Josephine: Deborah Cox to star in new musical about Josephine Baker

The New York Times reports that Canadian R&B singer and actress Deborah Cox will star in Josephine a new musical about Josephine Baker - an American expatriate who became a legend of Paris Music Halls.

Cox made her Broadway debut in the musical 'Aida,' when she played the lead role for the final seven months of the musical's run. She is a succesful recording artist who has released five studio albums. Her second album, 'One Wish,' went platinum, becoming Cox's biggest-selling album to date.

Josephine is to be directed and choreographed Joey McKneely, who is currently represented on Broadway for his choreography of the revival of 'West Side Story.' McKneely, who has twice been nominated for Tony's for his choreography (The Life, Smokey Joe's Cafe), will make his Broadway directional debut with the production.

The musical is inspired by actual events, and takes place in Paris between 1939 and 1945: Josephine Baker is queen of the Paris music halls, involved in a liaison with Crown Prince Gustav VI of Sweden and secretly serving her adopted country in the French Resistance. Her heroic work during the war brings her the self-worth she so vainly sought in fame, money and the arms of royalty."

Josephine fetures music by Steve Dorff, lyrics by John Bettis and a book by Ellen Weston and Mark Hampton.

Josephine Baker was an American expatriate entertainer and actress, who became a French citizen in 1937. Noted as a singer, Baker also was a celebrated dancer in her early career. She was given the nicknames the "Bronze Venus" or the "Black Pearl", as well as the "Cr�ole Goddess" in anglophone nations. In France, she has always been known as "La Baker".

Baker was the first African American female to star in a major motion picture, to integrate an American concert hall, and to become a world-famous entertainer. She is also noted for her contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States (she was offered the leadership of the movement by Coretta Scott King in 1968 following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, but turned it down), for assisting the French Resistance during World War II and being the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de Guerre.

The theatre, dates and additional casting for Josephine are still to be announced.