Baker’s charmingly scattershot reminiscences flag the need for a full-scale biography of this remarkable woman.
A freewheeling account of the boundary-smashing entertainer’s first four decades.
First published in 1949, this is less a memoir than a transcription by French journalist Marcel Sauvage (whose original introduction is included) of conversations he had over the course of 15 years with expatriate American sensation Josephine Baker (1906-75). Born in St. Louis, Baker left her impoverished family at 16 and was on Broadway at 17 in the chorus of the landmark Black musical Shuffle Along. Still a teenager, she hit Paris in 1925 and rocketed to fame for her uninhibited dancing; surviving film documents her charisma and acrobatic gyrations. All factual details about her life and career, including multiple marriages and affairs, must be gleaned in passing from Baker’s decidedly impressionistic recollections, which ramble unabashedly to give a vivid impression of her ebullient personality, extravagant love for animals, and overflowing generosity for the world’s unfortunates. Extensive touring in Europe, North Africa, and South America prompted endless protests about her “immorality,” usually fostered by the Catholic Church, but proved a useful cover for her intelligence work for the Free French during World War II. Despite conservative criticisms, Baker felt freer and more accepted in France than she had as a girl in the United States, and she is forthright about her indignation over the racism she encountered on a postwar American visit; she served in the fight against Germany “because of their race policy,” she comments, but “I found it again, more insidious, more hideous, perhaps, among the people who claimed to fight against it,” in the North as well as the South. (Her comments about exploitive Jewish landlords and shop owners in Harlem, though balanced by condemnation of American antisemitism, prompt a nervous disclaimer in this volume’s foreword.) The book closes with verbal snapshots of her many famous friends.
Baker’s charmingly scattershot reminiscences flag the need for a full-scale biography of this remarkable woman.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593853696
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Tiny Reparations
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
An old-school Hollywood tell-all with all the trimmings, traumas, and bold-face names.
A great American character claims her double legacy of genius and addiction.
Calling herself “the original nepo-baby,” the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincente Minnelli offers a raw and revealing look at a life shaped by fame and personal struggle. At the heart of Minnelli’s story is her fraught relationship with her volatile mother. While stressing that “our love was what mattered,” life with Judy was no picnic. The night before her fifth birthday, she accidentally kicked her mother in the head while watching TV, permanently scarred by lesson that “if Mama got angry, she was the most terrifying person in my life.” Garland’s addictions made her unstable and unreliable, forcing her daughter to take on adult responsibilities at a very young age. A veteran performer by the time she was in double digits, she won the first star in her EGOT crown (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards) at age 19 for her role in the musical Flora the Red Menace. This was also her first work with John Kander and Fred Ebb, musical collaborators in her most iconic successes: Cabaret, Liza With a “Z,” and New York, New York. Minnelli describes taking her first Valium in 1969 at the time of her mother’s death from an overdose, unwittingly assuming the mantle of addictions that would mar her public and private life for decades. In and out of the Betty Ford Center, she finally achieved sobriety in 2015, on the eve of her 70th birthday. As the title suggests, she has great stories, and, with the help of her dear friend Feinstein and co-writers Getlin and Evans, she leaves out none of the juice. From her torrid, cocaine-fueled romance with Martin Scorsese (both were married at the time, and she cheated on both husband and lover with Mikhail Baryshnikov) to her falling-out with Lady Gaga at the Oscars in 2022, she spares neither herself nor anyone else and, in the process, reclaims her once very tattered dignity in a moving and remarkable way.
An old-school Hollywood tell-all with all the trimmings, traumas, and bold-face names.Pub Date: March 10, 2026
ISBN: 9781538773666
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2026
PERSPECTIVES
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.
A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.
Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.
A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.Pub Date: July 12, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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