by women to duplicate her slicked-down hairstyle, called “Bakerfix.” In December 1926, she opened a nightclub, “Chez Josephine,” but it closed down a year later. She also made a motion picture, “La Sirene des Tropiques,” and recorded several songs for the record company Odeon. By the end of 1927, Baker had received approximately 40,000 love letters, nearly 2,000 of them proposing marriage.From 1928 to 1930, Josephine Baker embarked on a twenty-five-country tour, which included both the United States and Argentina. More importantly, however, she underwent a transformation from a gawky, chorus line dancer, to a complete artist and master of her skills and abilities. Several biographers have attributed this “metamorphosis . . . to a man named Pepito Abatino, who became her business manager, lover, and unofficial husband, but it was quite likely that a good deal of her new style and worldliness was achieved on her own initiative.”# She learned to speak French in order to converse, and sing, to a country that adopted her so completely that, eventually, she officially became its citizen.In the fall of 1930, the “new” Josephine Baker opened at the Casino de Paris. Henri Varna, the show’s producer, bought Baker a leopard. Ms. Baker and the leopard, Chiquita, became a sensation in fashionable Parisian circles. Varna produced the show Paris qui Remue, which featured Baker singing in French and wearing glamorous costumes. By the end of the 1930’s, “she ventured outside the music hall into two other professional areas. One was a motion picture . . . and the other . . . was light opera.”# Baker starred in two films, Zou-Zou, the story of a laundress who becomes a music hall star, and Princesse Tam-Tam. Jacques Offenbach’s operetta La Creole, a light opera about a Jamaican girl, was Ms. Baker’s most challenging role thus far. It opened...
