La Baker's Life

She first appeared before astonished Parisians in 1925, held aloft, wearing a single pink feather, and exuding, as one admirer would later put it, "a whiff of jungle air." Onstage —first with La Revue Negre, later with the Folies Bergere—Josephine Baker was an unabashed sex cat with a primitive purr; off, she was the chic "ebony Venus" of Paris, wearing snakes about her neck and taking her pet leopard for walks down the Champs-Elysees. This month, New Yorkers get a rare opportunity to see Baker in the celluloid when Film Forum presents the American premiere of Princess Tam Tam and ZouZou, both made in the mid-thirties and featuring Baker as the love interest of bedazzled white men. What is surprising about these films, besides their racial progressiveness, is how smoothly Baker mixes sex with camp. It's a reminder that her talent had as much to do with putting on as taking off.

J.R.