Josephine Baker vue par la Presse Française. [At head of title: Pepito Abatino Présente]

Paris: [Editions Isis]. 1931. 60 pp. promotional brochure, by her long-time manager and lover, celebrating the art of Josephine Baker during her years in Paris, including scores of excerpts and entire reviews of her art by a wide variety of cultural figures writing in myriad venues, an introductory text by Abatino (Josephine Baker vue par son Manager), a list by Baker (Josephine Baker vue par elle-même), profusely illustrated throughout after both photographs and drawings, including some full-page portraits. Sm. 4to. Orig. illustrated silver-foil wrapper, heavily worn, creased and chipped, attached at spine by only a small area else fully separated. An unnumbered copy aside from the deluxe issue of 50 copies with the same silver-foil presentation, separate from the edition with a paper wrapper, only one similar copy recorded in the US by Worldcat.

A charming publication by Abatino, a Sicilian former stone mason who passed himself off as a count, and who was Baker's manager and lover from 1926-1935. Baker, a favorite muse of many cultural figures including Pciasso, Christian Dior, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Langston Hughes, etc., is celebrated as well by the French press. Among the scores of textual contributors are Andre Levinson, Le Corbusier, Gerard Bauer, Marcel Sauvage, Erich Maria Remarque, Colette, Edouard Schneider, et al.; many of the reviews are identified only by the periodicals in which they appeared. The photographs are by Keystone Studio, Manuel Frères, and R. Sobol, other illustrations are by Paul Colin, Andre Foy, Kantor, Mirabelli, Jeannette Paul-Carrier, Jean Dunand, Chancel, Addouard, et al. 

Baker was most noted as a singer, while in her early career she was a celebrated dancer. She was given the nicknames the "Black Venus" or the "Black Pearl", as well as the "Créole Goddess" in anglophone nations, while in France she has always been known in the old theatrical tradition as "La Baker." (13614)

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