JOSEPHINE BAKER

BAKER, Josephine (1906-1975).

Vintage black and white production still of Josephine Baker in the bathtub for the 1927 French silent film La Sirène des Tropiques (The Siren of the Tropics), signed and inscribed by Baker: Inscribed in blue ink ‘Souvenir de Josephine Baker’.

Following her success in the Revue Nègre, Baker became the first black woman to star in a major motion picture. Baker played Papitou, a Caribbean stowaway who falls in love with a French man and follows him to Paris. The scene pictured here follows a slapstick scene in which Baker avoids capture while crossing the Atlantic: ‘Papitou over-determines her blackness by rolling in coal, only to whiten herself with flour in a reversal of black-face before emerging from her bath like Boticelli’s Venus’. Powrie and Rebillard, ‘Josephine Baker and Pierre Batcheff in La Sirène des Tropiques’ in Studies in French Cinema, 8(3), 245-264.

Gelatin silver print on doubleweight paper, stamped distributor’s credit ‘Eduard Weil & Co.’ and pencilled numerical notation verso, 219 x 282 mm, framed (377 x 435 mm).

[With:] La Revue des Folies Bergère, Paris, Èditions Artistique 1927-31. Three programmes, comprising: Un Vent de Folie: Cinquième Album, 1927, featuring a colour plate of Josephine Baker and an advertisement for Club Chez Joséphine Baker on the back cover; La Grande Folie: Sixième Album, 1928; and L’Usine A Folies: Neuvième Album, 1931. Quarto, each with original paper wrappers and die-cut opening to front cover. [With:] a programme for the Theatre des Champs-Élysées music hall, 1925, with cover illustration by Paul Colin, listing La Revue Nègre with Josephine Baker, wire-stitched in the original wraps. [With:] The Original Charleston. Paris, Editions Francis Salabert, 1926. Printed piano score, with cover illustration of a dancing Josephine Baker by R. de Valerio, and a loosely inserted sheet Théorie du Charleston by Pradère-Niquet giving detailed instructions for the dance, 350 x 269 mm. [And:] TELLY, Vincent and Laurent HALET. Dansez le Shimmy. Paris: 1921. Sheet music, with graphic cover illustration by Gaston Girbal, 271 x 174 mm.