Josephine Baker

FLASHBACK

Feathers flew when "La Bakaire" did her fan dance for photographer HoyningenHuene. (Other, less flashy fans will speak a more genteel language at New York's Cooper-Hewitt Museum this month.) By fluttering her fan, or bedecking herself with bananas, Josephine Baker (1906-75) danced out of the slums of St. Louis and became the black toast of Jazz Age Paris. Flounced in furs and spangles, and slit up to there, she was the flip side of the flapper, a show girl with a social conscience. "I had married an Amazon,'' said her fourth husband, Frenchman Jo Bouillon, but together they adopted a dozen children and won a permanent place in the hearts of 50 million Frenchmen.