Early Life
Graham was born Barbara Elaine Wood in Oakland, California.
California Birth Index, 1905-1995, Name: Barbara E Ford, Birth Date: 26 Jun 1923, Gender: Female, Mother's Maiden Name: Ford, Birth County: Alameda
When Barbara was two, her mother, who was a teenager, was sent to reform school. Barbara was raised by strangers and extended family, and, although intelligent, had a limited education. As a teenager, she was arrested for vagrancy and sentenced to serve time at Ventura State School for Girls, the same reform school where her mother had been.
Released from reform school in 1939, Barbara tried to make a new start for herself. She married and enrolled in a business college and soon had her first child. The marriage was not a success, and by 1941 she was divorced. Over the next several years, she was married twice more and had a second child, but each of these attempts at a normal life failed.
After this string of failures, Barbara is said to have become a prostitute: during World War II, she was a "seagull" working near the Oakland Army Base, Oakland Naval Supply Depot, and Alameda Naval Air Station. In 1942, she and some other "seagulls" flew down to Long Beach and San Diego. She was arrested on vice charges in these naval cities and in San Pedro. At 22, with her good looks, red hair, and sex appeal, she worked for a time in San Francisco for brothel madam Sally Stanford. She soon became involved in drugs and gambling and had a number of friends who were ex-convicts and career criminals. She served five years for perjury as an alibi witness for two petty criminals, and served her sentence at the California Department of Corrections Women's State Prison at Tehachapi. After her stint in state prison, Barbara moved to Reno, Nevada and then Tonopah. She worked in a hospital and as a waitress. Barbara became bored and got on a bus for Los Angeles, where she got a room on Hollywood Boulevard and returned to prostitution. In 1953, she married a bartender, Henry Graham, with whom she had a third child, named Tommy.
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