After the war, she was awarded the Resistance Medal by the French Committee of National Liberation, the Croix de Guerre by the French military, and was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle. She aided the French Resistance during World War II. citizenship and became a French national after her marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. Her costume, consisting of only a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.īaker was celebrated by artists and intellectuals of the era, who variously dubbed her the 'Black Venus', the 'Black Pearl', the 'Bronze Venus', and the 'Creole Goddess'. Her performance in the revue Un vent de folie in 1927 caused a sensation in the city. ĭuring her early career, Baker was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. She was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in her adopted France. Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald naturalised French Joséphine Baker 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress.
