Career
Work, rooms and years
Her working life ran across three decades and was interrupted twice, once by a trial and once by prison. The dates below follow the published record; where the sources disagree, the page says so.
01Timeline
A working chronology
- 1935Born Juanita Dale Slusher in Edna, Texas, on July 6.
- 1945Her mother dies in March; her father remarries on June 1.
- c. 1949 to 1950Leaves home as a teenager and reaches Dallas, where she works in a motel and as a waitress. Sources give her age as thirteen or fourteen.
- 1951Marries Billy Joe Dabbs in Rockwall, Texas on August 11; the marriage ends when he goes to prison for safecracking.
- 1951Appears in the underground film Smart Alec at sixteen, the film that later drew the label “the first porn star”.
- 1952Meets the Dallas club owner Jack Ruby. They stay friends for years; she never worked for him.
- 1954Marries Troy Phillips in Dallas on October 23.
- 1955Signs a six-month contract at the Colony Club, reported as the longest in the club’s history. Her daughter Troylene is born late that year.
- 1956Shoots her estranged husband when he breaks into her apartment in January; charged with assault with a deadly weapon and later cleared.
- 1957Plays Rita Marlowe in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? at the Dallas Little Theater.
- 1957Arrested in October after a police search of her apartment; less than an ounce of marijuana. She calls it a set-up.
- 1958Convicted in February and sentenced to fifteen years.
- 1959Free on appeal: headline work in Los Angeles and Las Vegas at up to $2,000 a week, and a technical-adviser credit on Seven Thieves (1960). Marries Jack Sahakian in Las Vegas on November 25.
- 1959Enters the Goree Unit at Huntsville on December 4, after the appeal is finally denied.
- 1960Photographed by a wire service playing drums at the Huntsville prison rodeo on September 30.
- 1961Testifies in Los Angeles at Mickey Cohen’s tax-evasion trial about money and gifts he had given her.
- 1963Paroled on April 1 under conditions that kept her close to Edna and away from burlesque work. Jack Ruby visits her there on May 8.
- 1963Interviewed by the FBI at Edna on November 26, after Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald; her statement is Warren Commission Exhibit 1506.
- 1964Marries James Wilson in Edna in March; they divorce in 1965.
- 1966 to 1967A short return to the stage at the Largo Club in Los Angeles, the Bonanza Hotel in Las Vegas and the Colony Club in Dallas. Pardoned by Governor John Connally, in 1967 by her own account, in 1968 according to other records.
- 1969Arrested once more in Brownwood while caring for her dying father; the case is dismissed for lack of evidence.
- 1972Publishes fifty-six prison poems as A Gentle Mind...Confused.
- 1976Poses for Oui at forty-one and gives a Playboy interview, her last magazine work.
- 1982The producer Mardi Rustam buys the film rights to her early life.
- 1984Texas Monthly names her one of history’s “perfect Texans”.
- 1988A biopic is announced with Ryan O’Neal directing Farrah Fawcett. It is never made.
- 1992Moves from Brownwood back to Edna.
- 2005Dies in Victoria, Texas on December 30, aged seventy.
02Rooms
Where she worked
The clubs, hotels and studios that make up her working record.
- Theater Lounge, DallasBarney Weinstein’s club, where she began as a cigarette girl and later danced.
- Colony Club, DallasAbe Weinstein’s burlesque house; the six-month contract of 1955 was the longest the club had given.
- Vegas Club and Silver Spur Inn, DallasJack Ruby’s rooms. She was a friend of the owner, never an employee.
- El Rancho Vegas, Las VegasHeadline engagement, 1959.
- Largo Club, Sunset StripReturn engagement in the late 1960s, played against a backdrop of prison bars.
- Sho-Bar Club, New OrleansBourbon Street club, part of her touring work.
- Bonanza Hotel, Las VegasComeback appearances, 1966.
- 20th Century FoxTechnical adviser and burlesque coach on Seven Thieves (1960).
- Dallas Little TheaterStarring role in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957).
What the work paid
By the mid-1950s she was the highest-paid burlesque dancer in Dallas, and during her appeal years she earned as much as $2,000 a week in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Those are the two figures the newspaper record supports; no reliable total for her career exists.
The Hollywood credit
20th Century Fox hired her in 1959 to coach Joan Collins for Seven Thieves, released in 1960, and gave her a technical-adviser credit. Collins described her afterwards as a down-to-earth girl with an angelic face who taught her more about sensuality than her years under studio contract had.
Writing
Barr wrote poetry in prison: fifty-six poems, published in 1972 as A Gentle Mind...Confused. Later accounts of her life, including a 2008 book by Ted Schwarz and Mardi Rustam, lean on interviews and on the archive she kept herself.
Recognition
The Burlesque Hall of Fame includes her among its inductees and displays her lip prints. In 1984 Texas Monthly listed her among history’s “perfect Texans”. Media coverage called her “the first porn star” because of the circulation of the 1951 film; it was a description in print, not an award.