Candy Barr, America's First Porn Princess

Back in Business

The third act of Candy's life, as an aging sex symbol, was filled with those sorts of confusing contradictions.

In every interview she gave, she decried her notoriety as Candy Barr and the occupation that made her famous. Yet she returned to that name and that career when it suited her financially.

She was lured out of retirement from the skin trade by a $5,000 payday when she posed nude for Oui magazine in 1976, at age 41.

Oui Magazine Cover Featuring Candy Barr

During the '80s, she made occasional appearances at strip clubs in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Dallas. She danced her final burlesque gig in 1998, at age 62, at the Ruby Room in Dallas.

By then, she had gone from a sex outlaw to a novel and revered Lone Star original — like a real-life Larry McMurtry character.

In 1999, she was named to Playboy's "Most Desirable" list, and she made Texas Monthly's list of "perfect Texans."

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

But she had long since grown weary of the attention.

''Let the world find someone else to talk about,'' she told the Texas magazine.

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1. The Big D
2. Down on the Farm
3. The Citizen Kane of Stag Films
4. Craving Candy
5. Dallas after Dark
6. Front Page Sensation
7. Teaching Sensuality
8. Mickey Cohen's Squeeze
9. Reefer Madness
10. Unlawful Arrest; Unfair Sentence
11. A New Leaf
12. The Jack Ruby Connection
13. A Gentle Mind Confused
14. Back in Business
15. Her Legacy
16. Resources