16. Josephine Baker was a spy for the French Resistance during World War II
Josephine Baker was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, a child of an unknown father and a marginally employed mother. She was married and divorced twice before the age of 20. Baker was the name of her second husband, her birth name was recorded as McDonald. By 1921 she was performing as a singer and dancer in St. Louis and later toured in vaudeville shows. In 1925 she performed in Paris, France. There she rapidly rose to fame as an exotic dancer and performer. Silent films followed. Ernest Hemingway called her “the most sensational woman anyone ever saw”. She interacted with the rich, the politically connected, and the leaders of pre-war France by 1939.
When the French declared war on Germany following the latter’s invasion of Poland in 1939, she was recruited to spy for France. After the French surrender, she continued to use her connections and her notoriety to surreptitiously collect information from German and Vichy officials, which she passed along to the French Resistance. She carried messages written in invisible ink on her sheet music, and in notes pinned in her underwear, to agents in neutral countries such as Portugal and Sweden. She traveled with an entourage disguised as an entertainment troupe, working closely with agents from Britain and later the American OSS. After the war, she was awarded the Croix de Guerre for her services as a spy and agent for the Allies during World War II.