Film Homage Junior Bonner 1972 Whiskey Row Palace Bar Prescott Arizona 1990-2010 #1 Acrylic Print

The Palace bar, opening in September 1877, is the oldest frontier bar in Arizona. In the summer of 1971 it was used as a favorite watering hole for Steve McQueen in Sam Peckinpah's "Junior Bonner" (1972). 



The low key modern Western is a gentle tale with marvelous performances by McQueen and his estranged parents played by Ida Lupino (1918-1995) and Robert Preston (1918-1987). 



It flopped at the box office so Steve and Sam returned that same year with their explosive "The Getaway," filled with multiple killings and chases. It was filmed in the U.S./Mexico border town of El Paso, Texas across from Juarez, where drug related executions are the norm. 



www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FhkOy1inT8 



A humorous (with Old West elements) campaign poster for Sam Steiger graces the front window, on the July 4th weekend, of the historic Palace Bar. 



I first became obsessed with photography and motion pictures while growing up in post WW2 Manila in the Philippine Islands in the late 1940's/early 1950's. Film noirs were a particular influence. But my first love remains the theater. I acted in numerous amateur productions from 1958 to 1978. In 1979 I earned a MA in drama from the University of Arizona; earlier getting a BA in English from the University of Minnesota, where I co-founded the first film society on campus and ran it for four years. While at the U of A, I studied with the master black and white photo essayist W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) the last year of his life. I am the last person cited in Jim Hughes' definitive biography of Gene, as I wrote about attending his final...