During the 1950s, Candy Barr received nationwide attention for her stripping career in Dallas, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, her encounters with the law, the death of her second husband, and her sentence to a prison term for drug possession. Barr was also in relationships with Mickey Cohen and Jack Ruby.

After serving three years in prison, Candy Barr went to South Texas. She returned to stripping in the late 1960s, and posed for Oui magazine in the 1970s, then retired. In the early 1980s, Candy Barr was acknowledged in the magazine Texas Monthly as one of history’s “perfect Texans”, along with other Texans, including Lady Bird Johnson.