Seductive, talented, and notorious, Josephine Baker rose from being a St. Louis street performer to become the toast of Paris for decades. The daughter of musician Eddie Carson and laundress Carrie McDonald, Baker began performing on the St. Louis streets as a child and then became a chorine in musicals. When she was 15, she married Pullman porter William Howard Baker (according to some sources she first married a foundry worker at age 13). Tired of the racial discrimination the African-American beauty encountered in St. Louis, Baker abandoned her husband at age 17 and moved to Paris where the exotic young singer and dancer became the star of La Revue Negre. Word of her sexy singing, sinuous dances, and charisma spread and soon she was performing to packed houses.
