Paper magazine's blog points out a recent New York Times obit: "Candy Barr, 70, Stripper and Star of 1950's Stag Film, Dies." Ms. Barr, it seems, lead a rather colorful life: relationships with Jack Ruby and Mickey Cohen, the shooting of one husband, and time spent in prison, not to mention an appearance in a notorious stag film called "Smart Aleck." Some consider Candy Barr to be the very first porn star.
Candy Barr, an exotic dancer whose hardscrabble life became Texas legend as she befriended Jack Ruby (who killed President John F. Kennedy's assassin), dated a mobster, shot her husband, went to prison for drug possession, and starred - unwillingly, she insisted - in a famous stag film, died on Friday in Victoria, Tex. She was 70.
The Slavik Funeral Home in Edna, Tex., confirmed the death, but provided no details. The Associated Press said she died of pneumonia.
Miss Barr said she was forced in 1951 at 16 to play the lead in a grainy black-and-white erotic movie titled "Smart Aleck." The plot, such as it is, begins with a traveling salesman luring the teenager from the swimming pool into his motel room.
Al Di Lauro and Gerald Rabkin, in their 1976 book, "Dirty Movies: An Illustrated History of the Stag Film," called it "the single most popular film of the genre." They refer to Miss Barr as "the first pornographic star" and liken her to Lenny Bruce as a subverter of official morality. The film was not shown in theaters, but was a hit on the bachelor party and smoker circuit.
susannah_breslin
I'm lost
June 2005
JAN 06, 2006 12:43 PM