Josephine Baker

Flashback

'She gave men a hard-on! Please don't be afraid to write that!" says Jean-Claude Baker, the lost dauphin in Josephine Baker's Rainbow Tribe. For six years he traveled constantly with his ''second mother" (she never officially adopted him), the divine "bird of paradise" who conquered Gaul in the 20s—with the aid of a feather and a few bananas. "She would talk to me, sleeping in the same bed—only as a son, never a lover." And now he has gathered the "bits of the puzzle" and fashioned them into a new biography called Josephine (Random House).

"Miraculously, I have discovered 19 years she erased. Her American springtime. She was making a lot of money—the little girl, 16, who stole the show in Shuffle Along. She left for Paris with a star's contract in her pocket. The world is told that France discovered Josephine! This is not the fact." Perhaps the only undisputed fact about Baker is that her life was an entanglement of myths. "It was mad! Fabulous!" says Jean-Claude. "But it was madness on a grand scale. Always believe in Josephine Baker!''

MATTHEW TYRNAUER