Candy Barr, America's First Porn Princess

Down on the Farm

Map with Edna, TX locator

Juanita came from Edna, in the south Texas cotton, cattle and oil country, halfway between Corpus Christi and Houston, each 100 miles away. Hot and dry, Edna was a county-seat city of 3,000 when she was growing up.

Candy Barr

It was not an idyllic small-town childhood.

Juanita was a Depression-era baby, born in 1935, about the time a boll weevil infestation was ruining the region's cotton crop and driving people off their farms.

Boll Weevil

She was molested by the older boy next door. When she was 9, her mother was killed when she fell out of a moving car. Her father, a bricklayer known by the nickname "Doc," brought home a new wife whose pastimes included whipping the stepchildren.

Juanita had a knack as a singer and dancer — the sort of talents that might draw a schoolgirl toward cheerleading for the Edna High School Cowboys.

But she quit ninth grade and ran away to Dallas, where the brief marriage to Billy Joe Debbs preceded her Commerce Street career and the featured role in the silent, black-and-white smoker film.

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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