Theatre Register

Josephine Baker

Shows · Josephine Baker

Actor 1906–1975 On stage 1924–1973

Freda Josephine Baker (née McDonald; June 3, 1906 – April 12, 1975), also spelled Joséphine Baker, was an American and French dancer, singer, and actress. Her career was centered primarily in Europe, mostly in France. She was the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture, the 1927 French silent film Siren of the Tropics, directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant. During her early career, Baker was among the most celebrated performers to headline the revues of the Folies Bergère in Paris. Her performance in its 1927 revue Un vent de folie caused a sensation in the city. Her costume, consisting only of a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic imag…

On stage 4 productions, 49 years

1924 The Chocolate Dandies New Colonial Theatre · Original · directed by Julian Mitchell 96 perf.
1936 Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 Winter Garden Theatre · Original · directed by Robert Alton 115 perf.
1964 Josephine Baker Brooks Atkinson Theatre · Original · directed by Felix G. Gerstman 16 perf.
1973 An Evening With Josephine Baker Palace Theatre · Original · directed by Patrick Horrigan 7 perf.

Each row is a staging this name appears in the cast list of, read from the production record rather than from the person record. The person record names works instead, and a work cannot say which run somebody was in — that is how Elaine Stritch ends up filed under Show Boat 1927 when she was in the 1994 revival. No row here says what part was played, because no cast list records it.

Also credited on1 work

Ziegfeld Follies

These come off the person record, which names a work and not a production. So we can say this name is attached to the work and we cannot say which staging, or in what capacity. For a composer or a writer that is the whole career we hold; there is no cast list to find them in.

In the literature8 passages

  • [61] Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Karen C. C. Dalton, Josephine Baker and La Revue Nègre , Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1998, p.7.ebooks/Atkey, Mel/Million Miles from Broadway_ Musical Theatre Beyond New York and London, A - Mel Atkey.txt
  • Cast: Fanny Brice, Bob Hope, Gertrude Niesen, Josephine Baker, Hugh O’Connell, Harriet Hoctor, Eve Arden, Judy Canova, Cherry & June Preisser, Nicholas Brothers, John Hoysradt, Stan Kavanaughebooks/Green, Stanley/Broadway Musicals, Show By Show - Seventh Edition - Stanley Green & Cary Ginell.txt
  • On “New Year’s Eve, nineteen-seventy-something,” Tune attended a Josephine Baker concert at the Palace Theatre in New York. Professionally, he was riding high with a long run at the Uris Theatre in Seesaw , playing one of the first openly gay major characters in a mainstream Broadway musical comedy. Hollywood had recently come calling; a…ebooks/Hadleigh, Boze/Broadway Babylon - Boze Hadleigh.txt
  • “Josephine Baker. We were on Broadway together in 1935. They called her the no-clothes horse. That was in France. On Broadway, brother, she had clothes!”—BOB HOPEebooks/Hadleigh, Boze/Broadway Babylon - Boze Hadleigh.txt
  • But France wasn't color-blind. Neither she nor Lennie knew that beginning with the Twenties, the Bal Negre and Josephine Baker were exotics to the French. Algeria was the French South and they had their own version of backof-the-bus. When Lena and Lennie returned to Paris from a London booking, they settled in rooms I had reserved for the…ebooks/Laurents, Arthur/Original Story By_ A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood - Arthur Laurents.txt
  • Brice brought Baby Snooks hack to the Winter Garden for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, which costarred Bobby Clarke, Josephine Baker, Eve Arden, Bob Hope, Harriet Hoctor, Judy Canova, and the Nicholas Brothers, with staging by John Murray Anderson and choreography by George Balanchine.ebooks/Viagas, Robert/I'm the Greatest Star_ Broadway's Top Musical Legends from 1900 to Today - Robert Viagas.txt

Passages naming this person, found by keyword across 178 books. A keyword match is not a biography, and a common name will pull in the wrong one.

What this page does not know

  • What this person played. No cast list we hold records a character against a performer.
  • Which of the credits above the roles on this record — actor — apply to. The roles sit on the person and never on a credit, so a director who also acted looks the same here as one who did not.

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