Bethlehem via Broadway and Hollywood

My husband's aunt, Texas Gail Paulus, started singing and dancing as soon as hse could walk and talk. She taught the other kids in her Bethlehem, Pennsylvania neighborhood dance routines and they put on shows. She was in every church and school production and by the time she was in her teens she was ready for the Big Time. At age 15 she was making regular trips to New York City to act in live radio plays and sing in variety shows. In 1942 at age 16, she made her Broadway debut in "The Three Sisters" as one of the leads.

World War II was well under way by then and she was a regular in USO shows and dances in her home town. Another article told of her meeting in New York with a Hollywood agent who was impressed with her moxie and signed her up for a movie with dancer Ray McDonald. The movie, “The Army Rhythm,” was apparently never made and Texas does not appear in the Internet Movie Database or the Internet Broadway Database.

 

The next time Texas appears in the genealogical records is in 1952 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with a husband who was an engineer at a nuclear facility, and no sign of her Broadway or Hollywood exploits. However, her artistic side was still in evidence with a newspaper item listing her as one of those exhibiting jewelry at the New Mexico Art League Exhibition.

Later, Texas would divorce the engineer and marry two, possibly three other husbands, and have a son. After all that adventure and travel, she died in 1992 in the same town where she'd been born, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.