Mary Louise Cecilia Guinan was born in Waco, Texas on January 12, 1884. Her grandfather Joseph Guinan had left Ireland during the potato famine and emigrated to Quebec, Canada, where his son Michael Guinan was raised on the family farm, until he was 20 years old and headed to the America to make his way. He arrived in Detroit, Michigan in 1877. He would meet his bride-to-be, Bridget “Bessie”  Duffy, in Colorado; coincidentally, she, too, had been born and raised in Quebec province. The couple wed in 1881.  They had seven children: William, born 1882, a son; Mary Louise Cecilia, born 1884, a daughter, nicknamed “Mamie”; Pearl, born 1887, a daughter; Tommy, born 1891, a son. [Three children did not survive.]
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Though Texas Guinan was fond of telling New York audiences that she was raised on a huge ranch, in fact the Guinan family lived in town at 604 North Fourth Street, Waco, Texas.  Nearby, on the corner of Mary and Fourth Streets, was Eaton, Guinan, and Company, wholesale grocers, where Mike Guinan worked for a time.  While they lived in Waco, this Catholic family attended services at St. Mary’s Church of the Assumption.
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Little “Mamie” was a tomboy and her parents felt a good education would set her straight; they enrolled her in the Convent School of Sacred Heart in Waco. Mamie soon learned the power of pulling pranks and saying outrageous things to delight a captive audience. She attended local stage performances and enjoyed the exciting Wild West shows. Not unlike the little March sisters in “Little Women,” “Mamie” wrote skits and tutored her siblings in the fine art of home entertainment. Even as an adolescent, she seemed to crave the spotlight and applause.

In 1900, the Guinan family moved to Denver, Colorado and “Mamie” got involved in local theatre productions. She also played the organ in church. At her cousin Katy’s home in Idaho Springs, “Mamie” met an interesting fellow, John J. Moynahan, a cartoonist for the Rocky Mountain News.

When she was 20 years old, Texas Guinan married John Moynahan in Colorado on December 2, 1904. Moynahan's career took them to Chicago, where Guinan studied music before divorcing him in 1906 and starting her career as an actress-singer.

By 1907, she moved to Greenwich Village and renamed herself “Texas” Guinan.  Still in love with his wife, and worried about her, "Moy" was sending her a few dollars every week.

As Texas Guinan would say:  "Marriage is all right, but I think it's carrying love a little bit too far."  

A number of romances followed. When the film industry beckoned in 1917, and Texas Guinan was renting a Los Angeles cottage for herself and her mother, there was a serious flirtation with her costar George Cheseboro. Texas made four silent films with George Chesebro as her co-star such as "The She Wolf." In case you are wondering, George played "the stranger" and Texas played the fearless gun-toting "she wolf" in the title. This was the first entry in a series of 26 two-reel thrillers starring Texas Guinan, released every two weeks beginning Saturday, 10 May 1919.

Together she and George made these silent films:  "The She Wolf" (1919), "South of Santa Fe" (1919), "Some Gal" (1919), "The Girl of Hell's Agony" (1919).
George Chesebro: Born in Minnesota, George Chesebro [29 July 1888 — 28 May 1959] was an American film actor. After returned from the war, he appeared in more than 400 films between 1915 and 1954, beginning in two-reelers starring Texas Guinan. According to her biographer, there was a hot little romance going on for awhile.

Thanks to her love of publicity, she often announced her latest “engagement” in the newspapers. But in a 1931 interview, when asked on camera how often she had married, her reply (recorded for posterity) was, “Twice in America – and once on the level. Love is the sugar coating on the cake of trouble.”

But she was not starved for male company. Gangsters backed her speakeasies, nightspots where she rounded up musicians and hired both her father and her brother Tommy to keep them close by. Business managers surrounded her along with lawyers such as Max Lopin, who kept her out of jail.

After the Wall Street crash cratered the speakeasy racket, Texas Guinan took her 40 showgirls on the road with “Too Hot For Paris.” As they toured the Pacific Northwest, Texas complained of abdominal pains.  It was getting harder to keep up the pace and, finally, she fell ill in Vancouver, British Columbia, and asked to be hospitalized. She died there, age 49, on November 5, 1933. The death certificate stated she died of toxemia and ulcerative colitis. Thousands attended her  funeral at Frank Campbell’s on West 66th Street.  Honorary pallbearers included her favorite journalists such as Heywood Broun, Mark Hellinger, O.O. McIntyre, Ed Sullivan Louis Sobol and some of her lawyers – like Max Lopin.

Texas Guinan was survived by her three siblings and both parents. Her father Michael Guinan was 79 years old when he died, two years later, in 1935.  Her mother Bessie, who lived to be 101, died in 1959. The Queen of the Night Clubs is interred in the Calvary Cemetery, Woodside, Queens, New York.

If she saw you reading this, Texas Guinan would say: “Listen, Sucker, as I said to my friend Mark here, why take life so seriously?  In 100 years we will all be gone or in some stuffy book. Give me plenty of laughs and you can take all the rest.”