, Washington in St. Louis, and when she would skip school, she would go to the theater. She would go to the theater whenever she could.

And she learned invaluable lessons from the performers there. And she got a taste of what it was going to be like to be a traveling performer when she started hanging out with a family that lived across the street from her. her a family called Jones. They had an organization called The Dixie Steppers and she went on the road with them. So that was her first taste of performing. And she was not actually performing. She was, you know, behind the scenes with that group, but she got the flavor for performing and traveling to perform with them. And it was when she was traveling with them that she met her second husband, Billy Baker, and she kept his name, even though they did divorce eventually.

And how does she go from there to France? Like, how's that jump take place? So she's gotten this bug, right, for this traveling performing, and she tries out for a show called Shuffle Along, which was huge, Noble Sistle and U.B. Blake's Shuffle Along, but she was too young at the time to be hired as a regular in the show in New York. But they did hire her for the traveling. show. And she went all around with them. And when she finally was able to return to the East Coast, it was with a new show by Cicill and Blake that didn't do so well. And she ended up working at a place in New York called the Plantation Club. And that's where she was discovered by a woman named Carolyn Dudley Reagan and wooed into a show called La Revue Negra, which opened in Paris in

October 1925. And she discovered that France was far less segregated, right? There were more opportunities for people of color in that era, I guess. Absolutely. And we have to keep in mind that during this time, there was a very, very, very small actual black population on French soil. France had his own history of slavery and colonialism and all of that. But largely, you didn't see that or feel that with regard to actual people on the ground in France. And so Josephine and the other people who were in this show that came to Paris, they came into an environment that was devoid pretty much of black people. And we have to also remember that they were African Americans and not directly tied to France's history of slavery and colonialism. That's a very, very important thing to understand about

why these people were able to experience the freedom that they did. And she makes a success, right? She becomes phenomenally wealthy. An overnight success and phenomenally wealthy in a very short period of time. And at the age of 19, this is when she debuts. Wow. Yeah. So she goes from eating out of trash cans and having a life threatened by racist mobs to being fantastically wealthy, all the most celebrated women in France,

in space of just a few years. Yes, absolutely. Do we know what effect that had on her? How did she take all that? Well, she's a 19-year-old. She's not very sophisticated, at least at the beginning. So she's overwhelmed, pleasantly overwhelmed, but overwhelmed because of all the attention that is poured upon her by men, by women, women want to look like her. They're all rushing out to buy the clothes that Josephine Baker wears, trying to get their hair done the way that she has her hair done. the men are, you know, oh my God, this exotic, and I emphasize that word, exotic, black goddess, and, you know, can we have our way with her? What can we do with her for her? All of that in really the space of just a few days and weeks.

And so she builds on that. And this show La Revue Negris actually leaves Paris and travels, but she is so desired in Paris that another theater wooes her away from that show. And she comes back to Paris and she performs at the Foli Berger and wears her banana skirt for the first time. And of course, that's legendary. And if people know nothing else about Josephine Baker, they know that she wore a banana skirt, right? Probably not the greatest claim to fame, but still an iconic image of her. And she goes on and on. And she meets an Italian man named Pepito Abattino who becomes her impresario. He manages her. He becomes her lover. But he most importantly, shifts her from the performing of the savage dancer,

moves her into a more mainstream type of performance. They travel through Europe, they travel to South America. He organizes a trip for her, a series of performances for her in New York, and she feels like she's going to be able to go back home, triumphant because she's experienced all of this success in Europe and in South America. And no, she's slapped down like an undesirable fly.

It was a disastrous trip for her. And so racism rears its ugly head again, but back on her home soil. Meanwhile, Europe is sliding towards racism and fascism and authoritarianism. Tell me about the famous tour when she suddenly was seen as a threat when she arrived in these different cities. Yeah, so that was even before her trip to New York. So this was in 1928. She and Pepito set out for a European tour. there are just as many places that welcome her with open arms as there are places that are

very reluctant, if not downright, refusing to have her perform because of, as you described, this sort of rising fascism and also religious beliefs. A lot of people felt like she was, you know, the devil's spawn, that she was doing the devil's work and that they were good, upstanding Christians, good upstanding Catholics, and we don't want this kind of entertainment in our city. So there was a mix of that. And there were certain places, I think most importantly, Vienna, where she had a very, very difficult time, even being allowed to perform. There was actually someone who had to testify on her behalf in front of the Viennese government to get her to be able to perform. And she ended up performing not in the theater that had originally been booked,

but in a tiny little theater across the street from a church, if you could imagine that. And so on the one side of the street, it's all of these righteous people. And on the other side of the street, it's people who braved that criticism to actually go into the performance and see her perform and loved her, you know, but just getting to that point was just very, very difficult. And there were other cities where she experienced rather similar difficulties.

But then there were cities where people just threw themselves at her feet, because they just couldn't wait to see her. So that was a big mix, and it was a big lesson for her, that she was not just going to be able to have everybody lie down and worship her, that she was going to have to prove her metal, not only as a performer, but also as a person, during these performances in various parts of the world. And she experienced a lot of the same thing in South America.

We'll be back after this short break. What about 1940? The Germans invade, conquer France. She's a successful black woman with a now, by now, Jewish husband, right? This could go very badly for her. What happens here? Well, first of all, you know, there's what we call in France the phony war. So Germany was doing all its things outside of France. And France is thinking, okay, but they can't come in because we have what's called the Maginot Line,

and they can't breach that line, so we're safe. And then Josephine is preparing herself, if you will, for what's to come. Just in case things happen in France, there are people who are seeking her out and asking for her assistance to help with any form of resistance that might be necessary. Because she is a performer, she's able to visit places like the Italian consulate and be in contact with people who are not thinking anything about guarding what they're saying to each other because she's a performer and, you know, who is she really? not really understanding that she does speak several languages and that she is able to understand and retain things and take them back to the French. Once the Germans are actually in France, she leaves Paris and goes to what is called Le Millon, which is a property that she eventually purchased in the Dordonia region. And she is aiding people who are escaping. Her husband and his family

included, even though they were on the verge of divorce at that point. And even before she went down to Le Moulogne, when she's still in the Paris area, she is recruited by a man named Jacques Apte, who arranges with her to do all of this surreptitious activity and gets her to join the free French forces and gets her to smuggle things and be a transporter of information. Even before, you know, before the Germans actually arrive. And once they are in the south of France, then they are given orders to get information to General de Gaulle,

who has left the country and is in England. It has decided that the way that they're going to get this information out is that she is going to be her own self. She's going to be the persona, the black star. And this gentleman, Jack Abte, is going to pretend to be her secretary. And so they are traveling together. she does perform and they do various things to get this information out of France and into

the hands of de Gaul in London. So they have to go to Lisbon and from Lisbon to North Africa and that information eventually gets to London. Before she escaped from France, the Nazis kind of came to her chateau, didn't they? And she sort of stood, faced them down and where her chateau was, it was actually near Bordeaux, which was at one point part of the collaboration. government of France. And there were people who were Nazi collaborators and soldiers themselves who came. And she really, she deflected all of that and was able to get people passports to leave the country. She just did a phenomenal job of doing whatever she could, officially and unofficially, to resist. She then returned, doesn't she, after D-Day? And she kind of wears a

uniform. She just, what an inspiring figure. Oh, for sure. So she actually joined the auxiliary of the French Air Force, and she received several medals for her service. One which was particularly special to her was the Quadre-Lorraine, which Charles de Gaulle gave her personally, in which she later hopped to raise money to support the French war effort. I mean, you can't get more heroic than this, really, given that she is not, I mean, she is a French citizen because she married a French man, but not a born French person. And so this service that she is rendered, to France is purely because France treated her so well, welcoming her and making her the start that she became when she couldn't do that in her homeland.

Although what I love about her career, she does seem to, you know, think, okay, I'm going to roll my sleeves up and try the U.S. one last time, the land of my birth, and she gets involved with the civil rights movement. Yes, she does. And so she went to the U.S. in, I think it was in 1951, I'm not mistaken, and had a whole series of performances set up where she refused to perform in front of segregated audiences. She did a lot during that trip. And she did some of it in collaboration with the NAACP and other organizations that were on the ground fighting day to day for civil rights in the U.S.

I don't want to give the impression that she was intricately involved in their activities. She organized this tour on her own because she fervently believed in what she was doing. There were some things that she was in communication with them about, but mostly not. It was her own initiative. And certainly years after that, she participated in the March on Washington and spoke on the same stage with Dr. Martin Luther King. What a career. What a life. She performed right up until she died, didn't she? She absolutely did.

That was sort of a... can't even say a Cinderella story. I mean, it was a Cinderella story at some point because she rose from the proverbial ashes several times, actually, during her career. During this last period, which is in 1975, she was living with her rainbow tribe. The rainbow tribe of the kids she adopted? Absolutely. The children that she adopted with her husband, Joe Bullion, she adopted 12 of them from various places around the world. And she did that with the intent to show the world that there should be no place in our hearts for racism,

no place in our hearts for discrimination because of religious beliefs, no place for discrimination of any kind. So her life was supposed to be a living example of that. Also, I have to say that Josephine absolutely was desperate to have her own children and could not have children. And so adoption was the own. alternative for her. She and her husband had originally decided to adopt only four, but she just kept

bringing them home every time she would go on a trip, it seems. She would bring home another child, and they ended up with 12 children that she called her Rainbow Tribe. And they lived in this place, Le Mieland, in the Dordonia area, and they had good times and they had bad times. And they eventually lost the property. She eventually lost the property. And Princess Grace of Monaco took her and her family in and mounted another combat performance for her, which they ran in Monaco and then brought back to Paris in early 1975. And she did several performances there before succumbing to cerebral hemorrhage, not on stage. She left a performance, went to the hotel she was staying in, and did not come to a rehearsal the next day. And her assistants found her unconscious in her bed,

and they took her to the hospital where she died. On the 30th November, 2021, she became the first black woman to enter the mausoleum of outstanding historical figures, the Pantheon in France. What does that mean? What's that incorporation mean? It is the highest honor that the French can bestow upon a person. And you may know that there are very few women in the Pantheon. Josephine is the sixth woman only out of over 80 people. She is the first African American in the Pantheon, the first African American woman. Her whole life, once she got to France, I will say, embodies what the French call universalism. It is an ideal that France would like to think that it is living up to. I think we can all say objectively that it is not there yet, but it is an ideal. And Josephine Baker's life embodied that ideal. And so I believe that when current president Emmanuel Macron had the opportunity to approve

the petition that would have Josephine inducted into the Pantheon, he was particularly pleased to do so because her life embodied this French ideal. And it's kind of ironic because the people who are not experiencing the ideal of universalism, a large number of them, are black people from France's former colonies, whether they be former slave colonies or former African colonies. So, It's an incredible honor. There is no question that Josephine deserves to be in the Pantheon. I don't think that there's any question about that. There are people who would say, despite the fact that she deserves this,

why was she the first black woman to be inducted? Why not a black woman who is part and parcel of France's overall history? Well, Monique, thank you for talking us through her extraordinary life. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening betwixters. We will be back with our usual episodes next week. If you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

If you want us to explore a subject or maybe you just fancy saying hello, you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.