Obituary | Dancer created exotic life as stripper

Candy Barr, the infamous 1950s stripper and stag-film star once romantically linked to mobster Mickey Cohen and associated with Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby, has died. She was 70.

Ms. Barr died Dec. 29 of pneumonia in a Victoria, Texas, hospital.

Born Juanita Dale Slusher in Edna, Texas, on July 6, 1935, Ms. Barr forged a life exotic enough in the mid-20th century to inspire a biopic. (One was contemplated but never produced, with Farrah Fawcett portraying Ms. Barr.)

Before the dancer's career was derailed in 1960 by a prison term for marijuana, she was earning $2,000 a week in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Ms. Barr trained actress Joan Collins for her role as an exotic dancer in the 1960 movie "Seven Thieves."

"She taught me more about sensuality than I had learned in all my years under contract," Collins wrote in her autobiography, "Past Imperfect."

In 1984, Texas Monthly magazine listed Ms. Barr among such luminaries as Lady Bird Johnson as one of history's "perfect Texans."

"Of all the small-town bad girls," the magazine said, "[Barr] was the baddest."

Ms. Barr said she began life as "poor white trash." Her mother died when Ms. Barr was 9; she said she was ignored by a stepmother and sexually abused by a neighbor and a baby-sitter.

She fled to Dallas at 13, married a safecracker at 14 and soon fell into exotic dancing and prostitution. Later claiming she was drugged and forced to perform, she was featured in 1951 blue movie "Smart Alec."

She met Ruby, owner of Dallas' Carousel Club, who subsequently was convicted of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President Kennedy. Federal agents questioned Ms. Barr after Oswald's killing, but she insisted she knew nothing about Ruby's involvement in the Kennedy assassination.

She developed her trademark costume — 10-gallon hat, pasties, "scanty panties," six-shooters and cowboy boots — at Dallas' Colony Club in the early 1950s and quickly became a favorite with fraternity boys, crime figures, businessmen and political leaders, who booked her for stag parties.

Conservative Dallas residents began pressuring police and prosecutors to shut down Ms. Barr's act. In 1957, she was arrested for having less than an ounce of marijuana in her bra. She maintained she was framed by police.

Ms. Barr was convicted and, under tough state laws for what now would be a misdemeanor, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The trial only enhanced her fame. The judge even asked to be photographed with her in his chambers.

Awaiting appeal, Ms. Barr was hired to perform in Las Vegas' El Rancho Vegas Hotel and Los Angeles' Club Largo, drawing the $2,000 fees. She dated Cohen for two months during this period.

Ms. Barr lost her appeal and entered prison in December 1959. Gov. John Connally paroled her in 1963 and pardoned her four years later.

She was arrested a second time for possession of marijuana in a 1969 raid on her home, but charges were dropped.

She tried briefly to restart her career in Hollywood in 1967, performing before a backdrop of prison bars, before retiring to a reclusive life in Texas.

Ms. Barr married and divorced four times. She had a daughter and was a grandmother.