Leigh French

Who is Leigh French?

Leigh French is an American actress.

In her early career as a regular on the Smothers Brothers variety show of the late-1960s, she portrayed a somewhat spaced-out or ditzy hippie named Goldie O'Keefe. The character was originally introduced, in an ostensible studio-audience interview segment, as Goldie Keif; both "Goldie" and "Keif" were slang terms for marijuana at the time. Reportedly, the slight name change to O'Keefe when she became a semi-regular was at the television network's insistence. Her segment of the show was called "Share a Little Tea with Goldie." At the time, "sharing tea" was a popular euphemism for getting high on marijuana. Following suit, her segment consisted largely of "helpful" household advice loaded with sex and drug-related double-entendres.

She played a similar character, a San Francisco hippie type named Cobalt-Blue, in a 1968 episode of the I Spy series. She and Rob Reiner also played hippies in the 1969 "Flower Power" episode of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. French can also be seen in such films as WUSA, The Drowning Pool, The Hollywood Knights, and The Long Days of Summer.