Book Description

Born in a men's prison in Florence Arizona in 1923, Jo-Carroll Dennison learned to walk (and dance and sing) on a medicine show traveling the American West and later taught herself to trick-ride horses in the circus. The huckster snake-oil salesman who ran the medicine show tried to rape her at age 12 -- she fended him off. She was crowned Miss America in 1942. Dennison shows us the underbelly of the Miss America organization of the time, and shares an unvarnished view of a starlet's life in Hollywood through the 1940s. Her marriage to Phil Silvers opened many doors. It was rarefied air. Invited to dance by Howard Hughes and having a deep love affair with Sydney Chaplin (son of Charlie), "normal" life revolved around the Hollywood party scene at the homes of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Gene Kelly. The highlight was being part of the core group in weekly gatherings at Kelly's, full of song (including impromptu piano with Andre Previn and Paul Robeson) and "radical liberal intellectualism" along with occasional drop-ins the likes of Garbo (at a Tupperware party, no less), Garland, and Monroe. Un-seduced by the glitter of men in power and their infamous casting couches, Dennison shows us that superstars and power brokers are mere mortals, and often worse. Eighty years before the Me Too movement, Dennison endured inhumane treatment by boys, men, and institutions: among them charlatans, producers, directors, and therapists. She reports on the ravages of McCarthyism on friends and throughout the cultural world. Her second marriage inspired the storyline for Redford and Streisands' dilemma in The Way We Were: She was the free-spirited liberal and he was he conservative pragmatist. She writes that "to stifle one's natural impulses, is to eventually destroy oneself". With that in mind, she ultimately steers away from film roles that would have propelled her to a higher level of stardom -- including Chaplin's Limelight -- but would have required some form of personal compromise. In a bid to recover her little red hat of courage -- worn as a child to unfamiliar schools while on the road with the medicine show -- in 1976 Dennison decamps to Mexico's San Miguel de Allende to write. Whether stroking poisonous Gila Monsters, being unexpectedly hoisted high in the air in an elephant's trunk, or finding soulmates among her many four-legged companions, a common thread through her life is a sublime connection to nature. Serendipity and intuition are everything in this story. Key forks in the road made all the difference. Through choices born of being true to herself, Dennison crafts a life entirely worth living while threading the needles of anger and fear with love and fearlessness. The book is heavily illustrated with vintage photos going back more than a century. Includes mature content.