Photon Torpedoes: Adrienne Barbeau: Thanks for the Mammaries

« Hulk Mythos: Better Than Hulk the Movie! | Main | Nasthalthia: Morrison's Nod to Adventure Comics 397 »

September 4, 2006

Adrienne Barbeau: Thanks for the Mammaries

When I was a young buck, growin' up in Corpus Christi, Texas (circa 1974), there was a TV show called Maude. I watched this show every week. There were topics on women's rights (abortion, right to work), race, politics--all of which made me a very liberated cowboy! But that ain't the real reason--I watched Maude to see Adrienne Barbeau. I was goin' through puberty after all! Whenever she turned up in one of her tight sweaters, I got that funny feelin' in my blue jeans. After one memorable show, in which Ms. Barbeau wore a particulary sheer top and leaned over toward the camera, I made a remark to a classmate in my junior high school (I think it was Paul R Hass Middle School). He said, "Yeah, Adrienne Barbeau!" with a wild look in his eyes, the kind that my dogs gets whenever he senses a member of the opposite sex.

Adrienne Barbeau recently published her memoirs, titled There Are Worse Things I Could Do. It's a fascinatin', quick read, especially if you liked her movies: The Fog, Escape From New York, Cannonball Run, and Swamp Thing. Barbeau was trained as a musical singer who appeared in Fiddler on the Roof and Grease on Broadway; before that she had an off-Broadway musical where she was completely nude for the entire performance! I would have loved to have seen that--I suspect that various nudie pictures I've seen must come from that event. There's a lot of behind the scenes stuff I've always wondered about--like how she met and married the director, John Carpenter. And how they got divorced! The making of Carpenter's movies is discussed, as well as the infamous train wreck, Swamp Thing! There's a lot of scandalous tidbits of Barbeau's love life, like how she lost her virginity to a man who pretended to be Philip Roth, and how Burt Reynolds two-timed her with Dinah Shore. Barbeau's had a wild ride, gettin' married and havin' twins in her 50s. If you're a fan, you'll need to check out this book. Nuff said.