26. She Became World Famous
Baker thrived in the integrated Paris of the 1920s. After La Revue Negre ran its course, she starred in La Folie du Jour, in which she continued to wow audiences with jaw dropping performances. Before long, Josephine Baker came to rival Mary Pickford and Gloria Swanson as the world’s most photographed woman. By 1927, within two years of her arrival in France, Baker was Europe’s highest paid entertainer, male or female. In the early 1930s, she starred in a pair of movies, and moved her family from St. Louis, to come and live with her in her French estate.