Photo: Barbara & Steve McQueen on the set of Sam Pechinpah's Junior Bonner. Barbara played McQueen's girlfriend in the movie and in real life while still dating Elvis and MGM head Jim Aubrey. They pursued her. She juggled.
The Original Vampirella - Barbara Leigh started off in show business making over 50 TV commercials and then became a regular on the Harry O series starring David Jansen. Next came the role of Rock Hudson's wife in Pretty Maids All in a Row. Unfortunalty, after Barbara did a lot of publicity for the Vampirilla project, it was cancelled.
During the casting for Sam Pechinpah's rodeo movie Junior Bonner, Barbara began dating Steve McQueen, while still dating the head of MGM studios, Jim Aubrey. Jacqueline Susanne's novel, The Love Machine, and the film adapted from it, were based on Aubrey's life.
Aubrey took Barbara to see Elvis Presley in Las Vegas. At the party in Elvis’ room, Elvis discreetly asked for her phone number. He called her and they started ‘dating’. So now, if you're counting, she was being pursued and 'dating' one rock star, one movie star, and one movie studio head, all at the same time.
With no cell phones at that time, only a message service, Barbara had her hands full, juggling her dating schedule with them.
When filming a commercial in a small town near Palm Springs, Elvis, who was at his Palm Springs home, called Barbara at her hotel room and talked her into visiting him overnight by promising helicopter transport so she wouldn’t miss her morning set call.
She flew to Elvis, stayed the night and was flown back in time to be on the set. However, she angered the commercial producer, who was hoping to get into her room that night, so he cancelled all of Barbara’s follow-up commercials. Yes, one expensive night with the king.
Barbara continued to juggle Elvis, McQueen and Aubrey until finally she had to tell Elvis not to come to the set of Junior Bonner because she was living with McQueen on location. Elvis was a gentleman and understood, so they remained friends. She was called by Joe Esposito when Elvis died.
All of this is documented in her book, The King, McQueen, and the Love Machine.
So, with a background like that, and still a favorite at celebrity shows because of being the original Vamperilla ever cast, (even though the six-picture deal folded), who better to play the hip and wild Liz in my audio-book production of Rock Star Rising?
For her party scene on the rock star's bus, I recorded it with all the actors overlapping their voices, giving it a live "just happening" feel to it. Something I learned from Howard Hawk’s movies. It took a couple of takes to get into the flow of it, with Barbara volunteering to pinch the actor who suddenly gets hit with a needle full of heroin.
His surprise yells on every take sounded completely realistic and painful. But he didn't look like he minded during the four takes.
Barbara leads a busy Hollywood lifestyle, working for Playboy magazine, entertaining fans at movie and comic conventions, and being involved in numerous charities.
Barbara's audiobook CDs are on Ebay here: https://ebay.to/3F0RQil
Rock Star Rising is FREE on youtube, no ads. Link Below.
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I haven't read her book, but I can say this: She was no "dumb bunny." I used to watch her lay on the bed and use Pavlovian and Skinnerian technique to train all the animals in the apartment she was renting from Dean Martin near the Mormon Temple in Westwood. The cat, the birds, even the fish. Patient as a pro, she'd get them all doing pretty much whatever she wished.
She had a fair sense of conditioning and rewards when it came to men, as well. The seductions and intended behavior modifications were pretty obvious and might have worked better had she been as patient with men as she'd been with the pets... -but- "so many men' so little time."
Nevertheless, she was wise enough keep a stable of other cuties around her to which to defer her abandoned legion of romantic conquests so we'd be available for things like script treatments when and if the need arose. (Of all the guys she'd nailed, only one really nailed -her- in those days: a blonde kickboxing champ named Joe Lewis who should have been a movie star himself.) Years later, I wondered if Barb would have been as successful as say, a Joan Crawford, if she'd been just a little more subtle.
I'll say this, though, the photos available now may be good indications of her beauty at the time, but like all photos, they can't really get it all across. Barb was plain staggering. Her frame and face were simply 99.99% flawless, even if she generally thought otherwise to the point of occasional obsession.
...Michael
Elizabeth