This week’s entry is another post in honor of Josephine Baker, who was born this week in 1906.
I previously mentioned a BBC documentary that will let you find out more about the legendary performer, but for me, as a youth, my first exposure to the impact of her life and world (including that beyond the world of entertainment) was captured in the 1991 biopic made for HBO. Lynne Whitfield stars as the icon who escaped abject poverty in the racially-charged South to become the toast of Paris.
Here are the opening credits for the film:
Granted I have not seen it in a while, so I am not sure how well it plays in a contemporary context. But I think this is a good entree into learning more about Ms. Baker.
Be sure to check out other films selected as overlooked on Todd Mason’s blog, Sweet Freedom.
I’d managed to forget that the film was more than twenty years old…but it’s difficult to forget how gorgeous Lynn Whitfield is in it, and how good.
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I haven’t seen this, but it sounds like a good intro to Josephine Baker and her times. She appears very briefly in Woody Allen’s MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, really just as a background sort of thing. Also has a brief appearance in the Frida Kahlo movie with Selma Hayek.
Baker had an amazing career and didn’t she go on to adopt many children of different races?
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Yeah she had a rainbow family (her words) of like 12 kids or something.
Great movie. HBO has had a bevy of EXCELLENT African-American-themed, historical films, and this was one of them. I loved “A Lesson Before Dying (Cheadle was excellent as always),” “The Tuskeegee Airmen (better than the silver screen version,” the baseball opus “Soul of the Game,” and my all-time fave in this category, featuring Alan Rickman and Mos Def-“Something the Lord Made.”
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