Juanita Dale Slusher: AKA, “Candy Barr”, “Juanita Debbs”, “Juanita Phillips”, “Juanita Sahakian”. (Married Billy Jo Debbs, Troy B. Phillips and Jack Sahakian). Was a 38-22-36 inch, 5 foot 4 inches, dope smokin' American stripper, burlesque dancer, ex-con, actress, and "adult" model in men's magazines of the mid-20th century. Candy Barr (July 6, 1935 – December 30, 2005).
Candy Barr
Here is another real life Noir tale of a, as the old pulp fiction paperbacks used to title, a "girl in trouble," The story of a genuine Texas Hot Tamale of a Femme Fatale.
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| Edna, Texas |
Born near the Gulf Coast of Texas in a cotton, corn, and rice farming town called Edna, to Sadie Mae the wife of Elvin Forest "Doc" Slusher a harmonica-playing bricklayer, who died when Juanita was 9. Her father then remarried to Etta Agnes Holden, but her new stepmom not wanting to be tied down with another woman's kids, ignores and neglects Juanita, dumping her off as much as she can with the lecherous neighbor who was her babysitter. A neighbor who sexually molested little Juanita.
At 13, she ran away from her home, and made her way 300 miles North to Dallas. You can just use your imagination on how that trip went down. Who knows, maybe she caught a ride the whole way with elderly Ma & Pa Peckerwood on their way to the Southern Baptist revivalists tent meeting with brother Billy Graham. On the other hand she may have literally sucked and fucked her way to Dallas. It can get as noir as you want to take it. Apparently, what ever happened, nobody was concerned back in Edna enough to even go look for her.
In Dallas Juanita gets a maid "job" at the Trolley Court Motor Inn. It's a hot sheet dive motel just south of downtown Dallas in the old Frogtown district. Frogtown (named for the frogs that populated the nearby Trinity River) contained at one point in its heyday 37 flophouses, beer joints and whiskey stores, and at one time 12 burlesque clubs.
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| Site of Trolley Court Motor Inn, Dallas Texas |
Juanita not only vacuumed and changed the sheets but she also pulled tricks on the side as a hooker, draining the sperm of all the lecherous customers looking for barely post pubescent new talent. Kinky. At 14, she marries one of them, a "boxman" named Billy Joe Debbs. The couple work as a low rent Bonnie & Clyde, cutie pie Juanita applying for jobs in a revealing dress, distracting the owner or manager with her ample charms while she cased the office for the location of the store safe. At night she's was the wheel girl waiting in the getaway car outside while Billy Joe burgled the joint. The honeymoon's over when Debbs is caught and shipped off to a Texas barbed wire hotel.
Juanita, alone again, but now with a wardrobe bought with ill gotten gains, starts selling her ass in the more upscale downtown Dallas nightclubs. There she rubs shoulders, breasts, and everything she's got up against the Dallas underworld. In probably 1953 (judging from the 1953 Mercury parked along the motel pool), when Juanita was 18 she makes three porno reels at the Starway Motel just outside of Fort Worth, Texas. The films were directed by Lonnie Eppwright. Eppwright was a notorious Dallas pimp and pornographer. His brother owned the motel which was considered a "safe" place to shoot stag films and still porno photos because it was located outside city limits.
The plot, if you want to characterize it as such, of the only known surviving film, is simple, a traveling salesman staying at the motel lures bathing beauty Juanita, sunning herself by the motel pool, up to his room for some hanky panky. He plies her with booze, lights two cigarettes (a nod to suave Paul Henreid in Now Voyager) and has his way with her, in a lot of different ways, the end.
Juanita has through the years given two different versions of the events. She originally told a men's magazine that she did the film because she was flat broke and needed the money. Years later (trying to play the "they did me wrong card" going for some matronly respectability) she changed the story saying that she was drugged and coerced into appearing in the movie.
The guy playing the traveling salesman with the thinning hair, is Lloyd "Birdy" Tibbitts. Tibbitts was a low life gambler and a small time hood who was the featured male talent in several of Eppwright's stag reels. He was also Juanita's off-and-on boyfriend until about 1953, which kind of shoots down the "forced and drugged" version of the story. There are stills from one or both of the other films, the dark haired actor performing with Juanita in those is the pornographer Eppwright himself.
Insomniac magazine once a while back, did a series on porn, and tracked down the details behind the surviving film Smart Aleck. The reporters pumped an ex-Dallas cop who knew both Lonnie and Birdy and he gave them the scoop on it. They tracked Tibbitts over to Las Vegas where he was living and working for Benny Binion an ex Dallas hood who owned Binion's Horseshoe Casino on Fremont Street in "glitter gulch." Birdy told them that the three of them (Juanita, Lonnie and himself) spent the weekend at the Starway and shot three stag films in total. Birdy didn't know what happened to the other two films but he did say that Eppwright often sold his stag movies through a guy named Frank Ries who apparently was a big name smut peddler in the underground porn biz of the day.
The 8mm silent movie, 15 minutes long became known for some unknown reason (lost now forever) as the aforementioned Smart Aleck. It actually was one of the first nationally-distributed pornographic films and it was apparently very popular at smokers and stag parties.
Smart Aleck
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| Juanita at the Starway Motel pool |
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| Traveling salesman (Lloyd "Birdy" Tibbitts) approaches Juanita |
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| "hey baby wanna have a drink with me?" |
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| the Paul Henreid move... |
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| Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. |
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| Peeling out of their swimsuits |
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| Lloyd "Birdy" Tibbitts with Juanita swapping saliva |
Stills below from one or both of the two "lost" porno reels featuring Juanita and Lonnie Eppwright.
Other photo shoots followed.
Juanita/Candy has been called because of the popularity of Smart Aleck, "the first porn star." Soon after movie debut Juanita's next gig is as a cocktail waitress/cigarette girl/stripper in Barney Weinstein's Theater Lounge in downtown Dallas. She was paid $85 a week.
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| Juanita, left, outside Theater Lounge |
Barney's brother Abe ran another nearby strip joint called the Colony Club. He sees Juanita and acting as a sort of "impresario" of burlesque, does a makeover on Juanita, makes her dye her hair platinum blonde and turns her quickly into a burlesque star.
Because of Juanita's fondness for candy bars (Snickers) she was dubbed with the stage name Candy Barr. It stuck. Once patrons found out that she was the notoriously eager "actress" in Smart Aleck her career as a stripper understandably sky rocketed. Candy's trademark costume was of a Texas cowgirl wearing a cowboy hat, bandanna, pasties, panties (when required by law), a pair of low slung pearl-handled nickel plated cap pistols and cowboy boots.
At private stag parties, Candy charged $500 each to get a much closer view of her "assets." She also hung out after hours at soon to be infamous Jack Ruby's places the Vegas Club, and the Silver Spur Inn.
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| Jack Ruby's Carousel Club |
After her breakup with Lloyd "Birdy" Tibbitts, she marries her second hubby Troy B. Phillips in the year 1953. She continued doing adult photoshoots on the side appearing on the cover of the September ‘56 issue of Bare Magazine "the confidential keyhole."
By 1956 she made headlines getting arrested for trying to shoot Phillips' dick off after he forcefully breaks into her apartment. She was acquitted.
In 1957 at 23 years old she gets arrested for possession of marijuana. She was facing a draconian 15 year sentence.
When she was released from custody during the long appeal process she appeared in adult spreads in the #7 Fling Digest of 1958, and in Fling Festival # 2 (Winter 1959).
Candy also left Texas and took her show on the road playing New Orleans, Vegas, and Los Angeles. Candy Barr was, most likely, at $2,000 a week the best-paid stripper in her era, earning over $100,000 a year dancing nationwide. When actress Joan Collins needed to perform a striptease scene in the 1959 movie "Seven Thieves", producers had her work with Candy to learn how to move just right.
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| Candy Barr and Joan Collins |
In Los Angeles she met gangster Mickey Cohen while stripping at the Largo Club on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood becoming his gal pal.
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| Mickey Cohen |
Cohen tried to get her to flee the country and set her up with a fake I.D. in Mexico, but she came back to the states. She married Hollywood hairdresser Jack in Las Vegas on November 25, 1959.
In 1960, with her appeals exhausted Candy does time for the marijuana bust in Goree Prison Farm for Women, near Huntsville.
While in prison her last adult photoshoot appeared in Fling Festival # 8 (Holiday issue 1961–1962) and was the cover girl for Foto-Rama Magazine 1960. She did three years and 91 days. Candy got a parole, under the conditions that she live within 36 miles of Edna, Texas and never again work at any place that sold booze or as a stripper.
In Edna, Candy decided to make a living breeding dogs. Old Dallas acquaintance Jack Ruby brought her a pair of breeding dachshunds on April, 1963. In November after the Kennedy assassination and Ruby's subsequent murder of Oswald the F.B.I understandably questioned Candy.
Candy started stripping again in 1966 and got busted for pot in a police frame up that got throw out in 1969.
Candy hit the spotlight one last time when, low on cash, she agreed to pose nude again for June 1976 issue of Oui Magazine at the age of 41.
In the early 1980s, Barr was acknowledged in the magazine Texas Monthly as one of history's "perfect Texans", along with other Texans including Lady Bird Johnson.
After living in quiet seclusion for another 24 years, on December 30, 2005, Barr died, at the age of 70.
Broken homes, neglection, and sexually molested at an early age is a story repeated over and over again. Bettie Page "America's Pinup" had the same roots, she was sexually molested by her father after her mother's divorce and remarriage, the result was her being very uninhibited about displaying her body on one hand but she harboured deep mental problems that surfaced after her modeling career was over. Norma Jean Baker aka Marilyn Monroe had an absentee father, a mother in a mental institution. She was shuttled around various foster homes where she too was molested and became sexually active at an early age. Marilyn was a prostitute servicing G.I.'s during WWII, and she also is rumored to have made a porno loop. Marilyn was notorious for sleeping her way with any sex to the top in Hollywood. Even Lucille LeSueur aka Joan Crawford is rumored to have made a blue movie.
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