NEW YORK — Author, painter, actress, Arkansan
Norris Church Mailer, an actress, model, author, painter and Arkansas native who enjoyed and endured the ride of her life as the sixth and final wife of Norman Mailer, died at her home in Brooklyn on Sunday. She was 61.
Her death was announced on the website of the Norman Mailer Society, which in a statement said she passed away “after a long and valiant struggle with cancer.”
As Norris Mailer wrote in her 2010 memoir, A Ticket to the Circus, she was a single mother in her mid-20s when she met the then-52-year old Norman Mailer at a 1975 party in Russellville. Norris Church became his sixth wife in 1980. A son, John Buffalo, had been born two years earlier.
A native of Atkins, she was born Barbara Jean Davis. She married childhood acquaintance Larry Norris in 1969 and had a son, Matthew, two years later. They divorced in 1974. As she began a modeling career, she changed her name to Norris Church, the last name suggested by Mailer because she attended church often as a child.
Her paintings were featured in several one-woman shows. She was a member of the Actors Studio, appeared in the television adaptation of Mailer’s classic The Executioner’s Song and had a brief part, with her husband, in the film version of Ragtime. She also wrote two novels, Windchill Summer and Cheap Diamonds, and worked as a model for the Wilhemina agency.
Arkansas, Pages 8 on 11/22/2010