"Tall, coffee skin, ebony eyes, legs of paradise, a smile to end all smiles." Picasso said of Baker

"Her magnificent dark body, a new model to the French, proved for the first time that black was beautiful." Janet Flanner, New Yorker correspondent.

"Onstage, the old magical transformation took place. She burst into frenetic action. She seemed to move every part of her body in a different direction at once. She clowned outrageously, unable to stop herself. She crossed her eyes. Her feet tripped over each other while the other girls were kicking neatly in step. The effect of her performance was to mock the very idea of a chorus line, a row of people mechanically repeating the same gestures. The chorus line hated her. They had a simple term for what she was doing: scene stealing. But audiences loved her." Phyllis Rose, author of Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time.

"For a weary, disillusioned, post-World War I era, she epitomized a new freedom festivity." Donald Bogle from Essence.

© 1998-2001 Josephine Baker Estate c/o CMG Worldwide