OCEAN PARK LIBRARY HOSTS NEW BIOGRAPHY BOOK GROUP

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date:       February 16, 2006
Contact:  Jamie Ruth Watson,  (310) 392-3804


The Ocean Park Branch Biography Book Club will discuss the antics of Florence "Pancho" Barnes, as recounted in The Happy Bottom Riding Club by Lauren Kessler.

Pancho Barnes was a force of nature, a person who lived a big, messy, colorful, unconventional life and who ran through three fortunes, four marriages and countless lovers while outsmarting Howard Hughes, outdrinking the Mexican Army, and outmaneuvering the U.S. government.  Pancho, who also hitchhiked across the United States, trekked through Mexico astride a burro, cruised South America and then took to the skies in the late 1920s, becoming a barnstormer, a racer, a cross-country flier and a Hollywood stunt pilot. In Hollywood, Pancho was an intimate of movie stars, a script doctor for the great director Erich von Stroheim and, later in life, a drinking buddy of the supersonic jet jockey Chuck Yeager. The project was running a wild and wildly successful desert watering hole known as the Happy Bottom Riding Club, the raucous bar and grill depicted in The Right Stuff. And, to top it all off, Florence “Pancho” Barnes was a hell of a woman and the wife of an Episcopalian minister.

Moderated by Jamie Ruth Watson
Saturday, March 11, 2006, 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Ocean Park Branch Library Community Room
2601 Main Street, Santa Monica CA 90405
310-392-3804

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This page was last updated on 02/16/06.