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JOSEPHINE BAKER INSIDE HER Daring Double Life
Closer US
|May 12, 2025
A NEW BOOK REVEALS HOW THE LEGENDARY PERFORMER FOUGHT FASCISM DURING WWII AS A SECRET AGENT
"At the end of the war, she was made a second lieutenant of the French Air Force," says Diamond.
When 19-year-old Josephine Baker stepped onto a Paris stage in 1925 to dance in La Revue Nègre, the French were astounded. Unfamiliar with the Black jazz dance style she'd perfected in her native U.S., Parisians cheered her boldness (she once wore a skirt of bananas and little else) and her talent. “She moved in the most frenetic, electric way,” historian Hanna Diamond tells Closer. “They'd never seen anything like it. She became an almost overnight star.”
This story is from the May 12, 2025 edition of Closer US.
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