‘Siren of the Tropics’ (French: ‘La Sirène des tropiques’) was a 1927 silent film that starred Josephine Baker (1906-1975), the first black woman to appear in a major motion picture in French films. Set in the West Indies, the film tells the story of a native girl named Papito (Baker) who falls in love with a French man.

The film premiered in December 1927 in Stockholm, Sweden and received almost unanimously positive reviews from film critics. The film ran for 86 minutes.

Baker was an American-born French entertainer, a French Resistance agent and civil rights activist. Her acting career included singing, dancing and as a ‘vedette’, the main female artist of a cabaret and related shows including a revue, vaudeville, music hall, or burlesque.

During her career, her costume, consisting of only a short shirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace, became an iconic image and a symbol both of the Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties.

She aided the French Resistance during WWII. After the war, Baker refused to perform for segregated audience in the US and is noted for her contributions to the civil rights movement. In 1968, she was offered unofficial leadership in the movement in the US by Coretta Scott King (1927-2006), following her husband’s (Martin Luther King Jr.) assassination.

In November 2021, she entered the Pantheon in Paris, the first black woman to receive one of the highest honors in France.

More Info: en.m.wikipedia.org