Josephine Baker at Home: 22 Photos of the Legendary Showgirl in Her French Châteaux

The first image that pops into your head when you think of Josephine Baker is probably of the Jazz Age performer dancing in a barely-there skirt made of faux bananas. It is, after all, one of the most enduring images of the Roaring Twenties. But there is so much more to Baker’s life story that it’s hard to think of anyone more overdue for the modern biopic treatment. (A television film starring Lynn Whitfield aired on HBO in 1991, and we may soon see both FKA Twigs and Janelle Monáe step into the role, in two separate projects.) The icon, who was born into poverty in St. Louis in 1906, got her professional start as a teenage vaudeville performer, and went on to stack up enough experiences to fill several lifetimes before she died in 1975. To name just a few highlights: She found immense fame in France, spied for the Resistance, bought a castle, adopted 12 children, spoke at the March on Washington, and was a muse for Alexander Calder, Le Corbusier, Paul Colin, Matisse, and Adolf Loos.Born Freda Josephine McDonald, the eldest daughter of a laundry worker and an absentee father of contested identity, Baker began working at only eight years old as a live-in maid. At 13, she found work as a waitress and was briefly married to a steelworker in his 20s. Two years later, in 1921, she married again while touring with a vaudeville troupe in Philadelphia, this time to a 23-year-old railroad worker named William Baker, whose name she kept for the rest of her life (they were officially divorced in 1925, a few years after they had last seen each other). By then, Baker had made a name for herself, having performed in the chorus line in two Broadway revues amid New York City’s Harlem Renaissance. In the fall of 1925, she set sail to perform in Paris, where she was propelled into stardom.Though she had quite the successful public career, you could also say that Baker relished domesticity. Once she had become an established star, she surrounded herself with gardens, pets, and her children, spending much of her time and money transforming a dilapidated estate into a lavish home and tourist destination. Below, we’ve rounded up photos of Baker’s offstage life.