Over the past 45 years, whereas she was out and in of flicks and tv, out and in of Hollywood and New York, and out and in of two marriages, Ms. Dennison wrote parts of her autobiography. She lastly printed it herself in September. She known as it “Discovering My Little Purple Hat” — as a result of, as an itinerant youngster, she had worn a pink felt hat for braveness when she went to a brand new college and confronted one more classroom of strangers.
“There was a particular Dickensian side to her story,” her son stated, however her life, even the hardscrabble early years, “was completely full of fantastic characters.”
Jo-Carroll Dennison was born on Dec. 16, 1923, in a males’s state jail in Arizona.
On the time, her mother and father owned and ran a touring medication present in Texas. When her mom, Elizabeth (Brownd) Dennison, was about to present start, her father, Harry Arthur Dennison, determined he wished his youngster born in California, which he seen as extra glamorous than Texas. So that they began driving west. By Arizona, her mom was in labor, and so they stopped within the small city of Florence. The one assist they may discover was the jail physician, who delivered Jo-Carroll within the jail infirmary.
They carried on to California in what Ms. Dennison known as their home automotive, a Mannequin T Ford with the flat mattress of a truck. She rapidly turned a part of the medication present, wherein her mother and father lured folks in with leisure after which sought to promote them elixirs. As a toddler, Jo-Carroll sang, tap-danced and carried out in sketches.
When she was 7, her father left, which shattered her.
After Despair-era gigs with a circus and carnival — she rode trick ponies and roped steers — she and her mom moved again to Texas, first to the tiny city of Hale Middle after which to Waco, the place they signed on with one other medication present. In her autobiography, Ms. Dennison wrote that when she was 12, the snake-oil salesman who ran the present sexually assaulted her.
She and her mom moved again to Hale Middle, the place Jo-Carroll graduated from highschool in 1940. She later moved in with an aunt in Tyler, in East Texas. She had enrolled in enterprise college to turn out to be a secretary when the banker requested her to enter the wonder contest. She had no real interest in parading earlier than the general public once more, however he persevered — and supplied her a free bathing go well with.