No one can say exactly when it happened. But at some point after Jan Jarboe Russell’s November 1993 cover story, “The Skinny on Susan Powter,” appeared, the insanity stopped. The workout madwoman with the grating voice and the blond buzz cut could no longer be heard blaring out of millions
A year ago last April, I explored the curious past of an East Texas man named Bobby Frank Cherry in a story titled “The Sins of the Father.” Though the FBI had long suspected that Cherry had played a role in the infamous 1963 bombing of a church in
Back in January 1976 when Gary Cartwright wrote “Is Jay J. Armes for Real?” Armes was best known to the average Joe or Jane as “the dude with the hand-hooks who can do karate.” He bragged that he was a private investigator who employed more than two thousand agents, that
It was the great Houston murder mystery of the nineties. Who shot 46-year-old Doris Angleton, the beautiful, ebullient River Oaks mother of two young daughters and the wife of Robert Angleton, Houston’s top bookmaker? When Doris was found in her home in 1997—she had been shot thirteen times—their friends speculated
In September 1984 Gloria Brock (a pseudonym) began a three-year relationship with Mark Reeves. It could have been the perfect romance, except that Brock was a Dallas prostitute and Reeves was the infamous Dapper Bandit, the man who committed a string of bank robberies from 1978 to 1988 without ever
In the June 1991 issue, in an article called “Voices From the Dark,” I told the story of Dawn, my mother-in-law. It was an account of her brief career as a singer in Hollywood in the late forties, how schizophrenia had brought that career to a tragic end, and how
Novelist Salman Rushdie, whose new book, Fury, will be published by Random House in September, kicks off the twenty-first annual Margarett Root Brown Houston Reading Series on September 10 at the Alley Theatre.
The longtime U.S. Speaker of the House from Fort Worth who personified the Democratic party for decades, Jim Wright has traded the public spotlight for the private life—sort of. He’s mostly stayed out of politics since he resigned in 1989 following allegations that he had used his influence to sell
The first queen of tejano music, Laura Canales broke the gender barrier in the seventies and eighties and paved the way for Selena Quintanilla, the superstar who put tejano on the map. But by the early nineties, when Selena’s career had begun to take off, Canales had vanished from
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If you counted up the combined years of total public service of the following former mayors, you’d discover that it covers more time than the longest of Texas droughts. Here’s why some of our well-known “local” politicians are stumping nowadays. Steve Bartlett (Dallas, 1991-1995) is the president of Financial Services
“I’m a proud member of the Texas Farm Bureau,” says Craig Washington, the former Democratic state representative, state senator, and U.S. congressman from Houston. The 59-year-old now spends much of his time on his farm near Bastrop, where he has lived since he left Congress in January 1995. “On the
Idealistic? Yes. Reform-Minded? Absolutely. Bipartisan? That Too. During the 1971 session, the state representatives who came to be known as the Dirty Thirty were everything you’ve learned not to expect in politics. The group—which eventually numbered 35 members—put aside party loyalty (Democrats (D) are marked in blue,
On October 14, 1987, an eighteen-month-old toddler named Jessica McClure fell 22 feet into an abandoned Midland water well that was only eight inches in diameter. For the next three days, rescuers frantically dug a tunnel to reach her while the little girl sang nursery rhymes to herself, called
From the start, Joe Dealey, Jr., had been groomed to take a leadership role at the Dallas Morning News. The great-grandson of the founding publisher, George B. Dealey, he joined the family business full-time in 1970, working in employee relations, and after a stint in the Army, entered the management-training
“If Beavis and Butt-head were around today, they’d probably be right back on the couch where I left them. That’s where they’ll always be in my mind.” So says Austinite Mike Judge, who created the animated teen duo back in MTV’s halcyon pre-Jackass era and still gets asked about
As the Dallas Cowboys head into the 2001 season, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether the quarterback of the future will be Tony Banks, Quincy Carter, Anthony Wright, or none of the above. What we do know is where some of the quarterbacks of the past are huddling up these
Though no one at Dallas-based Mary Kay Cosmetics will say too much about her physical condition, 83-year-old cosmetics queen Mary Kay Ash remains in fragile health following a stroke she suffered five years ago, and she rarely leaves her famous “round house” in North Dallas. Until that time, she was
Even his neighbors in New Braunfels haven’t heard much from Bob Krueger since he left Africa more than a year ago. Oh, they know that his wife, Kathleen, led a failed effort to ban beer on the Comal River, and they hear him occasionally on the half-hour Sunday morning religious
Comer J. Cottrell, Jr., one of Texas’ leading African American entrepreneurs, was a United States Air Force sergeant stationed in Japan in the early fifties and managing a PX when he noticed that it didn’t carry hair-care products for black soldiers. When he got back to the States, he was
Is there anything Nancy Lieberman-Cline can’t accomplish? The most storied female basketball player in the world won a gold medal at the Pan-American Games in 1975, a silver at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, led Old Dominion University to two national championships in 1979 and 1980, became the first
While serving a life sentence for participating in the slaughter of seven people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate, California inmate Charles “Tex” Watson has married, fathered four children, and founded a prison-cell ministry. Watson enjoyed repeated conjugal visits (now forbidden to the state’s lifers) with his wife, Kristin, at
In 1988, when former Houston Oiler Billy “White Shoes” Johnson ended his fourteen-year NFL career, he was the league’s all-time leading punt returner and one of only seven men to have returned four kicks for touchdowns in a single season. But despite all the juking and jetting that earned
Perish the thought, but the founder of the largest modeling agency in the Southwest no longer lives and breathes fashion. These days, in fact, when Kim Dawson travels with her husband, George, she doesn’t shop or even note the latest trends. “I figure that’s what I do at home,” says
At last, it all makes sense: Domingo “Sam” Samudio, who topped the charts with “Wooly Bully” in 1965 as the leader of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, studied voice at Arlington State College (now the University of Texas at Arlington) and is an opera fan! Why didn’t he
When Cedric Benson wrapped up his high school career this year, the star of Midland Lee’s football team had rushed for 8,423 yards, earning the title of the best running back in Texas. But even those eye-popping stats put him far behind the state’s most prolific rusher of all
In 1974, one year before Steven Spielberg became a household name with the release of Jaws, the director made his feature film debut with The Sugarland Express. The plot centered on the May 1969 kidnapping of a Department of Public Safety trooper named Kenneth Crone. Fugitives Robert and Ila
Half a century ago, in an era before graphite clubs, corporate sponsorships, and network TV coverage, Kathy Whitworth was a pioneer in women’s golf. Born in the West Texas town of Monahans and raised in Jal, New Mexico, she gravitated to the sport as a child, turned pro at
If the remedy to what happened in last year’s presidential election is to impeach the five Supreme Court justices who voted to stop the recounts,” says Ronnie Dugger, “then it would follow logically that you would impeach George W. Bush on the grounds that he is in receipt of stolen
“Brad Pitt is going to see me! All of Hollywood is going to see me!” That’s what 47-year-old Carrie O’Brien thought when she first spied the July 2-July 9 double issue of Sports Illustrated, the one featuring her and four of the other original Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders on the cover.
During the sixties and seventies the best entertainment the Capitol had to offer was the oratory of Galveston senator A. R. “Babe” Schwartz. “A bill written by liars, cheats, and thieves for the benefit of liars, cheats, and thieves” was his denunciation of an anti-consumer bill. Once he and Barbara
In 1985 Georgette Mosbacher appeared on the radar screen of Texas high society like some dazzling UFO. But the flame-haired beauty and cosmetics entrepreneur—who was then the new wife of Houston oilman Robert Mosbacher—didn’t remain unidentified for long. Together the couple pursued their respective careers and their mutual avocation,
“I think everybody knows I’m still here,” Tanya Tucker says when asked if she would describe her career these days as a comeback. But while most folks have heard of Tucker, they may not know that she is one of country music’s all-time best-selling female vocalists. (They also may
At the top of the University of Texas Tower 35 years ago, Austin policemen Houston McCoy and Ramiro “Ray” Martinez risked all to end the killing spree of ex-Marine Charles Whitman. The press initially credited Martinez with taking Whitman down, but after the coroner’s report was issued, it seemed
He’s the kid pitcher who went directly from Houston’s Westchester High School to the show. Twenty days after pitching in the state finals—and two weeks after the beleaguered Texas Rangers selected him as the number one pick in the amateur draft and paid him a $65,000 bonus—eighteen-year-old David Clyde
During each legislative session, the Speaker of the House hosts a dinner for his predecessors. This year the nine living former Speakers, Democrats all, made their way to Pete Laney’s Capitol apartment on the night of April 25, and in addition to dining on mixed grill, garlic mashed potatoes, and
From the pulpit to the chile patch, the career path of Joel Gregory has been a singular one. Between 1990 and 1992 he was one of the best-known Baptist preachers in Texas. Possessed of an incisive intellect and a deeply resonant voice that could arouse a sleepy Sunday morning
With its psychosexual overtones and perverse violence, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was so sidesplittingly over-the-top when it was released that the horror film genre hasn’t been the same since. Filmed in Austin, the pioneering 1974 flick brought tasteless gore into mainstream theaters—and made it nearly impossible for most
If there was ever a person with a reason to hold a grudge, that person is Stephen J. “Tio” Kleberg. Three years ago the man who was the living, breathing embodiment of the King Ranch found his world upended. He had clashed with other descendants of Richard King, the
Zina Garrison fell asleep. I was interviewing the former fourth-ranked tennis player in the world, who in a fourteen-year career had bested Chris Evert, Monica Seles, Steffi Graf, and Martina Navratilova, overcoming jangly nerves through faith in herself and a greater power, and I had sent her to the land
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Vanilla Ice (Rob Van Winkle) was just another white kid from the Dallas suburbs in 1990, when his “Ice Ice Baby” became the first rap single to hit number one on Billboard’s pop singles chart. Back in his heyday, the peroxided crossover sensation could boast of multi-platinum record sales
On the April morning that opened the last day of shooting the Walker, Texas Ranger series finale, the center of attention was not the all-American star of the show but a retired heavyweight boxer who played a bloodthirsty galoot. Randall “Tex” Cobb had barely twenty words of scripted dialogue, but
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“A limited series, with a limited future.” So wrote one Variety critic after viewing the 1978 pilot episode of Dallas, the CBS show that would become the second-longest-running dramatic series ever (only Gunsmoke lasted longer). For thirteen seasons audiences around the world were captivated by the trials and tribulations of
Only a man who came within three days of being executed for a crime he didn’t commit could be as passionate an advocate for a death-penalty moratorium as former death row inmate Randall Dale Adams.
