Abtey hoped Baker could use her charm, beauty and stardom to seduce secrets from the lips of fawning diplomats at embassy parties. After branching out into singing and acting in films, she became Europe’s highest-paid entertainer.Ī celebrity of Baker’s stature made for a most unlikely spy candidate since she could never travel surreptitiously-but that’s exactly what made her such an enticing prospect. Stung by discrimination in Jim Crow America based on her skin color, she left at the age of 19 to perform as a burlesque dancer in the music halls of Paris where her risqué dance routines while clad in little more than a string of pearls and a rubber banana skirt made her a Jazz Age sensation. She had only sporadic schooling and married for the first time at age 13.
Louis in 1906, Baker had grown up fatherless in a series of rat-infested hovels. Then again, nothing was typical when it came to the American-born dancer and singer.īorn into poverty in St. Typically, the secret service chief sought out men who could travel incognito. Jacques Abtey had spent the early days of World War II recruiting spies to collect information on Nazi Germany and other Axis powers. As war drums reverberated across Europe in 1939, the head of France’s military intelligence service recruited an unlikely spy: France’s most famous woman- Josephine Baker.
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