[1] A bodybuilder and hand-balancer, Leslie posed for artist Reginald Marsh and others and modeled for classes at the Art Students League and Pratt Institute.
[2] To raise the $250 required by Tibor de Nagy Gallery to exhibit there in 1952, he appeared on Strike It Rich, an early reality television program, and won.
[2] In 1955, a collector gave him a Polaroid camera, enabling him to take hundreds of police-style mugshots, of which only photos of Sam Francis and Al Held survived.
[2] Invited to partake in the Moderna Museet's "Art in Motion" (1961) exhibition, curated by Pontus Hulten, Leslie proposed Jolly, a kit with the ingredients to make an inflatable sculpture.
[3] Even though figuration and narration became contentious issues for painters in the 1980s, "these concerns didn't exist per se in film, theater, literary or still photography world, all of which I was part of.