TV & VIDEO - March 7, 1990

‘Josephine Baker’ Story: Fifteen years after her death, the story of Josephine Baker is going to make it to film--as a TV movie for HBO. “This is a project that only pay-TV could do at this point,” an HBO spokesman said, explaining that it will faithfully re-create the nudity in her stage act. Diana Ross had long been interested in a screen biography of the famed performer, but the pay-TV channel said Tuesday that Lynn Whitfield will have the title role. Whitfield--whose credits include TV’s “The Women of Brewster Place” and the film “Silverado”--will perform some of Baker’s musical numbers that made her famous in the music halls of Paris in the late ‘20s and ‘30s.