BARBARA LEIGH WILL JOIN US!

In 1972, my best friend in the neighborhood had his Mom drive us to a small movie theater called The Westwood. The marque' read : "Steve McQueen in Junior Bonner". The film was directed by Sam Peckinpah, and co-starred Ida Lupino, Robert Preston and Joe Don Baker. As boys go, our hormones had been raging for at least a year. Back then, it was safer for our parents to drop us off to a movie house and say "Be standing on the curb when the movie lets out. If you don't see us in 15 minutes, go back inside and watch it again"! Yes, it was a more innocent age. I had been a fan of Steve McQueen from the age of 9 when I first saw "The Great Escape" on television, and now five years later a new film was playing in first-run! It was a wonderful film and today it has a special following worldwide in DVD release. We enjoyed every minute of it munching away on popcorn and making occasional comments that film critic Roger Ebert could only imagine. However, Steve's love interest in the film was really what captivated our attention. And if I remember correctly, when Barbara Leigh appeared on the screen, we mentioned something along the lines of "Oh, God!" simultaneously (followed by several annoyed people 'shushing' us in the theater). My defense then is the same today. We couldn't help it! Barbara grabbed our attention (along with every guy who saw the film in worldwide release) as the pretty, flirtatious and fun girl attending the rodeo (filmed entirely on location in Prescott, Arizona). Looking back, it was the bar scene where Steve manages to get a slow dance in with Barbara's on screen character of "Charmagne" that held us spellbound. I must tell you. If my next door neighbor wasn't a McQueen fan when we purchased our tickets and walked into the theater, he became one instantly during a scene where a bar brawl breaks out in the Ace Bar. McQueen cleverly maneuvers Barbara into a telephone booth with a folding glass door and winds up talking to her and getting in a long kiss. At that point, we lost it! In retrospect, if theaters had video surveillance cameras similar to what we see now in shopping malls, they would have captured us on tape with eyes as big as saucers and our jaws hitting the floor. That scene cinched it. We wanted to be Steve McQueen before, but this was "Overdrive" for us! After the movie ended, my pals Mom showed up in her 1966 Chevrolet Impala and drove us off to The Mall (this was how our parents kept us busy and out of their hair back then). For the next two and a half hours (and daily over the next couple of weeks in junior high school), we were obsessed with this absolutely beautiful girl Steve had with him in the phone booth. We were smitten and that was it! Further, we now had our "image" of what the ideal girlfriend should look like (unfortunately we never found her in either junior high or high school). But you have to bear in mind the mentality of 14 year-old boys back then. We simply could not get past "How could Steve buy this girl a plane ticket and drive off alone to another rodeo?" I don't believe we ever resolved that issue! Fast forward to this past weekend. Who could have possibly imagined that I would have had the absolute Joy of visiting with Barbara Leigh and laughing over this incident?

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Barbara is our Special Guest this week on "THE INTERVIEW" and her new book is entitled, "The King, McQueen and The Love Machine", with Marshall Terrill. This will be a great week and I hope you will join us. If you happen to grab the book before or during my posts, you will enjoy Barbara's visit immensely. See you then...