The extraordinary life of Josephine Baker is intimately linked to the Principality of Monaco. Born into poverty in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1906, she went on to become a huge star of Parisian music hall. In 1925, her performance in La Revue Nègre caused a scandal when she appeared on stage dressed in nothing more than a loincloth decorated with bananas. Known for popularising the Charleston, she was also a generous and socially minded woman. A member of the French Resistance and a committed civil rights advocate, after the war she bought the Domaine des Milandes estate in the Perigord, where she raised her eleven adopted children, orphans from all over the world. After finding herself financially ruined in the mid-1960s, she appealed for help. Two women answered the call, Brigitte Bardot and Princess Grace, who invited her to Monaco and offered her a home for life. In 1974, she made a triumphal appearance at the opening of the brand new Sporting d’Eté. In 1975, she returned to the stage to mark fifty years in showbusiness, but died the following day from a brain haemorrhage. She was laid to rest in Monaco’s cemetery.
