Amsterdam's Verzetsmuseum (Resistance museum), dedicated to history of Amsterdam in WW2 has long been one of the most interesting museums around - in addition to its permanent exhibition, it also brings amazing temporary displays like currently the one about Josephine Baker. While its true that in public consciousness she is forever associated with her 1920s notoriety as the half naked black showgirl who danced in banana dress, her life story is much more than that and deserves proper, serious look and understanding of what it was like to be black entertainer in her time.
I was vaguely familiar with Baker's life story, since I have read her 1989 biography by Phyllis Rose ("Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time") but that was decades ago and at this point I remember only few general informations, namely that she was just another girl in black revues who discovered that audiences liked her clowning and used attention grabbing choreography to be noticed - its interesting that she never achieved success in her own homeland where competition was much stronger, but flourished in Europe where lack of black entertainers means that she was perceived as special. She was embraced in France and made France her homeland - so much that she even got involved in espionage in WW2, which gave her life a certain purpose and validation that would have never been possible back home. After the war there were international tours, tons of adopted children and basically basking in adulation & celebration until her death in early 1970s. That would be her life story in a nutshell, so I was familiar with this but wanted to see the exhibition anyway.
It was very interesting because I forgot a lot - chilling reminders of lynching in her birthplace St.Louis that young Baker must have witnessed. That was the reality of life when she was growing up. We are talking about mob burning the whole neighbourhoods and 100 people burned and clubbed to death. Than we have her first Broadway success that lead to engagements in Europe where she spread her wings and achieved notoriety as "banana girl" but even here there were problems - she was thrown out of Germany where both police and church were against her. Still, she persisted and became one of the biggest names of Showbiz on the continent between two wars, again I must note that her charisma and stagecraft overshadowed what was basically a fairly limited singing voice - as another US transplant in Europe, P. P. Arnold noted much later in her own autobiography, the fact that we did not have blacks in Europe (or the tradition of gospel singing) every black singer was immediately embraced as authentic and she mentioned that even singers who would be considered mediocre back home, flourished in Europe simply because there was no competition. I was never bowled over by Baker's recordings, to my ears she always sounded almost comical until much later when in 1950s her mature voice became actually genuinely interesting and sophisticated.
Yes, there is a fair amount of space on the exhibition about her post WW2-attempts to establish herself again in US but that was simply not possible, because of the racism. She might have been a huge star and a phenomenon in Europe but 1950s US would treat her abominably, like all the other black entertainers. While some, like Louis Armstrong were willing to close their eyes and simply accept the reality, Baker was too much of a diva to accept this and because back in France she was treated with respect and dignity, she fought publicly with bigwigs in US, with results that she was basically blacklisted and never accepted there. Just in case if you wondered what exactly was her connection to Amsterdam, she was regularly bringing her adopted children here and even published a children's book here, in collaboration with Dutch illustrator.
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