Julia Anne Robinson
The very obscure and ethereally beautiful Julia Anne Robinson was the unlikely subject of one of my in-depth essays. Although nobody remembers her but me, she managed to pack a lot of living into a very short life. She was a brilliant student, but chose to forego college in order to experience life. She was an Eileen Ford model who made major magazine covers. She partied with Andy Warhol. She rode the Magic Bus with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. She co-starred with Jack Nicholson in a major film.
All of that happened before she turned 22.
As fast as she rose, she fell even faster. Within a year after the release of her Nicholson film, she was back in her home town, performing in junior college theater. Within another year or two, she was dead.
Everything I just mentioned happened between 1968 and early 1975. If you define the hippie era as the period between the Summer of Love and Nixon’s resignation, Julia’s adult life was almost perfectly concurrent with that era, and perfectly symbolized it. She was like a real life version of Forrest Gump, having played every iconic chord and met every counter-cultural idol in her brief adulthood. How did she miss being introduced by a rock star on the stage at Woodstock?
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Elsewhere: my comments on the movie.