The fascinating, flawed & formative queer legacy of bisexual Jazz Age icon Josephine Baker.
By Cameron Scheetz
With the Michael Jackson film Michael a massive box-office smash in spite of poor reviews and the fact that it willfully ignores some of the more sordid details of his life, it seems that the celebrity biopic is still a hot commodity in Hollywood.
And if there’s one iconic star whose story deserves to be made into a movie, its actress-dancer-activist Josephine Baker, a larger-than-life legend who once worked as a spy for the French Resistance during WWII by smuggling German secrets in her lingerie!
Like, c’mon, that’s just screaming to be adapted for the big screen!
Well, soon it will be! Variety reports that avant-garde pop star FKA Twigs has signed on to play Baker in a yet-to-be-titled biopic directed by Maïmouna Doucouré (Cuties), which will cover the span of her remarkable life, from troubled childhood in the American Midwest, to her rise to fame in Paris during the Jazz Age, to her aforementioned stint as a spy, to her prominence as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement.
A phenomenal dancer with a haunting voice, Twigs definitely seems like the right person to capture Baker’s performance prowess, and she’s been gradually raking up acting credits, too, having most recently appeared in the pop world psychological thriller Mother Mary. Naturally, she’s thrilled to portray an artist who truly blazed new trails for Black women and so many others outside the mainstream:
“Josephine Baker’s extraordinary legacy is such an inspiration to me and to so many people around the world,” Twigs shares in a press statement. “She lives on in our hearts as a visionary, groundbreaking woman whose story is as powerful as it is relevant today. I cannot wait to embody Josephine Baker bringing her fight, her love, her losses, her talent and her heroism to the big screen.”
Born in 1906 in St. Louis, MO, Baker grew up in poverty, had a troubled family life, and frequently experienced to horrors of racism in early 20th Century America firsthand. Yet even as a child she had a passion for performance, street-dancing to make a living, and working hard enough that she eventually scored a role in the chorus line for a traveling revue of Shuffle Along, one of Broadway’s first all-Black productions.
In 1925, she left a deeply segregated America for Paris, where a growing fascination with jazz and the culture of the Harlem Renaissance presented a number of opportunities. She performed at all of the most prestigious theaters in France and was soon an in-demand name headlining shows of her own..
Particularly, she became known for Danse Sauvage, a seductive dance number that unfortunately leaned into othering tropes (she would famously perform it in a skirt made of bananas), yet turned her into a sensation, and opened more doors for her as singer, too.
When she eventually brought her act back to the States, now an international star, Baker pointedly refused to perform in segregated spaces and venues, which was just the beginning of her tireless work as a civil rights activist. In 1963, she gave a rousing speech on racial equality at the March On Washington—she was the only woman to speak that day.
Despite her unwavering advocacy for minority communities, her relationship to queerness is a bit more complicated. Though all of her public relationships were with men, she’s retroactively been described as bisexual, and is rumored to have had a number of affairs with women—including famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo.
She’s also said to have been a friend to many gay men over the years, and even married one: Her fourth, final, and longest marriage was to French composer Jo Bouillon, whose homosexuality she was reportedly aware of. Together, the couple adopted 12 children from all over the world, which they dubbed their “rainbow tribe,” and pointed to their family as an example of peaceful interracial cohabitation.
Unfortunately, there’s also an infamous instance where she caught her Finnish-born son Jari (now Jarry) in a bathtub with another boy when he was 15, so she kicked him out of the house, fretting he might “contaminate” his siblings.
Of course, it was a different time, and it’s been said that Baker was able to reconcile with her son before she passed in 1975, suffering from a cerebral hemorrhage just nights after starring in a retrospective revue in Paris that saw a star-studded audience to celebrate her 50 years in showbusiness.
Since then, her legend has only continued to grow. Widely considered one of the first Black sex symbols, Baker was a truly ground-breaking pop cultural figure who used her platform to call out racial inequality, challenged gender norms, and whose unapologetically erotic work helped paved the way toward the sexual revolution.
In that sense, it’s no surprise she’s now regarded as a queer icon, whose glamorous fashion sense & exuberant performance style has inspired countless LGBTQ+ artists (her influence can frequently be felt in the world of drag, for example, with queens like Jaida Essence Hall & Nymphia Wind among those who have paid tribute).
In 2019, that icon status was quite literally cemented when she was one of the names inducted into San Francisco’s Rainbow Honor Walk, which honors those who have “made significant contributions in their fields” for the LGBTQ+ community.
Oh right, and we never even doubled-back on her stint as a spy during WWII! In other words, there is plenty of ground to cover in this upcoming biopic with FKA twigs, so let’s just hope the film doesn’t forget to incorporate Josephine Baker’s fascinating, flawed, and highly formative queer legacy.
Source: Queerty
