She'll Always Have Paris

[Paris; March 26, 1975. Image via Getty]

US-born dancer Josephine Baker, nicknamed Black Venus, performs 26 March 1975 at a Paris’stage Bobino, two weeks before her death 10 April 1975. Baker, born 03 June 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri, first danced for the public on the streets of St. Louis and in the Booker T. Washington Theater, a black vaudeville house in her native town. Later she became a chorus girl. Her first job in Paris was in La Revue Negre at Folies Bergeres in 1925, where she first performed her famous banana dance. In 1937 she renounced her American citizenship and became a citizen of France. During WWII, Josephine Baker worked as a spy for the French resistance and became sub-lieutenant in the Women’s Auxiliary of the French Air Force. Baker was back in France in 1954, with the intention of raising a family of ethnically diverse children that she had brought to France from her tours around the world. In her last years, Baker suffered struggles, financial difficulties, and poor health.