![]() “Life was dull for me in San Francisco,” Josephine later wrote. In 1879, when she was still a teenager, Josephine ran off with a theater troupe. While her father ran a bakery, Josephine dreamed of a bolder life. from Germany, and the year Josephine turned seven, her family moved to San Francisco. Josephine Marcus Chose A Life Of Adventureīorn in Brooklyn in 1861, Josephine Marcus was the daughter of immigrants. But even before she became entangled with the infamous man, Josephine had some adventures of her own.īut she went to her grave trying to hide the secrets of her wild years in the West. Corral, Josephine Earp was living in Tombstone, Arizona, with Old West lawman Wyatt Earp. ![]() In 1881, the same year as the notorious shootout at the O.K. But the name “Josephine Earp” made her famous. ![]() ![]() She went by several names: Josephine Marcus, Sadie Mansfield, and Josephine Behan. Fly/Wikimedia Commons A portrait of Wyatt Earp’s wife, Josephine Earp, in 1881, the year they met. A figure as bold and underestimated as Josephine Baker needs no such flourishes. Chapters end with cliffhangers, phoenixes rise from the ashes, and purple prose abounds (“She should be safe to weave her vital intrigue, if only she could keep the Grim Reaper at bay”). Mr Lewis has researched his story thoroughly over the course of a decade, and tells it like a fast-paced spy thriller. At all stops, her signature song was “J’ai Deux Amours”, the two loves being America and Paris. She often stipulated that the crowds not be segregated by race. After recovering, she returned to the stage to perform for Allied troops across north Africa and for prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp after it was liberated. When she fell ill with peritonitis later in the war, she allowed her hospital suite to be used as a dead-drop location. Her chateau in the Dordogne became an informal headquarters for the Resistance during Germany’s occupation of France. At Canfranc, where France meets Spain, Baker beguiled the station agents, who were too dazzled to search the mountain of trunks that contained documents covered in invisible ink.īaker lent support to the Allies in other ways, too. Mr Lewis narrates their train rides, airplane connections and border crossings with élan. Accompanying Baker was her handler-and lover-Jacques Abtey, who posed as her tour manager. The documents included photographs of German military equipment, lists of Abwehr agents, details on Luftwaffe airbases and plans for the German seizure of Gibraltar. Her most important operation was to carry a priceless cache of intelligence from Paris to Lisbon. Both efforts were cited in a later war decoration. Next Baker exploited a friendship with the wife of Japan’s ambassador to France to pick up titbits about that country’s intentions. With her easy glamour and charm, she earned the confidence of an attaché at the Italian embassy and got him talking about Mussolini’s plans to ally with Germany. “The Flame of Resistance” (to be published as “Agent Josephine” in America) is an entertaining, if occasionally breathless, account of a true hero of the second world war.īaker’s early missions involved helping the British and French governments divine the intentions of Italy and Japan before they joined the Axis. But additional files on her intelligence activities were released by the French government in 2020 and are the occasion for a new book by Damien Lewis, a popular historian. Baker received the Légion d’Honneur and a symbolic interment in the Panthéon, a monument to French national heroes. Her contributions to the war effort are now reasonably well known, described in numerous biographies, television series and films. As she brassily declared: “Who would dare search Josephine Baker to the skin?” (She often pinned papers to her underclothes.) Whereas the typical agent receded into the shadows, fame was her cover. She helped the Allies as an honourable correspondent of the Deuxième Bureau, or French military intelligence, ferrying secret documents across enemy lines. Perhaps Baker should be considered a quadruple threat, as she also displayed a talent for spying during the second world war.
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