Betty’s second husband, James E. Webb, was a wiry, ruggedly handsome man with a pack of cigarettes and a motorcycle. They were a beautiful couple. As a child I thought they looked like Natalie Wood and Montgomery Clift.
Often Betty and Jim would take me along with them to one of the local drive-in theaters. I spent countless nights watching movies from the back seat of their 1959 Chevy Bel Air, or from the playground under the screen or the picnic tables near the concession building.
I saw movies starring Frankie and Annette, Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, Brando, and Lancaster. Under the stars I saw the first Bond films,Cleopatra, Doctor Zhivago, Cat Ballou, Bonnie and Clyde, The Alamo, Georgy Girl, Planet of the Vampires, Munsters Go Home, and Romeo and Juliet. Even when my niece Jackie was born in 1964 it was usually just me with Jim and Betty on a Saturday night at The Twin, the Astro, Hampton Road, or the Chalk Hill Drive-In.
Betty and I continued to share a passion for movies. Once as a teenager, I ran into her and a friend on Elm Street on a Sunday afternoon. They were doing what I was doing, going from one movie theater to another: The Palace, The Majestic, The Capri.
