Prohibition created a wide array of colourful characters who have stayed part of pop culture history for a century. This is what happens when you have a national law that basically encourages crime. People who wouldn’t ordinarily be criminals become criminals, and people whose actions enable the crime people want to participate in become folk heroes. And when you’ve got a brash, flashy woman who takes a positive pleasure in appearing to be the antithesis to the law, well, small wonder the twenty-fourth century’s best-known bartender is named after her.
It’s not that little is known about the early life of Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan, exactly. It’s that little that she said can be trusted. She claimed that her father was the first white child seen in Waco, but her father moved to Waco as an adult decades after the first white people moved there. She claimed her birth name was Texas, but [gestures vaguely]. She claimed to have been born on a ranch and probably wasn’t. It seems likely she claimed a lot of things to make herself seem more exotic than she was, and it was all part of a deliberate persona. Showmanship, probably, and not deceit?
She did actually make movies, back in the silent era. Even a few talkies, though in all of those she was basically playing herself. But in the Westerns, she was a tough-shooting gal who could hold her own among the rough men of the Wild West. She mostly did shorts, but shorts where she played characters called things like “The Tigress” and “Malamute Meg.” She did a movie called The She-Wolf, where she was the title character.
During Prohibition, that image would be used to create a series of speakeasies, wherein she became known as the Queen of the Nightclubs. She had a vaudeville and Broadway background, and she had a big stage presence. Even after her first raid, she would just move on to another speakeasy. She was bold and charismatic, and her presence attracted everyone from Jack Dempsey to the then-Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, later the Duke of Windsor, known Nazi sympathizer. Barbara Stanwyck was discovered while working as a dancer in a Texas Guinan club.
In the years since then, pretty well any female figure whose character name includes a state is probably based on Guinan. Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation is, of course, also based on Guinan. It seems likely Guinan would have loved the tribute; I don’t know her racial attitudes, of course, and assume they weren’t great given she was a white woman born in 1884 Texas, but while she might not have been thrilled that a black character was named after her, she definitely would’ve loved the scene where Guinan-the-character asks Riker to tell her more about her eyes.
Hello, suckers! I don’t ask you to leave your wallet on the bar, but it would be nice if you’d put a buck or two into my Patreon or Ko-fi!