October 2, 1927: The silent film Siren of the Tropics premieres in Paris. It will take 2 more years for it to be released in America, despite the fact that its star is an American.
You don't need to know about the film's plot. You only need to know about its star, the 1st black woman to star in a major motion picture, anywhere in the world: Josephine Baker.
She was born as Freda Josephine McDonald on June 3, 1906 in St. Louis. She grew up in what would once have been quaintly called "a broken home," and by the age of 13, she was homeless, making money by dancing on street corners. By 15, she had been married and divorced. At 15, she married William Baker, and began using the stage name Josephine Baker. In 1925, she got a job with a New York vaudeville troupe, and divorced William.
Like a few black American entertainers before her, and many after her -- some specifically because of her example -- she went to France to take the stage in Paris. She became a feature of a famed nightclub, the Folies Bergère. Her performance in its 1927 revue Un vent de folie (A Wind of Madness) caused a sensation in the city: Her costume consisted only of a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace. She became known as the Black Venus, the Bronze Venus, the Black Pearl and the Creole Goddess. Film of her doing the decade's defining dance, the Charleston, has made her an icon of "The Roaring Twenties."
She renounced her U.S. citizenship and became a French national after her marriage to French industrialist Jean Lion in 1937. Following the example of dancer Isadora Duncan, and presaging the later actress (of French descent) Angelina Jolie, she adopted 12 children of various nationalities, which she referred to as the Rainbow Tribe, and raised them in France.
During World War II, Baker aided the French Resistance, and worked with the U.S. Secret Service and the British Secret Intelligence Service. After the war, President Charles de Gaulle named her a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and the French Army awarded her its highest honor, the Croix de Guerre (Cross of War).
She did occasionally return to America, but refused to perform for segregated audiences in the United States. In 1951, Grace Kelly walked out of New York's famed Stork Club, hand-in-hand with Baker, vowing never to return, since it would let her perform there, but not dine there. (She broke the vow only once, because her eventual husband, Prince Rainier III of Monaco, wanted to visit.) In 1963, she was one of the speakers at the Lincoln Memorial during the March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
When, despite being an international star in the 1920s, a heroine of the French Resistance in the 1940s, and a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, she lost her French castle due to unpaid debts. Rainier and Grace took her in.
On April 8, 1975, she had a triumphal concert in Monte Carlo, attended by Rainier and Grace, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Sophia Loren, Mick Jagger, Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, and Liza Minnelli. Four days later, at the age of 68, she died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Paris. She was 68. The Monaco royals paid for her funeral and burial in Monte Carlo.
Ross often emulated her onstage, and wanted to make a movie about her life, but couldn't get the funding. Eventually, in 1991, The Josephine Baker Story aired on HBO, starring Lynn Whitfield. The film closes with her finale in Monte Carlo, with Whitfield singing Bob Dylan's "The Times, They Are a-Changin'."
A country not interested in honoring her during her lifetime did so afterward. Her hometown inducted her into its St. Louis Walk of Fame, and the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp with her image. Despite having married and divorced 4 men, and being known to have had an affair with the fame Swiss architect Le Corbusier, she has also been rumored to have had affairs with women, including French writer Colette and Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, and gay-rights displays in Chicago and San Francisco have honored her.
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October 2, 1927 was a Sunday. Baseball was between the regular season and the World Series. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The NHL started its season a few weeks later. But these games were played in the NFL:
* The New York Giants and the Cleveland Bulldogs played to a tie, 0-0 at Luna Park in Cleveland.
* There was a team named the New York Yankees playing in the NFL, and, on this day, 2 days after the baseball Yankees' Babe Ruth hit his 60th home run of the season, the football Yankees beat the Dayton Triangles, 6-3 at Triangle Park in Dayton, Ohio.
* The Chicago Cardinals beat the Pottsville Maroons, 19-7 at Normal Park on the South Side of Chicago. The "Roaring Twenties" were the football version of baseball's "Dead Ball Era," and the Cards scored 36 percent of the points in the League that day, all by themselves.
* The Providence Steam Roller (no S on the end) beat the Buffalo Bisons, 5-0 at the Cycledrome in Providence, Rhode Island.
* And the Chicago Bears beat the Green Bay Packers, 7-6 at City Stadium in Green Bay, Wisconsin. With the Cardinals still being in Chicago, it would take many years before the Bears and their fans began to consider the Packers their arch-rivals.
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