Norris Church Mailer became a model, actress and author after moving to New York to be with renowned writer Norman Mailer following their chance meeting in Arkansas at an event in Russellville. She published two semi-autobiographical novels, “Windchill Summer” and “Cheap Diamonds,” as well as a memoir, “A Ticket to the Circus,” which centers on her three-decade marriage to Mailer.
Born on Jan. 31, 1949, in Moses Lake, Wash., Norris Church Mailer began life as Barbara Jean Davis, being named for a little girl who lived next door. Her parents were homemaker Gaynell Phillips Davis and construction worker James Davis. They had briefly relocated from Arkansas to Washington state for her father’s work on the O’Sullivan Dam near Moses Lake. After the family returned to Arkansas, Barbara grew up in Atkins, where the family lived a simple life in the country without hot running water in the house or an indoor toilet. They attended a small, strict fundamentalist church several times a week. When Barbara was 3 years old, her mother saw an advertisement for the Little Miss Little Rock Contest and entered the child, who won.
The family moved from the country into town when Barbara was in first grade. There, they lived in a house with modern conveniences, including indoor plumbing. Barbara had a childhood friend whose name, Cherry, became the name of the heroine in her two novels.
Barbara attended school in the Atkins School District. After graduating from high school in 1967, she enrolled at Arkansas Polytechnic College (which later became Arkansas Tech University) in nearby Russellville. In 1969, she married her high school sweetheart, Larry Norris; two years later, they had a son, Matthew. In 1974, the marriage ended in divorce.
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Helaine R. Williams)
With her young son, Barbara moved to Russellville, where she worked as a high school art teacher. In 1975, she met renowned writer Norman Mailer at a party in Russellville when he was there on a visit. The party was held at the home of a mutual friend, author Francis Irby Gwaltney, who at the time was teaching at Arkansas Tech. Gwaltney and Mailer had become friends during World War II and remained close through the years.
Barbara stated in her autobiography that there was instant chemistry when she and Mailer met. Although she was several inches taller than Mailer, half his age and from a vastly different background, she said she knew the two would be together.
At the time they met, Mailer was in the process of breaking up with his fourth wife and seeing another woman who would (for the space of one day) become his fifth. Hailing from Brooklyn, N.Y., the Harvard-educated Mailer was a bestselling author whose World War II novel “The Naked and the Dead” (1948) brought him early fame. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for “Armies of the Night” and another Pulitzer in 1979 for “The Executioner’s Song.”
After meeting Mailer in Russellville in 1975, Barbara followed him to New York. Their son, John Buffalo Mailer, was born in 1978. The couple married in 1980 (the same year he divorced his fourth wife and then married and divorced his fifth), with Barbara becoming Mailer’s sixth and final wife.
When Barbara began a successful career as a model, her husband suggested she change her name to Norris Church Mailer. The name was composed from her previous married name, and “Church,” based on her religious background when growing up in Arkansas. She and Mailer often entertained top-tier celebrities at their homes in New York and Provincetown, Mass. Billed as “Norris Mailer,” she appeared with her husband in the movie “Ragtime” (1981) and also had small roles in a few other films.
(Courtesy of Ballantine Books)
Church Mailer’s first novel, “Windchill Summer,” was published in 2000, depicting a coming-of-age story about a girl named Cherry Marshall growing up in Arkansas during the Vietnam War era. Its sequel, “Cheap Diamonds,” released in 2007, followed Marshall’s story as an aspiring model from Arkansas arriving in New York City during the 1970s. Church Mailer’s 2010 memoir, “A Ticket to the Circus,” described her tumultuous life with Norman Mailer. Among other things, she claimed in her memoir to have had a brief romantic relationship with future President Bill Clinton, who was in his late 20s at the time.
In 2000, Norris Church Mailer was diagnosed with a malignant gastrointestinal tumor. Defying the odds, she lived 10 years, nursing her husband through his final illness until he died in 2007. On Nov. 21, 2010, Church Mailer died at her home in New York. Wilkes University in Pennsylvania established the Norris Church Mailer Fellowship in Creative Writing in 2004. — Nancy Hendricks
This story is taken from the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas, a project of the Central Arkansas Library System. Visit the site at encyclopediaofarkansas.net.
(Courtesy of Ballantine Books)
