Steve McQueen Stories by first wife Neile Adams

Lovely...go on.

:)

Steve was beginning to alarm me. His use of grass was escalating steadily. What used to be indulged in after work or after dinner and before bedtime was now being used freely at all hours of the day. Coke was also becoming part of his daily consumption. He seemed to find a drug connection everywhere—in and out of the country. We’d have words and his response to me was always the same: “Look, honey, I’m not working right now and I deserve time out for good behavior. Right? Right. I’ve been working my buns off, you know?” And then, in his Amos ‘n’ Andy imitation, would add, “I needs mah time to howl, woman!” All delivered in a way that made me feel guilty for even questioning him. tttt I couldn’t disagree with his reasoning, and I wasn’t smart enough to come up with the quick comeback. But his drug use bothered me. I sensed it distorted his view of the world. I began to resent Jay Sebring’s presence in the house. Jay and his damned briefcase! Jay’s briefcase with his combs and scissors ... and the little packets of coke. And yet it was Jay who helped me convince Steve he should do a movie called Bullitt.

The script had been waiting for Steve when we arrived home from Europe. As usual, I did the first reading. But when I told him that Bullitt was a cop, Steve immediately said, “No way am I playing a cop. Those kids call ‘em pigs, man! What are you trying to do to me? Why, those kids would turn me off so fast it’d make your head spin!”

After several days of trying to persuade him otherwise, it was still no sale. And then one afternoon, as Jay was giving Steve a haircut, Steve brought the new script into the conversation. Both men were as high as kites, and I took advantage of the situation by getting Jay to agree with my reasoning that playing a copy might actually enhance Steve’s image with his young fans rather than compromise it.

Actually, Steve’s feelings about police authority had thawed out considerably since those early days. But the drug culture was upon us, and he was again leery of authority. tttt His age was gnawing at him. But the young people he wanted to be identified with had warned, “Don’t trust anybody over thirty.” Suddenly, even I, his beloved wife, at thirty-three years of age, was looking old to him. He fervently longed to be a member of this now generation. If he couldn’t be a part of it because of his chronological age, then he would join them in spirit and in deed.

These young kids were mobilizing the country! It was astounding to him. They were anti-establishment, just as he had been in his youth. But then the country had been in a different frame of mind. Then there had only been “good wars.” Now we had a “bad war,” and Steve wanted to relive his youth through these kids.

Suddenly, I had a husband with two personalities: a self-destructive juvenile delinquent and a responsible, loving husband and father

The wife was very pretty.

[quote] The phone went dead and the blood drained from Steve’s face. He was thunderstruck.

Why would a str8 guy care so much? & react in this way?

[quote]His ego couldn’t handle the innuendo. It seemed to violate everything he stood for—most notably his macho image.

Nonsense. Must have been more than that.

After Bullitt had been a week into its San Francisco location....A new pattern and a new Steve emerged in San Francisco. Steve began acting like a spoiled brat. As a movie star-tycoon on his way to building his empire, he began flexing his muscles. He demanded, for instance, that a pool table be installed in his rented apartment.

The apartment was on the twelfth floor and the elevators were small—certainly not big enough to contain a pool table. “There’s no way we can get a pool table up there, Steve. It’s just plain impossible.” tttt “Well, you guys think about that for a little bit more and tell me what you can come up with. Just remember, I want that pool table!” said the star

The answer was a crane. They had to fly the pool table into the building with a crane. Not only that, but the rented apartment’s huge front window had to be broken and repaired in order to swing the pool table into the living room. Peter Yates had been impressed and remarked, “You only get your way if you have power, and McQueen has power.”

Steve was growing full of himself there was no doubt. Once in his dressing room, in the presence of screenwriter Harry Kleiner and Peter Yates, I witnessed a furious tirade over the word “obsequious.” It had outraged Steve that he didn’t know what the word meant and he bellowed, “Obsequious ... obsequious! What kind of a word is that? I don’t know what the hell it means and if I don’t know you can bet your sweet ass that those people in the theater ain’t gonna know either!”

The word was part of a sentence Kleiner had given the intellectual Bob Vaughn character to say to Steve. To keep peace the sentence was changed

[quote]Steve McQueen Stories by first wife Neile Adams

She won't be as much fun as Ali. Impossible.

Steve had the uncanny ability to believe what he was saying at the moment. He preached against the evils of sin like drugs and adultery and yet had a hard time living it.

For instance, publicly, the Cheech and Chong movies espousing drugs enraged him. Privately he did what they did on the screen. When Ringo Starr came to our house, he talked of the dangers of drugs and belief in one’s own publicity.

I think he wished he could have been that person. He wanted to be looked up to, and yet he couldn’t bear to be left out by the young people....... tttt

What I didn’t know was that he was already “entertaining” women in his apartment. I was not to learn about this “entertaining” until much, much later. But instinct told me the direction his life was taking, and I was being gently pushed away. I didn’t understand why, and neither did he.

Years later he would explain, “I felt compelled to do it and I couldn’t stop. That fuckin’ list [in the underground book] had twisted my head so bad, baby, that I felt I had to prove to the whole goddamn world I was Steve McQueen, super stud.”

One Sunday, while still in the middle of filming Bullitt, we decided to catch a new movie that was breaking box office records. It was called The Graduate and overnight it made Dustin Hoffman a star

As we left the movie house, I could see Steve was bewildered. I kept looking at his face to see if I could detect in it what was bothering him. It was clear he wasn’t ready to talk over just yet what it was he felt. I knew he had enjoyed the movie. His eyes had been riveted to the screen during the entire two hours. For a minute there I thought he might have been offended by the sacrilegious way the cross had been handled. tttt He remained thoughtful for a bit and then he blurted out, “What’s gonna happen to us, do you suppose?” tttt “Us? What do you mean? Why should anything happen to us?” tttt “No, no. I mean ‘us’—like Newman and me—you know?” tttt The man could be baffling sometimes. “No, I don’t know. Tell me.” tttt “God, baby, I can’t believe this guy’s going to be a movie star, can you? I mean, he is one ugly cat. Good actor, yeah, but he sure is homely!” tttt Dustin Hoffman’s emergence in the cinema as a leading man dumbfounded him. Steve couldn’t understand the public’s fascination with this unconventional-looking actor. Time and again after that, Steve would stare at his image in the mirror and say to me, “Look at that, baby, take a look at that face and that body and tell me the truth. Who would you pick, him or me?” We would then both laugh, although I knew that he was serious. tttt Dustin Hoffman seemed to arouse my husband’s insecurity over his durability, his ability to stay at the top. He called it the “brass ring” and spoke of “his lock on it.” The good roles would continue to be offered to him, I knew; but as Steve aged I also knew they would not always be offered to him. And that would kill him

[quote] Why would a str8 guy care so much? & react in this way?

Because it would ruin his career.

It didn't have to be true.

When you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes true in people's minds. Just ask James Comey or Donald Trump.

In 1968, a concerted effort to make people think a popular actor was gay would certainly ruin his career.

Steve McQueen was horribly insecure. He would turn down a film if he didn't get top billing, or if they didn't let him ride a motorcycle or race a car in it. He was very old fashioned in terms of male/female roles and Ali McGraw's careeer suffered for it (though I've never understood her popularity).

He wouldn't let her work. Her job was to take care of Steve McQueen.

By the time Steve returned from San Francisco the script that Paul had told him about the previous summer was ready.As soon as the studios became aware that McQueen and Newman were seriously interested in the property (still called The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy) tttt

But a little problem arose. tttt

Steve wanted billing over Paul—which was ridiculous, considering that Steve had made his film debut in 1955 in a minor part (which was basically the problem) in Somebody Up There Likes Me, starring Paul Newman. Paul Newman had also gathered a few Oscar nominations along the way, compared to Steve’s one, and Paul was as much a major star as Steve. tttt

I thought Steve was being shortsighted, but he was adamant. Then one night he woke me up and asked, “What if I ask him to flip a coin for the top spot?” tttt

“Come on, honey. Paul will never go for that. Put yourself in his place.” I turned around and looked at him. “Would you?” tttt

“Yeah, I would. You know I would,” he replied as he propped himself up on his elbow. tttt

I had to smile. “Bullshit, honey. We both know you wouldn’t.” He truly wanted to do this movie with Paul, but he had boxed himself in by stubbornly insisting on top billing. He thought flipping a coin would be the way to save face and it would give him a fifty-fifty chance of coming out on top. tttt

Newman was no fool. He said no. tttt

Then Freddie Fields, Paul Newman’s agent, came up with an idea that was wholeheartedly approved by Paul. And that was to give Steve billing on the left (which is the first position), while Paul’s name would be on the right, but raised higher than Steve’s. tttt

Or vice versa. Take your pick, Paul said. (Obviously, Paul didn’t care about power trips. He was secure enough not to need to. He simply wanted to protect his rightful place.)

It was an innovative idea, but Steve couldn’t decide. He asked Freddie’s advice. “Which one would you pick? The lower first or the higher second?”

Freddie said he thought Steve should choose the lower. Steve was thoughtful for a while and then agreed with Freddie. But by the time Freddie got to the door, relieved that the billing problem had been surmounted, Steve had changed his mind. He called to Freddie and said, “No, no, man. I don’t like it. Tell Paul I wanna flip coins.”

Well—so much for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

We bought a new vacation house in Palm Springs, a much bigger and grander one than I cared to own in the desert. I immediately went to work with decorator Peter Shore, whom I had known since our Solar Drive days and to whom I had entrusted the Oakmont Drive house. When the renovations got underway, Steve gave me a directive.

“Just think of this as my pad, baby, O.K.?” he said. “Decorate it as if it belonged to a man, a bachelor. No feminine stuff. You know what I mean?”

The man is serious, I thought. He’s not kidding.

“Ah ... just what are we proposing to do here?” I thought I’d best get the ground rules straight “Look, honey, this has nothing to do with you and me. I just want to feel like I have a house of my own. That’s not too much to ask. The Oakmont house is more you than me [which was untrue], so I want Palm Springs to look like me.” He said those words with such sincerity that I just stood there like a dummy, nodding my head!

My life was being thrown into disorder. I was feeling disconnected from the man I had married. At times it felt as though I were living with a stranger. Something was going on with him, and I couldn’t get a bead on it..... it was becoming impossible to talk to him sensibly, since he was stoned most of his waking moments.

His way of dressing was becoming very “mod” and very “hip.” It was a self-conscious Steve who walked around in extra-wide bell bottom pants and a tank shirt and a self-conscious Steve who walked around with a mustache and love beads and gold chains. I noticed the gold St. Christopher medal I had given him in Las Vegas many years before had now vanished from around his neck.

I had given it to him with the inscription, “To part is to die a little.” He was a sentimental man, and he had never been without the medal and chain since that day I had given it to him. The medal is visible in all his movies up to and including Bullitt, with the exception of The Cincinnati Kid, when the chain had been in the jeweler’s shop for soldering.

There was no point in inquiring about the medal. Steve had obviously removed it to make way for the love beads. (It did resurface in Le Mans briefly and then disappeared, never to be seen again.)

Steve decided we would go to Europe before he began his next picture, The Reivers. Claudia Cardinale and her husband, Franco Cristaldi (whom we had met when she and Steve were co-presenters at the 1964 Academy Awards), had invited us to visit them in Rome. The Cristaldis had two separate houses—one for her and one for him. They lived a mile away from each other just outside Rome.

I was fascinated by the way Claudia and Franco lived. She was a reigning movie queen and he a powerful and respected producer. To all appearances, their marriage was of the modern variety. And yet she was permitted very little latitude as far as her personal movements were concerned. When she visited California without Franco she would be escorted everywhere by one or two bodyguards. Steve and I, for instance, could not take her out alone. Whether the function be public or private, the bodyguards went, too.

Rome with Claudia and Franco was a real treat. They were gracious and enthusiastic hosts, showing us everything there was to see. We dined, we danced, we walked, we shopped, we sang, we sightsaw and gaped at the wonders of Rome. Steve was back to the Steve I knew and loved—funny, warm, and tender.

For our last night in Rome, we decided to try a lovely restaurant we had been told about. Steve and I dressed in matching black leather outfits . And of course we stood out like sore thumbs in a sea of elegantly dressed people. But Steve’s philosophy was, I’m a movie star, darling. We can wear anything we want. Nobody’s gonna throw us out!

Dining in the restaurant, to our surprise, were Cloris Leachman and three of her children, friends from sunny California who had proudly ordered their entire meal in Italian. We sat down to join them and Steve immediately ordered two steaks and two Coca-Colas—in English. Steve didn’t believe in ever making the effort to speak anyone’s language. “They hate you anyway!”

Bullitt had been released at year’s end and quickly became a top grosser. Never mind that the script was muddled and convoluted; what mattered was McQueen and all that action. The car chase alone was worth the price of admission.

God help me, I recall thinking, he has become so full of himself. He is actually boring to listen to. What happened to his sense of humor? What happened to that looseness? But how could I get that through to him? He was in no mood to listen. He was reveling in all that power—not to mention all the adulation coming to him from every corner of the earth. How the hell was I to deal with that?

And now it really did start. He was getting all that free love from the outside. Coming home and having to work for love seemed unfair to him.

He seemed to have suddenly placed unrealistic expectations on happiness. He had to be happy every day at every moment of the day, and when he wasn’t, he blamed me. After all, if he weren’t married, he reasoned, he wouldn’t have the feelings that made him feel guilty and, therefore, made him unhappy

It was “pretend time” for everyone. Steve and I had become so estranged from each other it was difficult to carry on a conversation. Steve' assistant' Mario, who was obviously aware of the situation, He was a considerate and sensitive young man who I know fervently hoped our problems could be resolved.

Mario told me, “Steve was stoned all the time. That house on Southridge was a veritable whorehouse. He picked these girls up from anywhere. He even picked up hitchhikers! I used to ask him, ‘Why do you do this? You’re gonna blow it all, Steve. You’ve got a great wife and you’ve got great kids!’ His answer was, ‘Hey, look at me. I’m the leading sex symbol in the whole world, man. I want it all.’ I didn’t know what to tell him. I just knew he was crazy!”

Maximilian Schell :

After this Russian party we decided to spend the weekend in Palm Springs. Steve wanted to put some time in with his motorbike......and Le Mans would at last begin filming in June of the following year he wanted his reflexes as sharp as possible. I was uneasy about the Palm Springs house. The house seemed to have a hex on me. I prayed all would go well. It didn’t.

I found a strange dress in my closet and I said, “Oh God, here we go again.” To add insult to injury, Steve tried to convince me it was Elmer Valentine’s girlfriend’s dress.

I went to New York for a few days—again to get away—and on the flight home, still despondent and angry, I found myself sitting next to a highly respected actor of the brooding European variety. He was dark, wildly handsome, and romantic. This charming Casanova was also the proud possessor of an Academy Award for Best Actor, having won the gold statuette for a riveting performance a few years back, in a film laden with other heavyweight stars.

During the flight, he lavished all his attention on me. I suddenly felt wanted, pretty, and feminine. Quite the opposite of what I had been feeling at home. And as our conversation progressed I found my mind wandering ever so often, thinking of home and Steve and the last few blatant trysts he’d had.... Casanova explained he was going to California to discuss his next film project. He would like to see me, he said. He would be staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel and he would be there for a few days and it would please him enormously if I could meet him during his stay in town.

My first reaction had been to say, “No, I’m a married woman. I don’t believe in cheating on my husband.” It is a fact of life in Hollywood that when a fairly attractive woman is married to a superstar, she becomes even more attractive to other men in a perverse way. Ever since I had committed to settling down and being a wife and mother, the thought of having an extramarital relationship of any kind had never crossed my mind.

And yet, on this day, feeling put upon and taken for granted by my husband, I found myself smiling at the handsome Casanova and having no doubt at all that soon I would be in his arms.

My vengeful idyll with the handsome and foreign Academy Award-winning star proved to be a Pyrrhic victory, a fact I wouldn’t be aware of for another year. Presently it amazed me how clever I was in covering my tracks. I would drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel in my Excalibur rather than a nondescript car, having come to the conclusion that the more visible I was the less suspicion I was likely to arouse.

I was terrified Steve might find out. It will be instant death, I kept repeating to myself. And yet I couldn’t make myself stop. “At least I’ll have gotten him where he lives, the son-a-bitch!” At the moment it was what mattered to me. And yet when the brief affair was over, I was surprised to find myself guilt-stricken and feeling even emptier than before

Steve continued to stay on at the beach or in Palm Springs, depending on where the action was for him. He would come by every two or three days to spend time with the children and then make his excuses about having to be alone so he could work on his scripts.

I continued to live life as best I could. I went to parties and other social events with friends and more often than not Steve would surprise me by showing up unannounced. And when it was imperative to show up together, we did. One such occasion was a small diner party at Danny Kaye’s. Danny was cooking one of his famous Chinese meals. Sharon Tate was there, looking beautiful in a chic black maternity outfit. She was then four and a half months’ pregnant and positively glowed with impending motherhood. Roman Polanski, her husband, was in Europe and she had come alone.

As fate would have it, it was the last time I would ever see her. Steve would see her a few more times because of her relationship with Jay Sebring. Jay remained a close friend to Sharon after her marriage to Roman, and occasionally Jay and Steve would visit Sharon at her Cielo Drive house In public

Steve and I would act just as any other married couple did, so that very few people were wise to the truth. But the loving manner that had once characterized our relationship in public and in private had long since vanished

Shortly after my liaison with the Academy Award-winner ended, I awoke to find my husband standing on the porch outside my bedroom door. It was 3:00 A.M. Steve didn’t have his keys so he couldn’t get in unnoticed. I said, “What do you want, Steve?” For one brief moment I thought he had found out about my affair and it was showdown time—until I realized the man was barely holding onto himself. He was flying high.

“Let me in, baby. I feel sick,” he whispered.

“Go find yourself a doctor, Steve. I’m tired and I’m going back to bed.”

“Please, honey, I really am sick. I need you to take care of me.” He was sounding desperate, but I didn’t want to give in.

“Good night, Steve. Go find yourself one of your girlfriends to take care of you.”

“Please, baby. I really am strung out. I need to come in.” By now he was begging and I hadn’t the heart to send him away.

I opened the door and let him in. He put his arms around me and I could feel his body shaking and he felt clammy. “Hi, Nellie,” he said. “God, I’m so tired.” There was no doubt about that. He looked as if he was ready to drop from exhaustion. He had been on a coke binge for days and needed to dry out. I wondered silently as I looked at him who he was hanging out with these days. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.

I spent the rest of the night and the first hours of the morning tending to Steve’s needs. Taking off his clothes, washing him down with warm water and alcohol, making him tea, letting him talk. Fortunately, going down to the kitchen was unnecessary since we had an efficiency unit upstairs.

What had started out as fun and games many years ago had gone far beyond that. But was this what is known as an addiction? I certainly didn’t know. Steve was self-indulgent and he was self-destructive, but he also had great willpower. He had the ability to stop and recognize the danger signs of going over the edge. There’d be a lull for a while when he would espouse the evils of drugs and talk about how it screws up one’s head. Periodically he would also go through his game of cleaning everything out that was in the house.

He’d either give his stash away or throw it down the toilet. All of it. And then in a matter of hours panic would set in and he’d have somebody bring him the less “harmful” grass. Days would go by where he would have nothing stronger than grass, but pretty soon it would escalate to coke and the cycle would start over again

On Thursday, August 7, 1969, Jay Sebring came by the house to give Steve a little trim. When I said good-bye to Jay that afternoon little did I dream it was the last good-bye. Steve and Jay had agreed to meet up with each other the following evening after dinner at Sharon Tate’s house.

Jay wanted to visit with Sharon before going to San Francisco for the weekend and to remind and reassure her that while husband Roman Polanski was away, Uncle Jay was there if he were needed.

Steve had looked at me inquiringly and asked, “You don’t mind, do you, baby?” The question was meaningless. I was beyond minding. And anyway Steve did what he wanted to do. All I did was go through the motions.

As it turned out, luck was with Steve that following Friday night. He had run into a little chickie whom he fancied and decided to forego Jay.

By late morning of the following day came the news of the gruesome murders on Cielo Drive. Both Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring had been murdered in a bizarre fashion. Also murdered were two of Sharon’s friends, Abigail Folger and her boyfriend, Voytek Frykowski.

There was fear in the air. Nobody talked of anything else for days. Steve was in shock. His narrow escape had been too close for comfort. Steve told me he had run into Elmer Valentine the night before and had decided to go slumming with him instead. (The truth was revealed to me several months later.)

Sharon Tate was buried the following Wednesday. We did not attend her funeral. Not knowing what madness was still out there, Steve felt one funeral for the day would have to suffice. We elected not to attend Sharon’s and to go instead to Jay’s funeral, since he had been a much closer friend than Sharon.

Those of us who came together in one car sat in the front and second rows of the church. The group included Steve, me, Elmer Valentine, Henry Fonda, Warren Beatty, and Jim Garner. Steve carried a gun in his breast pocket. Just in case. At the church at Forest Lawn I was shocked to find Jay in an open casket. But considering his violent death, the morticians had done a masterful job.

As we sat waiting for the service to start, a strange man climbed up to the altar where Jay’s body lay and began a bizarre chant. Nobody knew who he was and it galvanized everyone present to attention. Warren Beatty, who was sitting next to me, was ready to throw me onto the floor, fearful that some sort of altercation was about to occur. He was aware Steve had a gun and was concerned what might happen if anybody opened fire. But somebody removed the man who was chanting in front of Jay’s body and order resumed.

For the next few weeks the whole town, it seemed, was under investigation. Certainly the police went through Jay’s phone book and contacted everyone in it. Steve never went anywhere without a gun now. Even I had to sleep with a gun under my pillow—as per Steve’s direction.

Paranoia ran rampant everywhere and several weeks later, when it was learned Steve McQueen’s name had been on that murder list, Steve called on his friends from the CIA to help secure our house.

Then finally, after many, many weeks, Charles Manson and his Family were apprehended, and though no one could comprehend the reason for the wanton murders, Hollywood, once more, breathed a little easier.

Steve was back to smoking and snorting, and in Phoenix one night we drove to the Playboy Club for dinner. We had a new trailer home with us, a Cortez, and as the parking attendant directed us to a parking area a bit away from the building, Steve decided to drive the trailer home right onto the front steps of the club. He stepped on the gas, drove over the curb, and in the process ruined the undercarriage of the Cortez. Steve was laughing hysterically. He thought it was very funny, although nobody else did.

I believe that one of the side effects of drug abuse is paranoia. Steve had delusions that people were coming after him. For instance, we’d be driving from somebody’s home to ours when he’d look in his rearview mirror and immediately suspect the car behind was following us.

“Somebody is out to get me!” And so we’d go zigzagging from one road to another, and instead of being home in fifteen minutes, it would take an hour.

There were other changes. Where he had once sneered at the Hell’s Angels, he now saw them as folk heroes. Also, the Woodstock Festival of that summer impacted itself in Steve’s imagination in a serious way. The kids had shown the world that “one should do what makes one happy.” Steve dug it because “it was meaningful, man!”

Steve and I were once more together—if one could call it that. This was not my Steve. It was somebody else’s Steve. Spurning his London wardrobe and his “businessman” image, he was back to sporting his hippie mustache and his bellbottoms. His outrageous flirting with young—really young—girls infuriated and embarrassed me.

I removed myself from his side as often as I could. There was no point in ranting and raving. Face it, Neile, I kept telling myself, the man is simply out of control.

IN THE LIFE OF Mr. and Mrs. Steve McQueen, 1970 was a cataclysmic year. The upheaval was such that neither one would be the same again.......

He had brought me out to the gardens in the back, where he started going around in circles before he opened the conversation with, “Look, baby, I’m having a terrible time functioning. I can’t breathe!” .“You feel like a chain around my neck!”

“Steve, goddamn it! Will you stand still and tell me exactly what you’re talking about? Just what is it you want from me?” I was having a difficult time keeping my cool. These were not exactly the words one likes to hear from one’s husband.

“Christ, baby, half my life is over and I wanna fly! I wanna go!” he said with intensity as once more he circled.

I stood there staring at him in disbelief. He was having a difficult time looking me in the eyes. When I was finally able to speak, I asked him exactly what it was he wanted “Do you want a divorce? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No!” he said rather forcefully, which surprised me.The more I pressed, the more agitated and tormented he looked. And the more he circle

In the end nothing had been settled. Steve went to the pool area and asked Terry to have our housekeeper fix him lunch.

Mario had arrived in Le Mans exhausted from his long journey. As soon as he arrived at the château where Steve was staying, he tried without success to get some sleep. Soon, he heard Steve come down the stairs and ask for him. He also heard the voice of one of the film’s crew members, who told Steve he was going back to his hotel in town.

“No, hang on,” Steve had said. “Get Mario. I’ll be right down. I gotta drop somebody off.” The somebody was a blond “Puff of Hair” whom Steve ushered into the car with the two men.

Recognizing Steve’s dilated eyes, both men tried to dissuade him from driving. He was hyper and couldn’t stop talking. As soon as Steve pulled out of the driveway, it was clear that this was an accident waiting to happen. It was raining and Mario begged Steve to slow down.

“Cool it, Mario. We’re gonna have us a great time! Ooooweee!”

Shortly, as they were going around a curve, Mario heard Steve yell “Shit!” and he knew they were in trouble. Steve lost the car and they spun. They went through the kilometer cement bunkers on the road and became airborne. The car went down and headed for a grove of trees—more specifically, a big tree.

When they hit it Mario saw his arm snap. Everything was eerily silent for several minutes before he realized that Steve and Puff of Hair were over the windshield and the crew member wasn’t moving.

The next thing Mario remembered was being in the middle of the country road with the girl stretched out cold, and Steve was saying over and over again, “Oooh shit! Oh, fuck, man! I’ve had it! I’ve really done it this time. Fuck! What’re we gonna do, man? I’ll lose everything now. For sure. Oh, fuck! Mario, do you think she’s dead?”

Mario turned to Steve and said, “I don’t know if she’s dead, but I don’t think we should move her.”

After what seemed to be an eternity, Puff of Hair began to stir. She groaned and shivered involuntarily and her teeth began to chatter as she lay freezing on the road with the rain pouring on her.

As soon as Steve realized the girl was alive, he quickly pulled her up and placed one arm under her armpit and propped her against him, then wrapped her other arm around his neck. Steve didn’t want to waste any more time. They began walking and soon the girl seemed to get better. Steve kept repeating, “It’s not too far. It’s not too far. Come on, let’s keep going.”

They walked in the starless night. Only Steve was familiar with the road, busy as he had been in the last few days picking up girls and driving them back and forth. Mario was beyond the point of pain and exhaustion, and the crew member, too, was obviously hurt. Miraculously, in the ink-black night, they spotted a farmhouse that was recessed about fifty yards from the road. Steve pointed and whispered, “Look, there’s a car. We’ll steal it!”

Mario looked at Steve and said, “You’re crazy, Steve! You’re not playing a movie role!”

“Shut the fuck up, man. You’ll wake everybody up. Now, come with me!”

Steve tried jump-starting the car, and then the dogs barked and the lights went on in the farmhouse. Both Steve and Mario ran back toward the road with a “mad-as-a-hornet” farmer in pursuit. Fortunately the farmer gave up the chase, and the four of them arrived in Loué at two in the morning. Steve and the girl made themselves scarce, while Mario and the crew member got themselves to the hospital.

Was every fucking body in Hollywood invited to have dinner with Sharon Tate and later hang out at her house on the night of the Manson murders? The same thing happened in the thread about Robert Evans; he was supposed to have dinner with Tate that night later and keep her company, but he begged off at the last minute, thus saving himself from a horrible fate. I have a hard time believe any celebrity stories about how they escaped death by not having dinner with Sharon that night, or not coming to the "party" that night. I don't think Sharon Tate was in the mood for a lot of visitors that night; she was blown up pregnant and tired easily. I think all these stories of celebrities who were supposed to be there that night are utter bullshit.

By mid-afternoon of the following day, when Mario, who had passed out—finally getting his much-needed rest—woke up, he felt abandoned. He hadn’t seen nor heard from anyone, and here he was in a strange country in a strange hospital.

As he lay there feeling sorry for himself, he thought he hard a man speaking with an American accent. He prayed he wasn’t dreaming and he prayed that God himself would come through his door.

He did. In the person of Stan Kamen.“Hi, how are you, kid? I’m Stan Kamen,” he said as he shook Mario’s hand. “Now, don’t you worry. I want you to relax. You’re O.K. and I’m getting you out of here. All right?”

Stan took Mario back to Solar Village, the company compound, and gently warned Mario, “Nobody knows anything.” Mario acted accordingly and kept his mouth shut. At Solar Village Mario soon discovered he had taken the fall for Steve. Only Stan had expressed any concern about his present circumstances.

Steve, for his part, didn’t show up until the next day. He was warm toward Mario and the other man (whose injuries were two broken ribs), yet very guarded “How ya doin’, guys?” he asked, uncomfortably aware they shared a secret together. “Mario, how long are you planning to relax here? I need you to help me, you know.”

Mario couldn’t believe what he’s just heard, but he tried to keep calm and before Mario could answer, Steve had him out in the hallway. Grabbing Mario’s right arm, Steve asked him if he was going to sue.

Mario was aghast and assured Steve he wouldn’t. When Steve was satisfied the kid meant it, he told him to “hurry up and get out of here! It’s time you earned your living!”

Within a few days Mario was back at the château with Steve, and within a few days Steve was back to his old ways. Mario found it all appalling. He reminded Steve the children and I were due from the States soon. “Why don’t you stop this craziness, Steve?”

“Hey, kid, what for? Look at me. I’m the biggest star in the world. The number one sex symbol! All those women wanna fuck me, man!” And then, in an apparent effort to pacify Mario, Steve reminded him that he was tough and that Mario shouldn’t worry about him.

Mario found Steve’s behavior too painful to watch. All Steve seemed to have on his mind was girls. Preferably American girls and preferably very young. Girls and drugs. He would pick them up at bars and off the streets. Anything and anyone. Sometimes it was even two or three anyones.

The little plane bearing the McQueen party flew over the beautiful countryside, and although the day was a smoky gray, France was still visible through the haze. I was happy for the children. And especially happy for Chad, who had worked doggedly to bring up his grades so he could be part of this racing world with its powerful cars and share it all with his father. But I was apprehensive. The last time I had spoken to Steve was five days earlier, just prior to our sailing from New York, and we had said very little of substance to each other.

We drove back to the set briefly so I could greet John Sturges and Bob Relyea and the rest of the group, and take a peek at the million-dollar racing stable constructed for the movie. I inquired about the script.

“What about the script?” Steve was obviously annoyed with my question.

“You know what I mean. Have you got one yet?” Innocently I had strayed into forbidden country.

I hadn’t been around and was therefore unaware of John Sturges’ growing disillusionment with the project. John insisted on finding a story he and Steve could both be happy with—a perfectly reasonable request. Steve, however seemed more concerned with the grandiose idea of “leaving some scratch marks on the history of filmmaking.” In addition to the script problems, It surely must have been annoying to John to hear Steve refer to himself, over and over again, as a man who was wearing three hats in this production. “I’m a driver, an actor, and a filmmaker.” To the press around the world yet.

Now he had adopted a new attitude with his fans. No autographs. No exceptions. This had been Paul Newman’s edict for many years. It was a policy that worked for him and he stuck to it. Steve’s sudden embracing of this no-autograph business had more to do with his ego than anything else. It was part of a conscious posturing to be “the Boss.”

Changes were coming fast and furious with Steve. I could hardly keep up with them, and was completely unprepared for what was waiting for me around the corner. These last several months of casual indifference and verbal hurts had been nothing but a dress rehearsal, baby! tttt

The nightmare was about to begin

Our first evening at the château was a quiet one. We had dinner in the medieval dining room and the conversation, thank goodness, revolved around the children’s activities. Steve seemed distant and contained; no doubt, my presence was irritating to him. He tried to make the best of it just as I did.

That same night I asked Steve how he was handling the dope. He said, “Well, I obviously have to stay away from it when I’m filming the race sequence. But it’s O.K. at night. Don’t you worry your pretty little head. I can handle myself.” He had plenty of grass, but I was pleased his coke supply was almost nil. But then I supposed it was only a matter of time before he’d find himself a connection. Being a movie star almost guaranteed it

As soon as I was satisfied the children were comfortable in their new house, I kissed them good night. Then I went to my room and slipped quietly under the covers beside Steve. Then quite suddenly, I began hearing a noise here; a sound there; now a flapping here, on my left.

I thought, That’s the curtain. But then I realized the windows and the curtains were on my right. Then I thought it was Steve snoring. I inched myself closer to Steve. He was breathing heavily, but he wasn’t snoring. The noises continued all around the room and I decided they were real. My imagination wasn’t working overtime. But what the hell were they? I reached over and switched the bedside light on.

What I saw made me gasp! I grabbed the covers and pulled them over me as quickly as possible. Our bedroom had been invaded by bats! My God, there had to be at least two dozen of them flying around in the room and bumping into walls and into each other.

I yelled to Steve to get under the covers. He had been sleeping in the nude and I had visions of a bat diving at him as it looked for a way out! When Steve saw what was going on his reaction was one of horror, just as mine had been. But from under the covers he yelled, “Shit, baby, somebody’s put the evil eye on me! Get some candles!”

“Candles?” God! The man must be hallucinating! Candles! I’m slithering out of bed to find Kitty Kat and he’s thinking candles! Could he be planning to burn the house down? I stayed close to the floor to find the cat. I remembered that from my days in the Philippines. Cats just sit there, just as calm as can be, and slap away at those bats with their paws. They bring them down one at a time, methodically. Which is exactly what Kitty Kat did.

We found out the next day the “bat path” was right next to our house. Sometimes there would be a mix-up in their radar signals, and then they’d find themselves in the Château Lornay scaring the hell out of everyone. tttt

Terry and I drove to the set. They were filming at the Mulsanne Straight, a particularly treacherous piece of road on the Le Mans circuit. There were many grand prix drivers present that day, as well as a huge group of onlookers and groupies gathered behind the fences. The girls were dressed to the nines, false eyelashes and all. There were also a number of them on the hills around the course, mixed in with the male fans, all of them eager to catch a glimpse of the American movie star. The women thrilled to being waved to and smiled at by Steve McQueen.

The European groupie, I was to observe, was a much more aggressive type than her U.S. counterpart. Or maybe I had not seen the U.S. groupie up close.

As things happened, lunch break came sooner than expected. The mechanical problem was taking more time than anticipated to fix. Steve and I started walking toward his car. He seemed preoccupied. he took my hand, and sat me on the guard rail. I expected the news wouldn’t be good..

“Look, ah, I should tell you. There’ll be women coming from all over the world to visit me this summer and—”

“Wait. Wait!” I covered his mouth with my hand. I took a deep breath. Slowly I took my hand away. “What women are you talking about?” I knew in my heart, but I wanted to hear him tell me.

“They’re friends of mine.” Oddly enough he looked stricken as he told me. I laughed at myself for even feeling a twinge for his pain at this moment. God! Why? Why do I care how he feels? I brushed this aside and it took several minutes, I think, before I felt I could even say anything coherent....

“Well, we are kinda separated, right?” he continued. “Leave me here, please.” I was frantically searching for a place to run to. I felt I was hyperventilating and wanted to be left alone. “Have lunch with the children and tell them I’ve gone shopping. I’ll see them later. I need some time to pull myself together.” By now tears were streaming down my face.

I wandered around for the rest of the day. I have no recollection of how I got back to the château except I found myself at dinner with the children, Mario, and Steve.

In bed that night as I lay there exhausted from the day’s emotional shredder, Steve reached over and cradled me in his arms.

“I’m sorry I hurt you, baby. I really don’t mean to. I want you to know I love you. But I gotta do what I gotta do.”

I was too tired to disengage myself away from him. Given a little more energy, I probably would have hit him with whatever was handy. This time around I was able to hold my tears in check.

And then quietly and gently, in an almost fatherly way, he asked whether I’d ever had an affair No, of course not.” I was glad he’d asked me in the dark. I’m not a good liar and I was afraid he might have seen through me. But just now I wanted nothing more than to fall asleep. I wanted to forget the day. Even temporarily.

Steve pressed on. “Why not? I wouldn’t blame you. I’ve certainly given you enough provocation.”

“I just never felt the need to.” I wanted to get away from this line of questioning. It was the first time he had ever broached the subject with me, and it was making me feel uneasy. It seemed obvious that he was asking me only as a way to deal with his own guilt. At this very moment, he seemed like a man who was willing to take his punishment for sins committed against his wife. No more, no less.

I was not tempted to admit to my single indiscretion. My common sense told me it was unwise. It had been committed in anger and it was best left alone. But he wouldn’t leave it be.

In a lighthearted manner, he again offered the opinion that “It’s really amazing that you haven’t even been tempted to have an affair.”

“Steve, I didn’t say I was never tempted. I said I’ve never had an affair. Now, please, I’ve taken a sleeping pill and I can’t keep my eyes open. And you have to drive all day tomorrow.”

I guess what he really wanted at this point was the reassurance from me that no matter how bad and no matter how abusive he might be, I would still love him and take no retaliatory measures. His macho code could never in a million years allow him to forgive me. He had to be positive he was right in his assessment. And so he prodded once more, to be one hundred percent sure. And he lost.

“Steve, please, give me a break! I’m really so tired and I don’t want to talk anymore.” Steve simply couldn’t comprehend that the day’s revelation had left me numb—that and the medication coursing through my body, making it almost impossible to keep my eyes open.

He suddenly jumped out of bed and started rummaging through his dresser drawer. Even in the dark I could tell he had found what he was looking for. His movements were precise and sure. In a moment he was beside me. “Here, I want you to take this.”

My eyes opened wide. Take what? I suddenly felt my heart fluttering. What the hell does he want me to take? Then all too soon I realized what it was. He was having a “toot,” which he wanted to share with me. “It’ll do you good, baby. You’ll feel better!”

“Steve, you know I don’t do that stuff. Have a good time. I’ll see you around. Good night.” I wish I could say the night had ended there, but it had just begun.

“What do you mean, you’ll see me around?” he demanded.

I was now thoroughly annoyed. I shoved the covers down and sat up. “Well, what the hell do you suppose it means?” I kept my voice down to a minimum. “I—Will—See—You—Around. Even the dogs know what that means. It means I’ll see you when I see you. It means I’ll see you if you come home for dinner. It means I’ll see you if you sleep here. In other words—from time to time, from place to place, here and there and everywhere, with no set plans. If we run into each other, fine. If we don’t, so be it. I doubt the children will know what’s going on.”

The tears came again and I hated myself for having so little control. “God, Steve, I really don’t know any other way to handle this. I’m trapped! I can’t disappoint Chad. He’s so happy to be here with you! And I can’t leave them. I wish I could.” I reached for a tissue to dry my tears and blow my nose.

“For my sanity—please—try to be cool. Try to show me some respect when your little chickies drop down from the sky to visit you. I am in town and I am sharing a house with you. If nothing else, show Terry and Chad the respect they’re entitled to.”

Steve had gotten up to look for a cigarette and once again I wanted nothing more than to blacken out the memory of the last few hours. “I don’t think there’s anything more to say. So if you don’t mind I’m going to bed.”

Instead of the cigarette he was looking for, he came back to bed with a joint. “Here, take a drag.” “Steve, no! You know grass does nothing for me but make me sleepy. I’ve already taken a sleeping pill. Good night!”

“You know what?” he started again. Very gently Steve said, “I wish you wouldn’t fight me on this. I promise you a little coke will make you feel better. I don’t want you feeling bad, baby! No matter what’s happened you’re still my baby.”

I’ve got to shut him up, I decided. In my emotional state it looked like the only way to stop him from talking was to give in to his wishes. Share the damn coke and then say good night. My nose was all stopped up from crying. I’d always heard him say it clears up one’s sinuses. So what the hell, why not? “O.K. Give it to me. Show me how to do it.”

He couldn’t have been more pleased. He turned the light on and looked for a nail file. “I’m just giving you a little bit, baby. Not to worry.” I wasn’t worried. I wanted it over and done with so I could go back to bed. He had dipped the tip of the nail file into his silver box and he showed me how to “suck up” the little mounds when he said “go.” I couldn’t breathe normally over these teeny piles of white dust or it would disappear into the air. Just like my talcum powder, he said.

“Can I go to sleep now?” I figured now that I had experienced what he seemed so desperate to share with me, I would be given my reward. Please, God. Make him shut up. I’m so tired.

He reached for the light switch to flick if off. “Well, what do you think? Isn’t it great?”

“It’s O.K., Steve.” I nodded my head in agreement. “It’s cleared up my sinuses.”

And I giggled. Which was unexpected and which surprised me. Actually it had done more than improve my sinuses. I had felt a sudden rush and for a moment I liked my husband again and I had the feeling I could handle whatever cards were dealt me. I felt stronger and braver and felt there was nothing I couldn’t face. And when the next question came I was more than ready to answer it. With aplomb.

He was now in a lighthearted mood and he affectionately said how it had always amazed him that I had managed to escape romantic entanglements of sorts, especially given his example.

“I mean this with all my heart. I certainly would have understood. No shit, baby. You’re the best.”

“You really would have understood, honey?” Unbelievably, I had fallen for it.

“Sure, baby.” Silence. “Did you?”

Nasty repug closet case.

“Well?” Steve asked.

“Well, what?”

Steve slowly repeated the question. “Did you ever have an affair?”

I thought for a second. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did.

I can only attribute the great courage that had come over me to the coke I had inhaled. I turned onto my stomach and looked at him with a big smile on my face. I felt daring enough to tweak his nose gently.

“Honey bunny, yours is not the only golden cock in the west, you know.” As the first torrent of words came tumbling out of my mouth I became helpless in controlling the tide of anger and resentment that had been accumulating all these months. I was on a roll and it felt good and I meant to keep going.

“You know what, honey? He has an Academy Award, too. Now, if you’re a good boy, someday you might win one.” And as an afterthought, I pounded the last nail in the coffin. “Maybe, he might even present it to you!”

God, that felt fabulous, I thought. All the way to the bottom of my soul. Maybe we can call ourselves even now and start over from scratch. Starting now.Silly girl. Dumb, stupid girl.

Steve excused himself and went into the next room. He was back in a few seconds. He took me by surprise as he quickly grabbed my arm and roughly pulled me to a sitting position on the bed. My legs were ensnarled in the bed clothing and I couldn’t get my feet on the floor.

He had a gun and pointed it to my head.

"Who was he?"

I was struck dumb. No sound came out of my mouth. This time he cocked the gun and pushed the barrel against my temple. “Who was the motherfucker?”

I could see his face twitching from the light that was streaming in from the room next door. “You’d better tell me now or you’re not going to live to see him die! And I promise you I’ll find out who the motherfucker is! Make no mistake about that!” This time he yelled. “Who is he!”

And this time the name exploded from my lips involuntarily.

We were both silent for a long time, there in the dark. Every once in a while my throat would emit a spasm out of fright, I think, as he stared at me menacingly. He had laid the gun down but I was suddenly mindful of the violent and lonely life that had spawned him. And then unexpectedly he grabbed me again by the shoulder straps of my nightgown and with one swift motion pushed me onto a chair by the window. “Now let’s talk. And I want straight answers.”

He was as relentless as I imagine the Gestapo must have been. He was a fast and articulate interrogator, and when the answers didn’t come swiftly enough for him there would be jabs to the arms, a slap across the face—not hard, just enough to let me know he meant business—or a pulling of my head back by a handful of my hair while he hissed at me, his face only inches away from mine.

“Where’d you meet him?”

“On a plane coming home from New York.”

“Did you tell him your name?”

“I introduced myself.”

“Did he talk to you first or you talk to him first?”

“I don’t know, Steve. I don’t remember.” tttt Jab. “Try.” tttt “I don’t know. He probably did. I think he said hello to me first.” tttt Jab. “Try again. I don’t want ‘thinks’ I want ‘knows.’ Got that?” Jab. “Huh?”

I was sobbing and barely able to catch my breath. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but you’d been so awful to me. He came along and he was nice and he made me feel desirable.”

He had grabbed hold of my hair and had tilted my head backwards. “Desirable.” Slap. “Desirable, my ass!” He smirked. “Listen, you stupid bitch! He romanced you because of me. Me! Not you! Men get their jollies off fucking other men’s wives. Don’t you know that?” tttt

Honey, I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

“And what did you mean to do with that little number you pulled? Tell me that!” “What!”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh. You don’t know! Who’ll know? Shall I call up the motherfucker? Hm?”

“Please stop hitting me, Steve. I can’t stand it.”

“Well, that’s too fuckin’ bad, baby. You’re in the big time now. You’re playing with the big boys. You play, you pay.”

I was feeling weak and nauseated and told him so. But he was compelled to continue. “Tell me something. Did you enjoy yourself? Did you have a good time?”

“No, I didn’t, honey. Please stop.”

Slap. “I want an answer!’ “I want the truth! Did you have a good time?”

“No.”

Slap. “The truth, goddamn it!” “I’ll ask you again. Did you have a good time?” He looked so sinister in the glow of the light coming from the other room.

“No, honey. I swear I didn’t!”

Slap. Slap. “One more time. Did—you—have—a—good—time?”And finally, exhausted from the emotional shock, I uttered a low, guttural, animal “Yes!”

He needed that “yes.” He needed it so he could unleash the furies that were consuming him. He felt the final “yes” would give him the excuse necessary to haul off and punch me, which is what I was expecting. Surprisingly and thankfully, he slowly straightened himself up and gave me a look of such hatred that I cringed. He, too, by now, was emotionally spent. He turned around and walked out the bedroom door.

A few minutes later I heard his Porsche start up. He would try to drive the rage he felt out of his system. tttt

As I stood at the window watching his car go out the drive, perversely, regardless of the harrowing experience I had just gone through, regardless of the torment I knew he was feeling, all I could think was, We’re even now. Maybe he’ll think twice before he fucks around again

He drove around all night. It was six thirty in the morning when Steve came back to the château. His eyes looked haunted. My heart went out to him. I put my arms around him and hoped we could put it all behind us. “I’m so sorry, honey, forgive me.” The pain, the tears and the humiliating loss of self-respect, didn’t seem important anymore. I only wanted to get back to that place where we once were. I now felt as if I were totally responsible for our deeply scarred relationship.

He looked as if he’d been crying a good part of the night. Just as I had. “Take a good look at what you’ve done, baby. I hope you’re happy. Nobody’s ever reached me like you have. You’ve burned my soul and I’ll be a long time forgetting that. If ever.”

Then abruptly he changed the subject. “I’ve got a lot of heavy driving to do today. I need some good strong coffee. Get it for me, will you?” All this was said in almost a monotone. I started getting panicky. I had knocked the wind out of his sails and he needed a tremendous amount of energy to carry him through the day’s shooting.

I brought him his coffee in the bathroom, and as I turned to leave, he grabbed my arm and spun me around. “Tell me. Why’d you do it? Why another actor? Why somebody in my industry? Why?”

I could see the anger rising and I pleaded with him. “Please, Steve, let’s talk about it later. I know you have to leave.”

He gave me his cold, hard, blue stare and let go of my arm

How dare that WHORE turn Steve McQueen into a CUCK!

I, also, don't believe all the celebrities it's claimed were invited to Sharon Tate's but for some fateful reason didn't make it. It's all bullshit.

I had to laugh at whoever upthread thinks Neile McQueen wouldn't be as much fun as Ali MacGraw? As much fun? MacGraw has no sense of humor, and it appears that when she was first famous she was focused on acting out her romantic fantasies with men, and she was very slow to see outside the lens of her fantasy. She was very rigid and resistent to reality.

Although this generation still has amazing problems. It's these baby boomer women who claim to be liberated but at the end of the day their only idea of freedom is to establish themselves as THE woman who can tame whoever the alpha guy in their world might be. It doesn't matter how alpha they themselves might be. The biggest supermodel, biggest actress, hottest star. They fall over themselves trying to be with the alpha guy in their world so they can prove to themselves and the world how amazing they are to have pulled it off. They always fail, but that's how they measure their value to themselves. Meanwhile the guys they're trying to "tame" are a bunch of spoiled, probably gay, way stupider than the woman realizes, narcissistic divas.

Yes, this is a good, fun read.

And I like your post too, r37.

Neile Adams with two DL-SUPER-FAVES in the late 60s.

& just with Mia (& Steve)

[quote]I had to laugh at whoever upthread thinks Neile McQueen wouldn't be as much fun as Ali MacGraw? As much fun? MacGraw has no sense of humor, and it appears that when she was first famous she was focused on acting out her romantic fantasies with men

Yes, that's what's funny.

[quote] and she was very slow to see outside the lens of her fantasy. She was very rigid and resistent to reality.

Exactly.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Thanks, OP.

I stayed home and slept away most of the day. I was bone weary and if this morning was any indication, there would be another hard night ahead.

As it turned out, there were hard nights and hard days ahead. Every one was a repeat of what had occurred that first night. He was relentless, he was unforgiving, and he pressed hard. And I know he tried to get it behind us, but he was incapable of doing so. That macho code was firmly implanted in his soul. He struck at all hours of the day, able to control himself only when company was present. This surprised me. And so I learned to stay close to either Mario or Joe, and I never left the children’s side unless it was absolutely necessary.

But night always fell. And, always, in the sanctuary of our bedroom, Steve would bring it all up again during those few hours before sleep claimed us both.

When I look back on those days I understand that by not leaving I obviously must have been punishing myself for the pain and sorrow I had inflicted on Steve (forgetting all that he had done to me). Yet I also still loved him and somehow I kept hoping this all would pass and the nightmare would end.

But a week after I arrived from the States, Steve and I agreed to separate—publicly for the first time.

It was a peculiar separation in that we still shared the same house and the same bed. Nothing had changed except we’d given notice to the world at large that all was not well between the McQueens. I thought going public with it might alleviate my plight. It did no such thing. Every man I came in contact with, every man I said “hello” to, every man who smiled and looked at me came under Steve’s suspicion.

My closets and drawers were rummaged through; my mail was censored and I was prohibited from going into town by myself. What the announcement did was compound the problem. I was under orders to appear at the village every day. And I timed it to coincide with the end of the lunch break. Which would mean Steve was on the set.

Steve, surreptitiously, asked Bob Relyea to inquire into Casanova’s availability. He wanted Bob to offer him a part in Le Mans as a way to get him on Steve’s turf. It had to look legitimate or, he reasoned, he might hesitate, and Steve wanted desperately to “beat the shit out of him.” I believe Steve would have seriously hurt him had he innocently accepted this offer.

But it turned out Casanova was busy on another project and was unavailable to join Le Mans. Thank you, God

Steve now took to cross-examining Mario about me every day. The poor kid’s loyalty was being tested because Mario and I were good friends. Mario had no idea of the reason behind the heavy interrogation, except that he was painfully aware of Steve’s increasing paranoia

On the Fourth of July, in an effort to give the children a bit of fun, we had a little party that consisted of Terry, Chad, Mario, Joe, Steve, and me. Tension was heavy in the air although we tried to maintain some sort of sanity in front of the children—in front of everybody, for that matter.

In the dark, narrow corridor leading to the dining room Steve cornered Mario just before we went in to dinner. “Who do you work for, Mario? Answer me that.”

Mario thought it was a joke and he laughed. “You, of course.” It was a ridiculous question until he heard the next three sentences.

“You remember that, kid. She may be my wife, but your loyalty is to me! You do understand that, don’t you?”

Mario assumed Steve was concerned about Puff of Hair and the car accident that had happened twenty-two days before. Mario reassured Steve he had no intention of telling me anything about his extracurricular activities. Mario, frankly, wanted to spare me the pain and the embarrassment

He may not have been a sophisticated young man, but he was wise beyond his years. And he was loyal, despite the fact that he was dealing with Steve’s Jekyll and Hyde personalities now on a daily basis. Then one day there was an incident that totally rocked Steve’s faith in Mario, and Mario’s in Steve.

Betsy Cox, Steve’s secretary, had stayed behind at the Solar offices in Hollywood to handle the daily chores that related to Steve and to the production. Betsy was crazy about Steve and tried to do everything to please him, no matter how odd his requests were. She was the anchor in town.

Every once in a while Steve would get a craving for real American hamburgers. Betsy would have a box of three dozen hamburgers and cheeseburgers with everything on them sent via Air France. On those days everybody waited for the car to come bearing those wonderful hamburgers!

One day three boxes arrived from the U.S. filled with Fruit of the Loom T-shirts. Betsy had sent them at Steve’s request. He was now buying clothes in bulk. He was into blue jeans, cords, and chambray shirts and T-shirts. The blue jeans were bought three or four dozen at a time, washed many times over for shrinkage, and then especially bleached by the studio’s wardrobe department to make them look well-worn. They were tailored to his form afterwards. The great clothes Steve had accumulated through the years from his movies and shopping forays were mothballed, thanks to the newly raised consciousness of the young and the spaced-out hippies. In his effort to keep up with them he became the epitome of the adult afraid to grow old. He seemed more lost than the kids who envied his position.

At Solar Village was a young, hippie- type who had been hanging around the compound for the last three weeks. People just knew her as a “friend of Steve’s,” and she was left alone. Nobody could remember her name, although it was known she was an American (probably picked up while hitchhiking, since that had been Steve’s modus operandi). She always looked as if she needed a bath and some clean clothes.

Mario didn’t know whether Steve was “carrying on” with her. He seriously doubted it, but there was a lot of whispering going on between the two and about the two. I don’t have a specific recollection of her since there were so many groupies about. One face melded into the other.

“My God, she was dirty,” Mario recalled. “I mean, it is hard to imagine. But then who knows? He was a little weird, too.”

Can we PLEASE stop calling everything you don't like as the fault of "Baby Boomers"?

For r37:

Neile Adams: Born: July 10, 1932 (age 84), Manila, Philippines

Ali McGraw: Born: April 1, 1939 (age 77), Pound Ridge, NY

Baby Boomers: Baby boomers are the demographic group born during the post–World War II baby boom, approximately between the years 1946 and 1964. This includes people who are between 53 and 71 years old in 2017, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

She was there when Mario began putting away the boxes of T-shirts in Steve’s office—in the corner behind his desk. Because of Mario’s difficulty with his broken left arm, he had dropped a box, which split open, spilling the T-shirts on the floor. Mario saw the girl eyeing the shirts and felt sorry for her.

“What the hell—” Mario shrugged. “Here!” and he threw one to her. “You look like you can use a new T-shirt. I’m sure Steve won’t mind.” The girl’s eyes lit up, and as she expressed her thanks, in walked Steve.

Mario was well aware of the problems on the set and he became uneasy as soon as Steve walked into the room. He hadn’t looked pleased and became less so when the girl opened her mouth.

“Steve! He’s the nicest man!” Mario smiled when it dawned on him she most likely didn’t know his name. “Look! He just gave me this T-shirt!”

Steve asked the girl to leave the office, giving the excuse that he and Mario had important business.

No sooner had the girl stepped out the door than Steve slammed it closed just as hard as he could, causing the little building’s structure to shake.

“You fat little fucker! How dare you fuck with my women!” Steve started advancing toward Mario. “I told you once! You can have my food, you can have my money, but who the hell gave you permission to give her that T-shirt! Huh? That T-shirt is bought with my hard-earned money. How dare you fuck around with her?”

Mario was stupefied! “Steve, look at me! Look! I’m fat. She doesn’t want me! What the hell would she want with me?”

“Shut up when I’m talking to you, you little fuckin’ asshole! How could you do it? Huh? How could you do it?” There was no reasoning with Steve. It would have been funny had Mario not been on the receiving end.

Steve grabbed Mario by the lapels and yanked hard and started hitting him on the arms. Then he threw him against the wall and slammed him into the couch.

And with that, Steve went to his desk and poured himself some coffee, sat down, and with a smile quietly asked, “So, what have you got to say for yourself?”

Mario was eerily reminded of the two faces of drama. The mask of tragedy and the mask of comedy. He sincerely believed that Steve’s mind had snapped. When he was able to, Mario stood up and slowly walked to the door. “I don’t know, man, but I think you’re fucking crazy. I quit.”

“What do you mean, you quit?”

“I quit! I can’t handle this, Steve.”

Steve watched him silently open the door. “O.K. I can’t hold you back, but I hope you know what you’re throwing away. You will never work in this industry again.”

Mario had one foot out the door and Steve tried another tactic. “I don’t want you to go, Mario.”

Mario looked at Steve sadly and told him how he felt—for the last time. “Steve, my arm is killing me and I can’t handle you anymore.”

Knowing now that he was not going to get his way, Steve angrily jumped up from behind his desk. “What did I ever do to you?”

Mario closed the door behind him.

That night as we were having dinner, Mario quietly packed his bags and asked Joe McCormack to take him to the train station. The train would get him into Paris at a ghastly hour, but he didn’t care. In effect he was running away from Steve. He had hoped to say good-bye to me and give me some sort of explanation for his departure, but he had to get away from Steve first. He’d get word to me somehow.

A month later, Mario received a nice apologetic letter from Steve. Mario suspected the motive behind the letter was Steve’s fear of a lawsuit.

People at home had been urging him to sue for injuries sustained in the accident and Steve had gotten wind of it. However, Mario was not vindictive. Frankly, all he wanted was his freedom from Steve. Nothing in the world could convince him to do battle with Steve in court.

For Mario it was good-bye and good riddance.

Everything around Le Mans was disintegrating.

The difficulties the film was experiencing had intensified in the last few days. Nothing seemed to be going right. John Sturges was unhappy about the absence of story. He had no desire to make a documentary even if it did feature Steve McQueen, and Steve was being stubborn in his refusal to see that a race is a race is a race.

“Where is the human story?” was John’s lament.

Throughout the summer, Steve’s outbursts toward me continued, usually without warning. They would start with an innocuous question like “What car did you drive that day?” and then he would be transformed into a raging bull.

The nights were frightening, made more so by the fact that the château was so private. And because of the gun, which he would wave around and point at me on occasion. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night and see Steve sitting by my side just staring at me.

There were times when he’d be feeling mellow after having smoked a joint and he’d catch me off guard as the relentless interrogation began again.

And I stayed, although I wanted to run away. But where to? Home? What about Terry and Chad? I had never broken a promise to them. And the thought of leaving the children behind was unthinkable.

By then I had also begun to believe it was all my fault. Steve was right. It was me! It had to be me! I would look at the man and I would see a man shaken to his very roots. If I hadn’t been unfaithful, maybe the picture wouldn’t be in the mess it was in. My God! Could it be my fault? How could I leave him now? And, of course, no one knew of his suffering except me.

One day he told me he had wanted to kill himself and had purposely precipitated an accident on the track. He had escaped injury at the last minute when his survival instinct had taken over. As I stood there, faint with guilt while he recounted the story, I saw the glazed look come over his eyes and I immediately looked for cover.

“You fucking bitch! You see what you’ve done?” Slap. Then he pushed me hard against the wall and held me against it as he tried to control himself from demolishing me altogether. By some miracle he was able to resist the impulse. Instead he released me and told me to go away.

His head knew and understood why my fling had come to pass, but his heart found it impossible to forgive me

Steve McQueen and Sharon Tate

As soon as everybody had left the château, Steve’s first words to me were, “I’m going to let Stan go. I need a barracuda and he can’t hack it.” He glowered at no one in particular. “He’s too nice. Shit! They’re all too goddamn nice!” After I recovered from the shock, I asked him to reconsider. But he was determined. “I want new people around me. People who aren’t afraid to take chances.” It took me a few seconds to recover. Stan had been with us for so long and had guided Steve’s career so brilliantly, it was going to be difficult working with somebody else.

I needn’t have concerned myself. My days, too, were numbered.

“I need someone who isn’t afraid to play dirty. Someone like Freddie Fields. I just can’t help feeling that Stan and the rest of those guys from William Morris are working for CBS. Fuckers! Let’s face it. CBS is bigger than Steve McQueen.”

“Steve, honey, that’s a little paranoid, don’t you think? Whether you want to admit it or not, Bob was right. The picture is out of control!” He sat there with the chair tilted against the window. He was formulating his thoughts as he took a drag on a joint. Oddly enough, since the disclosure of my indiscretion, Steve was smoking very little grass now. He was down to nighttime indulging only. And he’d given up coke entirely.

I think he was so busy keeping an eye on me that he didn’t have the energy or the inclination to get high—lest something escape him. “Yup.” He looked at me. “What do you think of Freddie?”

“If you’re positive you don’t want Stan [God, it pained me to say it], then you’re right. Freddie is a barracuda. He’s creative and aggressive, and I think he’ll do very well by you. Call him. And then please call Stan and inform him of your decision. I feel very strongly he should hear it from you directly. There’ve been many great years together. All right, honey?”

Stan did hear from Steve directly. Only it was by way of a cablegram that read, DEAR STAN, YOU’RE FIRED. LETTER FOLLOWS. STEVE. He couldn’t have done it more crassly. But he did write Stan a handwritten note about a month later. Big deal

He was a major Asshole

David Foster, who was just then getting into production, gave me a copy of a book entitled The Getaway. He hoped I’d like it well enough to convince Steve to do it. I hoped so, too, since David had been part of the team that had helped build Steve’s career.

While in the process of reading the material one afternoon in Steve’s office on the set, I opened his desk drawer, looking for pen and paper. Realizing I was completely alone, I started reading the bits and pieces of paper that had caught my eye. What I saw was so hurtful it was enough to make me kill. I saw a starlet’s name typed neatly on a memo pad next to her phone number.

Beside the name and phone number was a little notation (not Steve’s) that said, “On a scale of 1-10, I’d say she’s a 9.” Then on another piece of paper was a Playboy centerfold’s name and phone number. And there were some other names. Strange names. But the one that upset me most was a letter written by an English duchess, asking Steve to come spend a weekend and she would make sure that so-and-so was present since Steve seemed to keen on her the last time he was in town

What is it, I wondered, that drives generally decent people to rummage through their lover’s private belongings in search of damning sexual evidence? I hadn’t wanted to particularly, but once begun, I found it impossible to close the drawer and leave it be. Much as Steve, I knew, went through my drawers, my purses, and my luggage to see if he could come up with any more incriminating evidence. For as soon as I had confessed my affair, Steve was certain there were many more that he would uncover.

I had a feeling that Steve had cooled his straying nature because I had surprised and hurt him so. And I saw no point in confronting him with the information in his desk drawer since he was still so busy confronting me with what he thought was the most unthinkable act a woman could do to a man

The daily confrontations were now taking their toll on me. I was becoming deeply depressed. To make things worse, two weeks after shooting resumed, I began to feel poorly. When I fainted in Sister Bridget’s hut, she made an appointment for me to see a doctor, which I resisted bitterly, saying it was only the heat. I reluctantly kept the appointment, fearing the worst. Two days later, I received the results of the tests.

I was pregnant.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell Steve. I had fallen off my pedestal with such a loud thud there was no question his reaction would be more one of suspicion than joy.

I wanted to be ready to act in case Steve’s reaction to my condition was negative, as I expected it to be. As much as I would have wanted to have a new baby, there was no way I could withstand both the continuing physical and mental abuse and a pregnancy.

I had to find out what the procedure would be. If any “No, Madame. It is not possible to have an abortion in France,” the doctor at the American Hospital in Paris said. But he was understanding and sympathetic and could put me in touch with a doctor in London. “Abortions are legal in England. But the sooner the better,” I was told. “Please do not delay.”

It took me three weeks to gather enough courage to face the issue with Steve. I made my announcement.

Steve looked at me disbelievingly. “What am I supposed to say?” Hey, groovy, baby? You got some nerve, you know that?” And swiftly, before I could react to his words, he had pulled me by my T-shirt and had sat me on the bed.

“Whose is it, woman?” he taunted. “Are you gonna tell me or are you gonna sit there and lie?”

Tears started to well up in my eyes and Steve became more abusive.

“Oh, don’t give me that shit! How am I supposed to believe it’s mine!” His words were dagger thrusts. He raised his hand to slap me, but instead he took a deep breath and abruptly released me, then marched quickly out of the bedroom....

I asked him one more time, hoping he might reconsider, if I should make the arrangements of abortion in London. “Yes!” came the unhesitating reply.

I do remember well the hospital bed where I tossed and turned that night, unable to sleep, wondering out loud why at thirty-six years of age I had to terminate this pregnancy. If I had the guts I’d say, “To hell with you, Steve. I’m keeping it.” But I didn’t have the guts. The last few months had taken their toll on my nerves, and my only thoughts now were of survival

There was no wrap party when Le Mans ended.....And a budding empire that had hoped to take wing managed to stay aloft only long enough to lose several million dollars

Steve went to lick his wounds in Switzerland. We drove the gray Porsche to the Niehans Clinic, where we stayed for two weeks and were rejuvenated physically. But mentally he was despairing, whereas I had become totally accepting of the harassment he doled out to me each day because by now I was thoroughly convinced the fault was mine alone and that I deserved whatever punishment I got.

By the time we came back to California, I felt I had been ravaged. I was desperate and finally enlisted the aid of our doctor, who turned us over to a marriage counselor. After a few weeks of therapy our marriage counselor felt he would be unable to help us in view of Steve’s unforgiving attitude. He suggested we see separate psychiatrists. God! Anything! Anything that could relieve the unremitting tension between us!

At least Steve had his grass and his beers and his motorcycles to turn to. I had nothing. I didn’t have the energy to go to dance class, I didn’t drink, and drugs were not my scene. Cigarettes probably kept me from becoming unstrung altogether. I went from a pack a day to two and a half packs a day.

For Christmas, German actor Siegfried Rauch and his wife, Karen, came to Palm Springs to spend the holidays with us. I was ecstatic. At least the presence of the group ensured Steve would exercise a modicum of restraint. The only place where danger existed was in our bedroom. And I did believe I was in danger.

There were guns in this house just as there were guns at Oakmont. Steve, increasingly, was finding it harder to suppress his anger. He had gone a step beyond working out. It had been his way of letting off steam. Now he was working out on me. Verbally, emotionally and terrorizing me physically. I thought of obtaining a restraining order, but I knew the press would get wind of it and I felt a strong sense of responsibility to protect his reputation—for everyone’s sake. I was boxed in.

When the holidays were over and we were back at the Castle, Steve had a particularly violent day directed mostly at the wall sconces in the entry hall and my collection of perfume bottles and antique boxes on my dressing table. I called Dr. Arons, my psychiatrist, who consulted with Dr. Goodheart, Steve’s psychiatrist. It was obvious things were getting out of hand and we had to separate or it was likely I would wind up dead.

But what was more distressing to me was the effect it was having on the children. They were aware something awful was happening. Terry was almost twelve and Chad was ten—still impressionable ages. One day after school, Terry had been upstairs with me in my dressing room when teve had pushed open the door hard, slamming it against the wall, then had pulled me by the arm and had dragged me down the stairs as he called to Terry to “close the door and stay in there until I call you!”

He had grabbed me by the neck and had pushed me into the living room, all the while asking me, “Why? Why?” And when I hadn’t answered he smacked me across the face and then, suddenly ashamed of what he had done, he had left hurriedly on his motorcycle for God knows where.

Steve loathed himself for his inability to control his violent episodes. He was always remorseful afterwards and would hold me and tell me how much he loved me. I believed him. I needed desperately to believe him. But I was also determined to follow the psychiatrists’ advice. We had to separate. I was afraid for me and I was afraid for him. And we were both afraid for the children—how it might affect them in the long run.

Betsy found Steve a guesthouse in the Pacific Palisades. It was old and small and damp. The musty smell suggested it hadn’t been aired in years. It depressed me so when I first saw it, I asked him to move back in with me “I can’t, baby. God knows there’s nothing I’d like better. But I’ve gotta get over this or we’ll never make it.”

I think very few people are aware how hard divorces and separations are on men. As difficult as they are for women, we at least remain in our own familiar surroundings. We have the children, the animals, and the furniture. The man is totally displaced. He has to think of things he never thought of before. The laundry, the food in the refrigerator, and if he’s lucky, the maid he has to contend with. For a man like Steve, there were a hundred and one details he found impossibly confusing to deal with.

We were allowed to date each other, which we found absurd, but we dared to hope that by following doctor’s orders, we’d get better. He never met my psychiatrist, but Steve had developed a grudging admiration for his. He no longer thought it unmanly to seek their help as he once had

There were times when I’d spend the night at his place and there were times when he’d spend the night at the Castle. It still wasn’t possible to spend time together without Casanova’s name being brought up. Steve’s anger would make me flinch, as always, but he was becoming better at suppressing it. The violent outbursts had lessened, which made me a little more trusting and a little less scared.

On February 9, 1971, Southern California was rocked by a violent earthquake that registered 6.2 on the Richter scale. The earthquake had taken place in the early morning hours, and while it had been in progress, Steve and I had simultaneously sat up in bed and gaped at each other. The Castle was swaying as it moaned and groaned like a giant dinosaur fighting to keep extinction at bay.

“My God! Honey, the kids!” was all I managed to say as I tried to stand up.

“Fuck, man! I gotta get down there!” Steve, in his rush to get downstairs to the children’s bedrooms, had sprung out of bed like a cat, deftly knocking me over and spraining my ankle severely (I was unable to dance for a whole year). As it turned out, the children had acted sensibly.

They remembered what I had told them about earthquakes and had positioned themselves in a doorway and waited until Steve got to them. When it was all over we all looked at each other as if waiting for the next round—not knowing exactly what to do. Our housekeeper, who had come into the hallway to join us, received an even bigger shock than the earthquake’s when she came face to face with Steve, sitting on the stairway without a stitch of clothing on.

After our nerves had stabilized, Steve drove me to the doctor’s office to have my ankle looked at. It had turned an angry purple and red and was throbbing furiously. After it had been wrapped and after I had been given crutches to walk with, I turned to Steve and laughed. “And you said you loved me so much!”

He had a type didn't he?

BY STEVE’S forty-first birthday on March 24, 1971, things were looking up. Our thrice-weekly dates and our daily phone conversations had melded, unnoticed almost, into our total involvement in each other’s lives, and once again we were together at the house on Oakmont Drive. Once again we were a family, although it was against my doctor’s advice. He felt it was too soon. But I felt I knew better

After all, I do know the man, Doctor, we’ve been together for fifteen years!

I was well aware that Casanova was alive and well in Steve’s head, but thanks to the intensive visits with his psychiatrist, the name nowadays elicited only mild contempt for the man and a baleful stare for me. Although this was still a daily occurrence, it was one I could easily live with.

Then early one evening a producer-friend called to ask if he could drop off a script for Steve to read. He had been an agent at William Morris, and he was a man Steve admired for his gentle approach to life.

“Sure, Phil. Anytime. We’re in all evening.”

“Oh, great, Steve. Say, would you mind if I bring along a friend? We won’t bother to get out of the car. It’ll just save me having to double back to the Beverly Hills Hotel if he comes with me now. You might even enjoy meeting him.” It was “Him”!

“Of course, Phil.” Click.

“Neile!” It had startled me. By the way he bellowed my name I thought one of the children had had an accident. But it came to me they were at a friend’s house and staying the night. It was Friday.

I came running down the stairs as fast as I could, thinking he’d had an accident, just as he came bounding up the steps, taking them two at a time.

The man I met on the landing was not a normal man. His face was red and his veins were sticking out of his neck and his eyes revealed my deepest fear. He had lost control of himself, for whatever reason, and I was alone with him. Without losing his stride, he had caught me just right. He grabbed my right arm, put it behind me, proceeded to push me up the stairs and then began swinging at me wildly with his left hand.

Mercifully he refrained from using a closed fist. As soon as we were in the bedroom he pushed the door shut with his foot and simultaneously shoved me hard onto the bed. When I turned around and saw him coming toward me I thought I’d had it.

All I remember saying was “Honey, please don’t!”He grabbed me by my sweater and started shaking me. “You see what you’ve done?” Slap. “Now I even have the son-of-a-bitch coming to my house.” Slap. “You sure you wouldn’t wanna fuck him here?” Slap. “You whore! How dare you!” tttt

I had no idea what had precipitated the outburst. It stunned me. But in between the shakes, the slaps, and the jabs, the story came out.

An alarm rapidly spread through my body. He is going to be here soon. Steve will pounce on him most likely when he extends his hand in introduction. Phil probably won’t even know how to react since everything will happen very quickly. What if Steve shoots him? Oh, my God! All I could think of was that I had to get out of here. I was acting like a coward and I didn’t care. If Steve went after him, he would surely come after me too. God, Dr. Arons, why didn’t I listen to you? Jesus Christ! How do I get out of here?

I waited till Steve was sufficiently calm before I told him I had to pick up the children. In the meantime I prayed that Phil wouldn’t ring that gate buzzer. At least not until I was out of the house. It was a little before six o’clock now and I headed for the beach. I wanted to be alone to figure out what to do. I was still shaking and still a little hysterical as I parked my car on San Vicente and went across Ocean Avenue and sat on one of the park benches.

I went back to my car and headed for my friend Ann Smith’s house. I knew I was always welcome there and I knew she’d never betray me to Steve. She was waiting for me when I arrived. Steve had been looking for me. She promised him she’d call if I came by. Of course, she didn’t and wouldn’t. That’s what friends are for. I hugged her and thanked her and then told her what had happened.

I stayed at Ann’s house for three hours. Steve called every twenty minutes to ask about my whereabouts. “No,” Ann said, “she hasn’t come by.” And after Steve’s last call Ann turned to me and reported Steve had called the police.

“You’d best go back, Butterfly [her nickname for me]. He’s really worried now.”

I was tired, but I couldn’t go back—not just yet, anyway. I was frightened by what I might find at Oakmont. I drove around and around, idly thinking I might drive to Palm Springs, but finally after an hour, I figured it was time to face the music. Whatever it might be. I stopped at a gas station and went to a phone booth.

He answered immediately. “Baby, where are you?”

“I don’t know, honey. Somewhere.” I paused for a moment and then I cried haltingly, “Can I come home now?”

When I pulled into the courtyard Steve pulled me gently out of the car and held me in his arms while I sobbed. He rocked me side to side telling me he was sorry. After all I’d been through the last few hours I found out the man hadn’t shown after all.

I thought to myself perhaps Casanova had found himself a date. And then again, perhaps he might have thought it best not to come and tempt fate.

Memorial Day night, 1971, was a night I shall never forget to my dying day.

We were living separately again, seeing our respective shrinks and once more playing the dating game. He was back in that wretched guest house, and the children and I were in our beautiful Oakmont Drive house. I couldn’t bear the thought of him living in that little guest house, but he promised he’d move as soon as he returned from Prescott, Arizona, where he was starting a new movie called Junior Bonner.

We still both hoped we could work it out.

One of the more positive and constructive results of his time with Dr. Goodheart, he had informed me, was that he no longer had the need to use hard drugs as a way of making a statement.

However, on this night of Memorial Day, when he picked me up he was already high, which made me apprehensive.

“On grass, baby. That’s all!” On the way to the restaurant, the coke came out.

“Ah, honey. I thought you said that was over with.” I must be calm. Be cool, kid. I was very nervous. I could feel the hair on the back of my neck bristling.

He said a buddy of his had given it to him and he was just trying it out. “Don’t you worry, baby. I’m fine. O.K.?”

What could I say? I was in the car. I would have to be on my toes tonight, I could see that. At Chez Jay’s, we dined and talked while he drank three Carta Blancas. I was watching him carefully, knowing full well what to expect. Shit! Should I refuse to go home with him? For some reason I couldn’t. On the way home, he smoked a roach and swallowed what he couldn’t smoke.

As we turned right onto Bristol Circle North from Sunset Boulevard (the scenic route, as we used to refer to it), the questions began.

How did you meet him?” “Were you scared?” “How did you feel afterwards?” Ever so gently, so as not to frighten me, I presumed. Oh, but I was frightened.

By the time we had approached the speed bumps on Oakmont Drive, the battery of questions had crescendoed to such a pitch that I remember considering jumping out of the car. The jabs were coming fast and furious on my left arm and I was becoming hysterical.

As we drove up the long driveway to the house, Steve had one hand on the wheel and the other hand was holding onto my hair, tightly pulling my head back. As soon as the car stopped, I tried to open my door, but he was quicker than I was. He rapidly jumped out of his side and his powerful arms grabbed me by my neck and arm and pulled me out over the gearbox and across his seat.

He kicked me from behind and I went sprawling on the courtyard. And he came at me again, asking me, “Why? Why did you do it, you whore?” This time he pulled me up and slapped me hard against the side of my head. I remember the explosion and the incredible sensation of not knowing where I was for a second. And then another one caught me on my ear. This one sent me on my knees.

And then silence. I looked up and saw Steve as in a freeze frame, his eyes staring toward the servants’ room, with his arm in a pulled-back position ready to strike.

I didn’t know why he stopped and I didn’t care. I crawled on all fours to the back door ready to pound as hard as I could so Ariel or Mary (our houseman and housekeeper) would open the door. To my surprise it was already open.

(The next day Ariel told me what happened. He had heard a commotion going on outside after Mr. McQueen’s car came up the driveway. He looked out his window and witnessed the scene. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to interfere and yet he knew he must stop it. Ariel had picked up the radio on his dresser and had smashed it against the wall. Which apparently is what jarred Steve out of his agitated state. Immediately Ariel had then quietly opened the door.)

Steve’s energy was spent. I knew I was safe now. I was hanging on to the doorway as my head leaned against the doorjamb. I was weary and I ached in forty different places. Steve put his arms around me, shocked at what he had done.

“Oh, my God, baby. I’m sorry. So sorry.” And I knew he was. He just couldn’t help himself. But I could and I didn’t intend to make any more mistakes

“Honey, I’m going to have to leave you.” Tears were running down my face. “I must because if I don’t, someday you’ll kill me. And my God, honey, what will happen to the children? I don’t want that for them. Do you?”

My knees and hands were scraped and I had a gash on my thigh, apparently suffered during the slide across the car. My face felt all right although my head was pounding, and I had blood blisters on my right ear.

Steve helped me upstairs and put me to bed. .... Before he turned to go he said, “I love you and I will always love you.” He smiled sadly. “Remember that, will you?”

I can't believe you are typing all this.

Junior Bonner and Prescott, Arizona, were notable to me for my personal lack of involvement in Steve’s new movie. That had never happened before. For the first time in fifteen years I felt completely separate from him.

It was a time for adjusting to changing circumstances. I wasn’t ready to file for divorce just yet. That seemed so final. I still wanted to hang on, hoping for the impossible to reverse itself. Yet when I put Terry and Chad on the plane to Arizona to visit Steve for two weeks that summer, I felt like an outsider. These were my children, going to see Daddy. Why isn’t Mommy on the plane with them? It was very depressing.

Although Steve called me two or three times a week, something had died between us, and it would require a major miracle not yet invented to resurrect it. Our conversations were aimless. How’s the weather? How’re you doing? How’s the movie coming? Feelings were never discussed. Emotions were still raw.

When Steve came home from Prescott, he brought me two beautiful Navaho bracelets. He hadn’t announced his arrival and he came through the door carrying a briefcase, wearing a green embroidered cowboy shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. He looked gorgeous and I felt an immediate stab to the heart. Being away from each other for ten weeks had done him good. He looked rested and he no longer had that haunted look. I silently thanked God for that.

I was at a loss for words. We both were. It was as if we had never met. Or worse. It was as if we had forgotten how to talk to each other. We were both acting, trying to act “normal,” both trying to suppress the pain we had suffered and were still suffering.

After having a reunion with the children, he hugged me and asked me to dinner the next night. To avoid the kind of drastic change in mood that had precipitated the Memorial Day episode, we had been advised to take separate cars when going out and we both thought it wise.

I met him at the Santa Ynez Inn in the Pacific Palisades, which was close to where he was staying. Throughout dinner as he drank beer after beer, we talked about our lives, what it would mean to be without each other. We were both frightened of being alone, and yet there was no denying that the anger he felt toward me was too terrible a threat. I cried and he drank.....

There was no turning back. Divorce was only a matter of time Since the very real possibility existed I would be seeing an attorney sooner or later, he consulted with his to explore what the possible legal alternatives might be. He definitely had no intention of filing. He was going to let matters stand

That year (1971) he also joined First Artists Productions, a new company, in partnership with three other giants of the silver screen: Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, and Sidney Poitier. This company had been masterminded by Freddie Fields and David Begelman and gave the individual artist control of his projects.

After much discussion I had convinced Steve he should go ahead and do The Getaway. He had been reluctant to do it because the main thrust of the story dealt with the wife’s unfaithfulness.

“Look at it this way, honey. You’ve been through it, you know how it feels.” I actually said that teasingly, but the immediate tenseness of his face and body promptly told me I should back off. “I’m sorry, honey. I was just kidding.”

Anyway, since The Getaway was handy and since Steve wanted to test the effectiveness of First Artists, everything fell into place quite nicely for David Foster and Mitch Brower, a new team of producers.

And even as these events unfolded, somewhere in us was still the hope of reviving our marriage.

But finally, on the first Friday in October, I filed for its dissolution. Steve was angry and hurt, but I had to get on with my life. No matter what it brought. I couldn’t bear to live it dangling in the air like a trapeze artist. Not anymore.

The Getaway began shooting in El Paso just three weeks before our divorce became final on April 26, 1972. We had been married for fifteen and a half years and as I left the Santa Monica courthouse in the company of my lawyer, I suddenly felt lost and alone.

The judge had congratulated me and Steve (in absentia) for the manner in which we had conducted our divorce proceedings. He was impressed that our custody agreement declared the children were free to come and go between our two houses according to their wishes, not ours. Their choices would be based on their needs. (We had agreed beforehand the children’s welfare was of paramount importance. No games were to be played at their expense.)

During the period The Getaway was shooting in El Paso, I started detecting a hoarseness in Steve’s voice that seemed to come and go. At first I thought it was my imagination and then I began to think it was our telephone connection. I was wrong. He was being bothered by something in the air down there, he explained.

After a while, his hoarseness had advanced into an annoying, sort of throat-clearing exercise. Since we talked frequently—mostly about the children—I was able unconsciously to chart the progress of the cough. Finally, I asked him what in heaven’s name was the matter? It didn’t sound like an everyday cough. He wasn’t sick and neither did he have a cold. He felt only as if there was something constantly caught in the back of his throat.

“So stop smoking cigarettes and grass, for God’s sake!” I had pleaded.

“Don’t be silly, woman! I need to wind down at night!”

Steve was unable to undergo a battery of tests that our doctor had advised until the completion of the movie. The results of the tests would determine the course of action.

I was uneasy. Ethically, since I was no longer his wife, I couldn’t discuss my ex-husband’s ailments with our good Dr. Kert. And yet, because of our long-standing relationship, I felt entitled to the information. I couldn’t put Dr. Kert in a compromising position. I would have to be patient and wait until Steve himself filled me in when the tests were completed.

Within forty-eight hours after the conclusion of principal photography, Steve was wheeled into the operating room at Mt. Sinai (Cedars-Sinai today) for the removal of polyps in his throat. This was a direct result, I was told, of too much smoking.

Only a handful of people knew Steve was in the hospital. Freddie Fields and I waited in the coffee shop downstairs for Steve’s return from the recovery room. During our conversation, I learned that Freddie was now being regularly subjected to the abusive irrationality that was so much a part of Steve’s personality. Freddie has since said, “He was suspicious of anything and everything, including himself! And I was his best friend at that time!”

In Steve’s room a tub of flowers was sitting on the windowsill. They were from Ali. Steve was clearly disappointed that she had elected to stay away. And knowing him as well as I did, I knew he would forever hold it against her. Only the Lord knew when it would surface, but I was certain it would when she least expected it.

Ali’s reasoning was well founded. I think she was not yet ready to tell the public a divorce was imminent and she was still living with her husband. As far as the world was concerned, a reconciliation between the Evanses was still possible, and to show up at the hospital would have created unnecessary gossip she neither needed nor wanted.

I stayed the afternoon as Steve fidgeted in his bed. What he had undergone was not major surgery, but Dr. Kert wanted to keep him in the hospital for observation for a few days nonetheless.

Steve had never been comfortable in hospitals. He detested them and feared them at the same time. When our children were much younger and Chad would have his yearly severe asthma attack, it was my responsibility alone to stay with our son at the hospital. Terry was hospitalized once with pneumonia and once with acute tracheitis, and neither time had Steve come to see his daughter, the apple of his eye. It wasn’t that he hadn’t cared—he was apprised of what went on at every moment. It was his own irrational fear. (This fear might have had something to do with his going to Mexico rather than an establishment hospital during his final illness. I don’t know. He never discussed it with me.)

Now here he was, expressing through body language that he felt like a caged tiger. He was also very cranky because he wasn’t allowed to utter a sound. He was never at his best writing anything down, and the slow process irritated him. Now he was being forced to. It incensed him.

And to top it all off, Ali wasn’t there to see him through his convalescence. She, whom he thought he could count on. Her commitment couldn’t be as complete as she had led him to believe, could it?

He could be so exasperatingly simplistic that sometimes one wanted to shake him and say, Grow up, Steve, for goodness sake!

Then the morning after surgery, he dressed himself and calmly walked out of the hospital unnoticed and walked all the way to Freddie’s office, which was only three blocks away. Using the voice he had been asked to pamper, he announced that if CMA wanted its commission, then, by golly, they’d best find someone to drive him home. Done!

The year was 1972 and it was the beginning of summer.

Steve was forty-two years old and in the prime of his life.

Today, I am convinced that this was the start of the insidious cancer that would in time destroy him. It was as if it had announced its presence to this almost- perfect body and had said unceremoniously, “Beware. I am here.”

He was a weak-chinned, wife beating neurotic. I kinda feel sorry for him. Thanks, OP.

AFTER GOING THROUGH the most turbulent, the most debilitating and the most excruciatingly painful two years of my life, there I was—alone, after fifteen and a half years. To say I felt lost is putting it mildly. I had pushed for the divorce because I saw no other way out. It was for my own survival.

When we were together, Steve had me believing I was the cause of the mess our marriage was in. And yet when I was by myself and able to think clearly, the fact remained that his accelerating selfish and self-serving demands and behavior were so outrageous as to defy anyone’s sense of decency and self-respect. Who knows? He might eventually have asked for a divorce anyway. We certainly seemed headed in that direction

As always, Steve and I were in touch with each other. And I could tell how enthralled he was in this new relationship with Ali. It was shattering to me that he had found someone so quickly and someone so visible. Some days I would say, “Good. Better her than me.” And then on some days I’d wallow in self-pity, unable to pick myself up off the floor. It had been a lifetime since I had been on my own. Could I manage again?

In the end I had come out with much less than I had been financially entitled to, but it hadn’t mattered. I wanted no delays and I knew in my heart Steve would come to the rescue if the need ever arose. For now it was time to gather my own resources and concentrate on me—the new me, whoever that might be. And as soon as I found her I resolved never to lose her again.

I took a good look at myself and asked myself what was missing from my life (besides a husband). Not much, to tell the truth. My good friends were still my good friends. The peripheral friends didn’t matter. They were fawning over Steve and Ali now. (As they would fawn over the next Mrs. McQueen.)

I had a sneaking suspicion, given Steve’s personality and what I perceived Ali’s to be, that their marriage would not live happily ever after. I was already hearing less-than-loving stories here and there from the children.

[quote] What I saw was so hurtful it was enough to make me kill. I saw a starlet’s name typed neatly on a memo pad next to her phone number.

Troublemaker

It wasn’t too long after my mother’s death and my arrival back at my house on Amalfi Drive in Pacific Palisades that I received my early-morning phone call. Steve had developed the maddening habit of waking the world up as soon as he opened his eyes. With a cup of coffee at his side and a cigarette or a joint accompanying it, he would proceed to conduct his business regardless of the time. Six o’clock or six thirty in the morning was his usual calling hour.

I had voiced my objections loud enough so that we had reached a compromise whereby the calls to me were to be made after his business calls. I did feel sorry for his agents and his press agents and whomever else he had any business dealings with. The greeting most always started with the disheartening words, “Hello. It’s Steve.”

I say disheartening because none of these people looked forward to his calls, which were seldom pleasant. He was hyped up in the early mornings, having plotted his attacks on his “enemies” in the middle of the night before while they went innocently about their normal business, which was sleeping.

The advantage of these confrontations was their surprise. The verbal abuses heaped on those who worked for him were so devastating that they would acquiesce immediately to whatever requests Steve would subsequently make. Good or bad. Unreasonable or not. Anything to get this madman off their back.

I, on the other hand, now had only family matters to discuss with him. Sometimes, just to irritate him, I would have a gentleman friend answer his call and tell him that “I’m sorry, Neile can’t come to the phone right now. Can she call you back?” The answer would invariably be a loud click.

In June of 1977, we celebrated Terry’s eighteenth birthday with a big party at my house. Besides Terry’s friends, we invited friends who had been with us through the years.... Steve and Chad brought little Joshua Evans along, and because of the troubled circumstances surrounding their marriage, I left it to Steve to bring Ali or not. Ali didn’t come.

I thought Steve looked awful. He had swelled up like a giant balloon. He also seemed to be coming down with another in a succession of colds—he constantly had either the flu, the runs, or a head cold. I jokingly told him his extra fat couldn’t fight off those germs invading his body.

That summer Terry and I took off for Europe and went backpacking through France and Italy. We had a glorious time together. As soon as we hit town at the end of summer, Steve carted me off to MGM to see An Enemy of the People, a film that originated from his disenchantment with First Artists, who kept asking for his second film. (Each star was committed to do three.) As a way of retaliating he had randomly pointed to one of Ali’s books and up came An Enemy.

“That’s what I’m gonna do,” he said. “That one!” Now it was still a rough cut, but he was anxious for my opinion. I sat through the first five minutes looking at the film and the man emoting up there before it finally dawned on me the person I was looking at was Steve! I turned to him aghast! “Honey, that is you, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s me,” he answered, rather annoyed.

I almost yelled. “Forget it, kid! It’ll never sell. Not in a million years! First of all, there are a lot of people out there who don’t even know who Ibsen is, you know what I mean? An Enemy of the People sounds like a western. They’re gonna come into the movie house looking to see Steve McQueen and what they’re gonna see instead is this big, hairy slob! You’re crazy!

”Shut up, goddamn it. Talk to me after it’s over!”

Perhaps it’s unfair to say the movie was terrible. It just wasn’t Steve’s métier. I hated seeing him looking plain ugly. Unfortunately, my take on the movie was colored by the way I saw him. He was a man more at home with emotions than words; this attempt to do Ibsen seemed as though he were deliberately trying to destroy the image he had carefully cultivated over the years.

I thought to myself, Words have become his windmill now. He had given up car racing a while back and motorcycles had lost their charm for him, mostly due to the Le Mans fiasco, except as objects to collect. Maybe he had to give this a shot. This enigmatic man was an experience unto himself.

My reaction was a disappointment to him. I knew that pained him. He had worked long and hard on the character and he thought he could pull it off.

From the book :

The changed Steve, 1977

The last picture of the four of us together at Chad’s 18th birthday party in 1978

1971 Memorial Day night.

At about this time I started performing on the dinner theater and stadium circuit. It’s not the kind of work that does much for one’s career, but it kept me busy. I also appeared in a succession of episodic television shows, and when each one aired, Steve and I would have dinner and watch the shows.

In late March of 1978 I opened in Can Can in Las Vegas. I was doing two shows a night and by the end of the eighth week was exhausted and missing my family and friends. Steve called me one day, and on a whim, I asked him to come and spend a couple of days with me if he had nothing better to do. “I need a friendly face!”

I wasn’t too concerned about the public recognizing him. He looked like a well-dressed bag man at this point.

Sure enough, a few days later, I received a call late in the afternoon. Steve was somewhere on the outskirts of town. Would I pick him up? He couldn’t have found a seedier motel to stay in and “crap out” if he had tried. He was on his way back to Los Angeles from Idaho, where he had been working on his next film project, Tom Horn, the story of a man out of step with the approaching new century.

He’d been hiring and rehiring writers and finally he decided he wanted to take a crack at the script himself. Now he was in need of a breather, so the timing had been perfect.

That afternoon in that seedy motel in Las Vegas was the last time he and I ever made love.When we got to my apartment he asked to be fed. As he was gobbling down the tuna fish salad I made him, he asked rather matter-of-factly whether he and I could make it back together again.

There was no question we couldn’t and it was no more than a rhetorical question. But I answered it anyway. “Honey, too much time has elapsed. We love each other. And that’s forever. So there’s no need to live together. I couldn’t put up with you anymore. No adult woman could. You need a young girl who is still malleable enough and can run with the tide. I’m too set in my ways and you know what? I like not having to answer to anyone.”

He understood that. He laughed and reached for my hand across the table. “We’re gettin’ old, you and me, baby. I’m building me a log cabin in Idaho. You’ll come see it when it’s done. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

And then as an afterthought he asked, “Hey, why can’t you and me and Ali and Barbara all live together under one roof?” I just shook my head and he laughed at the thought as if he were telling a joke on himself. “Can you imagine that? Ooooweee!”

SOMETIME AFTER Steve arrived back at Trancas, he came down with the flu. And then the flu turned into walking pneumonia. And there it stayed for a very long time. Despite all the medication. Despite all the care. The doctors were baffled; they had given him every conceivable test.

Throughout all this, neither Steve nor Chad had made Terry or me aware of his illness. Chad was told Steve had bronchitis and that it was flu-related. Steve was confident he’d get over it, whatever it was. He gave orders not to have a big deal made out of it. After several weeks, the doctors had come to the conclusion he had a fungus in his lung, most likely picked up in the desert during his biking days. So they began treatment with a sulfa drug.

And it worked. He began to recover and feel better.

Except his strength was a long time coming back. He tired easily, walked slowly, and used a cane to help him around.And because he was his usual ornery self, Barbara Minty (now solidly entrenched in the house) and Chad thought soon he’d be back to normal.

One day in October Steve asked me to come and visit. When I drove down the beach road to his house, I saw him at the bottom of the incline giving orders to Chad and his friends about moving some cars and trucks around. He seemed his usual self—deploying his forces like a general and yelling as if a battle were in progress.

With one difference. The general standing there was wrapped in a maroon bathrobe and leaning on a cane.

And when we walked toward each other, I noticed one shoulder was lower than the other. “Sometime it just aches from the dampness around here.” My heart went out to him. I wasn’t used to seeing this man weak or sick. As I put my arms around him I told him, “I know I’m always going to keep a room for you to come to in case there’s nobody to take care of you.”

His face looked drawn under the beard but he was in good spirits. He described what had happened the last few months and added that the doctors wanted him to leave Trancas. It was too damp and apparently not agreeing with him. He had instructed real estate brokers to search actively for land that was reminiscent of the farm he remembered from his early youth with Uncle Claude.

I met Barbara Minty for the first time. (She told Steve after I left she was so nervous about meeting me that she changed outfits three times.)

I was taken aback at how young she looked. And then I found out she was only four years older than Terry (whom she hadn’t met yet), which would have made her twenty-three years old then. Actually, the first thought that crossed my mind when we were introduced was, She looks like she could be Ali’s daughter, for God’s sake! I found her to be very sweet, very shy, very pretty, with very little to say. I most likely intimated her. I was, after all, the mother of his children and I was older (probably as old as her mother, I wryly thought).

As I observed her and Steve together, I thought they had a pretty good thing going. She certainly seemed to care for him. Also she and Chad had become friends—which was important—and as children do, they played games together. Chad recounted the story of the time he and Barbara were playing tag when Steve came through the door. His reaction had been immediate. He ordered Chad to sweep the deck around the house and ordered Barbara to cook him some chicken. That settled that.

By Christmastime, Steve was feeling pretty good. He was looking at ranches in the Santa Paula area and had put the Trancas home on the market. When it sold, he had plans for Barbara, Chad, and him to live in a sixty-foot motor home. I thought it was an awful idea. “Listen to this scenario, Steve, and listen good. Barbara and Chad are much closer in age than you and she are. His hormones are working overtime right now. You wanna tempt fate?”

Silence. “You have a dirty mind, you know that?”

But the next day, after thinking it over, Steve called to tell me he would rent two trailers when the time came. One for him and Barbara and one for Chad

Sometimes I look at my quiet little life, and think I should be more adventurous, that I should be one of those people who are out there grabbing life by the balls and siezing every new experience.

Then I realize most such people are like McQueen as described here - desperately insecure, willing to do anything to appear cool and with it, unable to enjoy what they have, and raining destruction on themselves and everyone nearby.

And I feel better about my life.

[quote]Then I realize most such people are like McQueen as described here

Nonsense.

Steve and Barbara, 1979

Steve and daughter Terry in Santa Paula, CA, 1979

On December 28, 1978, we were all together again for Chad’s eighteenth birthday. The party consisted of the same grown-ups who had attended Terry’s party the year before and, naturally, Chad’s friends. This time Joshua Evans wasn’t present and Barbara Minty was.

It was the last time the camera caught us as a happy family group, and also that last time the four of us would be together under such happy circumstances.

If proof ever was needed that Steve couldn’t handle being a filmmaker, as he would like to have been known, Le Mans in 1970 and Tom Horn almost a decade later would have to be the perfect examples.

Steve’s biggest problem was his inability to trust someone else’s judgment. He’d delegate a responsibility and then he would take it away. He referred to this same tendency in another person’s personality as “doing a 360.” Oddly enough, it was the very same trait he failed to recognize in himself.

As an actor, when he worked with strong directors and/or strong producers, his contributions to the success of his movies could be enormous. Left to fend for himself as the chief executive of his own movie, charged with making all the final decisions, his 360s were in great part to blame for his failures

Tom Horn suffered from too many writers and too many directors. By the time the final shot was completed, four directors had been on the movie, not counting Steve, who personally had taken over at one point. The Directors Guild of America had intervened and had insisted the company bring in a card-carrying member of the guild.

Steve was a stickler for details in all his movies. Unfortunately, he carried it to such an extreme the films suffered under the weight of all that detailing. The gold tooth gimmick was revived for this picture. Only we saw it protruding from Linda Evans’ mouth. In addition to this, Steve also insisted she not wear makeup. I thought he went out of his way to make this gorgeous woman look quite plain

Tom Horn began principal photography in the cold wintry desert of Tucson, Arizona, in February 1979. Even with having to battle snow, sleet, and ice, Steve, Chad, and Barbara were back home by Easter of that year. Chad had worked as a production assistant and as an extra. Our precocious and gorgeous dog Junior had vanished in the wilds of the desert, which had upset me when Steve called to inform me

Upon his arrival back in town, Steve complained to me about the couple I had found to house-sit at Trancas. Steve discovered through casual conversation that this wonderful French couple had had the temerity to invite another couple over to play gin. I couldn’t take him seriously.

“Hey, why don’t you just thank me for getting you a first-class and responsible couple? Don’t complain so much.”

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but he didn’t seem like himself. I was familiar with the nuances of his personality and his mood changes. But there was something else. The blue eyes were dull and tired. The sparkle was gone.

In July of 1979, Steve purchased a fifteen-acre ranch in Santa Paula. He also bought a hangar a hop and a skip away from the ranch to store his various collections of American memorabilia. Antique toys, old gas pumps, cars of years gone by, and antique motorcycles. He had become an avid collector, and when time allowed, he and Barbara went to swap meets all over the state and country.

At one point he seriously considered buying a Peterbilt so he could go from swap meet to swap meet, load up and even sleep in the truck when necessary.

On my forty-fifth birthday, a few days after Steve closed on the Santa Paula ranch, I received the last gift I was ever to get from him. It was a unique antique brass pepper mill. Set in a square box with intricate designs on all four sides, the mill also had a little drawer at the bottom to catch the pepper when the handle was turned around. The handle is much like an old Victrola handle.

When I called to thank him, Steve told me the Trancas house had finally been sold and he and Barbara had moved into the hangar while the ranch was being readied. Chad had found himself an apartment and the problem of the living accommodations had been solved.

Steve had discovered airplanes and had become all enthused about flying. (He was impressed when I told him Al had been a jet fighter pilot.) But Steve was into antique airplanes. As was generally the case, when Steve chose to do something, he threw himself wholeheartedly into the project. It was the same with flying.

He kept buying one after the other, until he had five antique airplanes. The money from The Towering Inferno was pouring in and it kept him happy. And as soon as he got his license to fly, he insisted on taking Terry up—against my nervous objections. Airplanes still frightened me. But she had a great time and hadn’t been the least bit frightened.

Steve and actor Lee Majors at santa paula airport

Steve with Barbara

I fell madly in love with Al Toffel and became engaged to him the night of my birthday. This unusual man had caught me totally by surprise. The more time I spent with him, the more enamored I became. He was all the good things I had ever known—the real thing, a man of substance in a town generally inhabited by superficial people...

Shortly after we moved to Beverly Hills, Steve made one of his typical early-morning calls. This time, Al answered it. Although Steve had been aware of my deepening relationship with Al, it had irritated him to be confronted by it unexpectedly.

When I got on the phone, he immediately went into a tirade about how he desperately needed the money he had lent me and wanted it back right now. He said he was broke (which was absurd). Luckily, the Amalfi house was to close in a few days and I told Steve to hold on. When I told Al about it, he offered to give me the money to give to Steve, which I thought was an extraordinary gesture. He also asked that no more financial arrangements be made with my ex-husband.

It had been the men’s first encounter with each other, and neither had been happy about their early morning introduction over the phone. From then on, Steve called at more respectable hours in deference to Al’s wishes.

Steve left for Chicago that September to begin The Hunter. I thought the script was so-so and that he deserved better and could do better if he would only bother to read a few of the scripts sent to him. To me it read more like a TV movie than a feature film. For the moment, he said, it was the only decent script available to him.

Steve felt he should go ahead with his film. He understood there was a whole audience out there who had forgotten or never knew what he looked like. His last film as Steve McQueen, superstar, had been The Towering Inferno, five years earlier. Hardly anybody had gone to see Tom Horn and An Enemy of the People.

As it was, by the time The Hunter made its appearance in the movie theaters, it would be the latter half of 1980. Six years is a long time away from the screen. Audiences are fickle. They change allegiance at the bat of an eyelash. In fact, he had all but disappeared from the box office list of stars.

So although we talked often, he and I didn’t see each other again until a few days before Christmas. When I spoke to him after he had finally finished with The Hunter, Steve informed me he was checking into Cedars-Sinai because of a low-grade fever he’d had for two weeks running. He had had a persistent cough and was generally pretty tired. The strain of the location in Chicago had taken its toll on him.

Al and I had already made our plans to marry when the holidays were over. We had picked a date: January 19, 1980. I had told Steve over the phone that he was not going to be invited to the wedding because “I intend to be the star at this wedding. Not you, my darling. The focus will be on Al and me.” He had understood completely and we had laughed over our circumstances.

And now here we were, Al and I, in this hospital room with Steve, five days before Christmas, where the two men met formally for the first time. Airplanes were their commonality for the moment, but their communication deepened. I could tell they liked each other.

Steve seemed subdued, extraordinarily so. Barbara was usually quiet, so that meant nothing to me. One usually couldn’t read her face.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Steve’s X-rays showed there was a major problem with half of his right lung. What it meant exactly wasn’t clear yet. Not until the tests were completed.

Little did we all know that three days before Christmas would bring the most disastrous news Steve had ever encountered in his entire life

Chad called me the following Saturday evening. “Mom, Dad was operated on this afternoon and he’s in intensive care. I thought you’d want to know.” My God, I thought, they’ve done surgery on him. Not just a little biopsy like he said they would.

When Steve came out of surgery, Terry and Barbara found themselves facing each other in the recovery room. The first time they had met had been in Sun Valley many months before when Steve had called Terry asking her to join them for a bit of skiing. Their second meeting, in the recovery room at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, was ominous.

The doctor had slowly articulated for Steve what they had found. It was cancer and it was inoperable.

Mesothelioma was the medical term for the tumors found in the lining of his body, and his were malignant. It was a very rare form of cancer, probably caused by asbestos.

It became apparent to Terry that her father had been so groggy at the time he had been told of his condition that he had no recollection of her presence in the recovery room. After he had been brought back to his hospital room, Steve—wanting to spare his children any unnecessary pain—had told them a bald-faced lie.

“Guess what? It isn’t cancer. I’m gonna be fine.”

Terry, who has the same temperament as her father, lied to him as expertly as he had lied to her. “That’s great, Dad. Let’s go skiing as soon as you recover from whatever it is you have. O.K.?”

Chad chose to deny what he had learned and was comforted to know Dad would be well soon and was all smiles.

On Monday afternoon, Christmas Eve, I stepped into the exclusive VIP room at Cedars-Sinai to find Steve sitting in bed while Terry fiddled with a small Christmas tree. Gaily wrapped boxes in different sizes spilled over onto the floor from the desk where the little tree sat. From what Steve had said, Barbara had gone to do some last-minute shopping and Terry was keeping him company.

I was anxious to see him. I had already learned what was wrong with him. Naively, I had thought the strength of his spirit and his belief in himself would show me if he could conquer this new reversal.

He sent Terry to get him a soda, then without mentioning the dreaded word, he made me promise—on our children’s lives—that all I would say to anyone if questioned was that he had an unidentified fungus of the desert variety.

Then he added, “I am gonna make it, you know. Barbara is heavy into this health stuff, and she’s putting me on all these vitamins and feeding me healthy foods. I’ve already stopped smoking and I’ve been clean and sober for a while now and I’m gonna work out and lead a real healthy life in general. Not to worry, baby. I’ll be just fine.” I promised to keep the secret and left—with a lingering doubt.

In the afterlight, I think how courageous Steve was to be able to carry all that off in the way he did—even later, when the National Enquirer reported in a sensational manner that he was dying of cancer. I also think how dastardly one of the nurse’s aides and her boyfriend were to slip the story to the Enquirer.

And what an absolutely first-class lady Barbara Walters was for having turned them down when approached and for immediately informing Steve’s press agents, who attempted to get the story killed. Another reporter who showed her true colors as far as we were concerned was Rona Barrett. She handled everything with taste and never resorted to sensationalism. Actually she kept a very tight rein on what she reported with regard to Steve. And for that we thank her.

The National Enquirer story has an equally unsavory footnote. There was a coffee shop at Santa Paula, not far from Steve’s hangar, that he used to frequent. One day a young man (a college kid, Steve said) turned up at the coffee shop and struck up a conversation with him. Steve felt relaxed in that setting. They knew him well there, and he wasn’t bothered by any of the regulars. Steve, who had an affinity for young people trying to make it in this world, took a liking to the kid.

It wasn’t long before Steve had this kid to his hangar showing him his planes and his various collections of memorabilia. The point is, later, Steve let his guard down. Not too long after the kid had Steve’s confidence, the trusty young man showed up with an innocuous camera.

Steve first saw him take a picture of Barbara, then of Barbara’s plane, then of Steve’s plane. A little warning light had gone on in Steve’s head. But not big enough. Steve questioned the boy about the camera. The reply had been perfectly rehearsed.

“Oh, I’m sorry about that. I hope you don’t mind. One of my subjects at UC Santa Barbara is photography. I just thought those old planes might be really interesting. But if you’d prefer I didn’t, then I won’t. I apologize.” Steve said he had been struck by how sincere this boy was.

I suppose we all get taken in at one time or another. Steve told me he felt foolish after the kid’s long speech “Hey, don’t worry about it. Take all the pictures you want. Makes no big never mind if it’ll help you.”

It sure helped the kid. Steve said those were the very pictures that turned up in the Enquirer accompanying the horrid and insensitive article

By the end of the first week in January of 1980, the soreness under Steve’s right arm where they had cut him to do the exploratory surgery had eased considerably. Terry said his mood vacillated from lightheartedness to depression. And still nothing was mentioned about cancer.

For the next several days his main concern, according to Terry, was the date of my wedding to Al. He kept asking her when Mom would get married. Terry, in her effort to throw him off, would hem and haw, saying she wasn’t exactly sure.

“Come on, Terry. Tell your ole dad here when your mom is gettin’ married. I know damn well you know when!”

Terry would laugh, amused as she was over Steve’s transparent motives. And still she wouldn’t say. Chad was no help to Steve, since this darling son of ours remembers no dates except his own birth date. (This kid is going to make some woman very unhappy over this someday.)

Because she suspected something imminent, Terry called me early one evening. “Mom, it’s nothing Dad has said to me. It’s more because of all the questions he’s been asking. You know how he is. When he asks too many questions he’s usually poised for action. Well, he’s been asking me repeatedly about the date of your wedding. So I would assume he’s going to try and beat you to the altar.”

“I’ll just wait until he calls me. Then we’ll really know for sure what he’s up to!” There was no question but he’d call to tell me.

On the Tuesday before my Saturday wedding, the phone rang and intuitively I knew it was Steve.

“Hey, Nellie! How you doin’?” He was in good spirits on this day. I was happy to hear that. We went round and round, talking about everything in creation without actually coming to the point I knew he wanted to cover. Finally I told him I had to leave. It was then he blurted it out. “I’m getting married tomorrow.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m getting married tomorrow!”

“You’re getting married tomorrow? Is that what you just said, you son-of-a-bitch! You couldn’t wait till after Saturday?”“No!” He was petulant now. “If I wait until after you get married, they’ll say I got married because you did!”

“They’ll say that anyway, you old fool!”

“I don’t care. I’m still gonna do it before you!”

Actually, it really didn’t matter one way or another who got married first. It was a game. And it was fun giving each other a hard time. I couldn’t resist one last parting shot.

“Tell me one thing. What do you have in common with Barbara besides her youth and beauty?”

“You’re bad, baby. You know that, don’t ya?” He took a breath as if preparing to extol all her virtues. “She loves me, you know, honey? She says she would live anywhere with me, including pitching a tent out in the desert. Plus she takes care of me.”

And so on January 16, 1980, Barbara Minty became Steve’s third wife. Our children weren’t present. From my recollection of what Steve told me, the minister from his new church in Ventura (he had become a born-again Christian) married them in his house, with Sammy Mason, his flying instructor, who had reintroduced him to the Lord Jesus, and Sammy’s wife as the only witnesses.

On the Saturday afternoon of January 19, 1980, Ali MacGraw called me up to wish Al and me a happy life together. Ali at one point offered to design my wedding dress.

When I shared with Ali that my live-in boyfriend of long ago was planning to get married the weekend after I did, she was moved to joke,

“What you should do is pull out of your wedding, and then Steve and the other one will most surely hang themselves!”

Obviously I ignored Ali’s advice!

Steve and Barbara wedding

Making Amends :

After Steve and Barbara were married, Mario received a call from Steve. Would he come to Santa Paula?

Mario agreed unhesitatingly. Steve had tracked him down while The Hunter had been filming on the Paramount lot. They had had lunch together and it was then Steve first told Mario he hadn’t been feeling well.

It was ten years after Le Mans and Mario was doing quite nicely. He was writing screenplays now and was at present working for Stanley Kramer. Steve seriously suggested Mario write a script about flying. Steve said he’d star and Mario could produce. Mario loved the idea, but he also knew the man too well. Steve could change his mind by the time Mario walked out the door.

Steve had started methodically to say his goodbyes while he still had the strength and while he still looked good.

When Mario came to Santa Paula, Steve had wasted no time. He took Mario aside and without warning and almost without emotion sat him down gently and said, “Mario, I don’t think I’m going to make it.”

Mario had seen the tabloids and had heard the rumors. He had also seen the way Steve looked. Not great, but not bad either. And so he had refused to believe any of it until this very moment as Steve stood there telling him what was in store for him.

Mario said he wanted to run to hug Steve! To make it all go away! But he sat there rooted to his chair, unable to utter a word. Unable even to lift his arm to push himself up from the chair

Steve was bidding the kid (who was now almost thirty years old) farewell. He hadn’t treated him well a long time ago and he wanted to make amends. Steve continued, “Is everything all right between you and me? You’re not mad at me anymore, are you, kid?”

With enormous force, Mario pushed off from the chair and gave Steve a hug. “No, Steve. I was only mad at you for a little bit. But I put it all aside many years ago.”

And for Mario, that was his last glimpse of Steve.

McQueen with his assistant, Mario Iscovich (second from left)

Elmer Valentine was part-owner and manager of a new club called the Roxy, on the Sunset Strip. One afternoon Steve showed up to talk to Elmer. As it had with Mario,

Le Mans had put the whammy on that friendship, too. Steve claimed that Elmer had left him abruptly to manage his business affairs at the Whisky a Go-Go. Since then, they’d phoned each other here and there and shared an occasional lunch, but that’s all.

This afternoon, Steve had come bursting into the Roxy to make sure Elmer didn’t believe any of those ludicrous rumors. They told each other jokes and laughed together as in the old days. Steve said he couldn’t stay long, as he had a few errands to do. “But I’ll call you real soon. We’ll break some bread together.”

As they said good-bye, Elmer put his arms around Steve and immediately perceived Steve was indeed a very sick man. “He felt so thin under all that layered clothing. It just wasn’t the same Steve and I knew, man. I knew.”

Bud Ekins and Steve went to Boston to look at a collection of antique motorcycles. During the flight Bud could see Steve wasn’t feeling up to par. He also saw a Steve who would get lost in thought and would seem depressed for short periods. He’d snap out of it as soon as Bud said something, but then off he’d go again to that place where no one was allowed

In Boston, Steve bought $65,000 worth of antique motorcycles. Bud said they were the kind one would kill for. On the flight back to L.A., Steve had said he would leave Bud his entire motorcycle collection if anything were to happen to him. But had replied, “Don’t be ridiculous, Steve. Leave them to your kids. I certainly wouldn’t do the same for you!” The two friends laughed and Steve had agreed with Bud.

However, as a compromise, Steve had told Bud, “I’ll tell you what; in case of anything, I want you to pick out a couple for yourself.” As a result, Bud wound up with the two best motorcycles in the entire collection.

As Steve would have wished

To be Continued...

Thanks OP. The most interesting tidbit was that Sharon Tate dined at Danny Kaye's house!

R37 People born in the 1930s are not baby boomers.

They aren't members of the "greatest generation" either, so I don't know what you would call them.

I am a baby boomer and Neile Adams is my mother's age.

r103, see r47. :-)

Did Ali and Ryan O'Neal hook up on Love Story?

It just hit me as I looked at the photos of Barbara Minty that she looked very much like DL fave Kendall Jenner. She was a pretty successful model in the late 70s.

[quote]After Steve and Barbara were married, Mario received a call from Steve. Would he come to Santa Paula?

Boy, they do a lot of schlepping around.

I was right, this isn't NEARLY as amusing as the Ali book which was pure GOLD.

Thank you so much, OP!

I want to know about dreamy Oscar winner Max Schell's cock.

He sounds like a complete cunt. He was cute for a few years in the sixties though.

In Hawaii, 1964

Testing the new Indian motorcycle with daughter Terry and friend Juliet Mills.

One early evening Steve called and my husband Al answered the phone. Steve had recently taken one of his first cross-country flights from Santa Paula to Santa Monica in an antique Stearman biplane, and he was still feeling proud of the accomplishment.

This discussion went on to be the longest conversation the two ever had, and Steve confided to Al that the unrelenting back pains at night found him sleeping on the floor to get some relief. Sometimes he’d have Chad pound on his back to help loosen the congestion plaguing him.

Sometime during this talk the subject of the tabloid stories and the cancer rumors had come up. (Al is too smart a man not to have detected what was going on even though I had kept the real nature of Steve’s illness to myself.) It was the first time Al had heard any bitterness coming from Steve.

“Suppose it’s true? Just suppose? Why do I have to do anything? Doesn’t a man have a right to die any way he wants?”

Al thought Steve’s attitude and control were profound and noble and touching, and he wanted very much to help this man in any way he could—this man who was the father of my children and who my husband knew meant a great deal to me.

Al agreed with Steve. “Yes, he does have a right to handle it any way he wants. But, just supposing, if he knew he was dying and if he had a chance to help influence his children, what would he want done?”Steve sighed audibly. This was exactly what had been troubling him

. “I’m not sure. I think they’ll both be O.K., but I’m a bit concerned about Chad. I think he’ll have tougher problems than Terry.” Steve said

Al tried to ease his mind. “I will watch out for both of them. I can see they’re both fine kids and you’re proud of them both.”

“I am.”

So there it was. The unspoken had been spoken. There was no doubt left in Al’s mind that Steve was dying. And as if to break the solemnity of the moment, Steve said, “Sorry about getting married before you did!”

“No sweat. It caused me no problems at all! Take care of yourself, Steve. When you’re feeling better, you can show me what a Stearman can really do.”

“Yeah. You’ll show me!” They laughed and said their good-byes.

when I’d talk to him and he’d be excited and looking forward to a plan he had just made, I had to summon all the strength I had in order to be just as enthused as he was about his plans.

He was excited about a trip he had promised Barbara. Steve’s favorite show on the tube was The Love Boat. He never failed to watch the damn thing, Barbara was doing a modeling assignment in Acapulco sometime in early May, and Steve thought going on one of the Princess cruises would be great.

He went about outfitting himself at J.C. Penney’s, which he had nicknamed “Jacques Penay.” He chose Bermuda shorts (never had he worn those), shirts that matched, and picked out all the leisure suit outfits he thought he would need. For good measure, he also threw in a straw hat and white deck shoes for himself. It had been an absolute joy for him to go from rack to rack unrecognized and undisturbed. He said Jacques Penay was all he had hoped it would be. Something out of his childhood in the midwest

A month before his departure for Acapulco on the Princess cruise, the papers had carried a picture of Steve and Barbara at a press screening of Tom Horn. The picture showed a very changed Steve. His face was gaunt and his eyes just weren’t the same. Even his smile was different.

And so when he called me after they arrived back from Mexico with the news that he had contracted the turistas over there, I was afraid to ask him a question but I did anyway, hoping against hope.

“Did you lose any weight?”

“Yeah, baby. I’m afraid I did. Twenty pounds’ worth.”

Oh, God, here it starts, I thought. Only three years ago it was my mother and Steve had gone to New York to comfort her, unaware he was already a marked man. And now his turn had come.

The death sentence had been handed down and it was irreversible

Steve’s odyssey for a cure for his terminal illness began almost as soon as the news had been delivered to him. He found a doctor in the San Fernando Valley who convinced him that several weeks of intravenous feeding of mega-doses of vitamins and a new diet might possibly retard the progress of the disease. These were administered in a camper Steve rented, on a parking lot just outside the doctor’s medical offices.

After the end of the treatment, which was sometime in July, Steve went back to Cedars for a blood test and transfusion. There he received the news that the treatments, which had been painful, had been for naught. There was no improvement. In fact, in order to make him feel comfortable, his abdomen had to be drained.

Terry called regularly with information regarding her father’s health Steve refused to give up. After he checked out of the hospital he and Barbara vanished. And so did my daughter.

Their departure had been so sudden that even Chad had no idea where they were. Several days later, Terry called to say they were in Mexico.

Steve had found another doctor, who was into alternative methods of curing cancer. Terry said Steve had checked into a clinic on Rosarito Beach and had investigated the doctor (a dentist whose license to practice had been suspended) and his methods thoroughly and had decided to “go for it.” Steve felt he had no choice. His own doctors held no hope for him, while these doctors were giving him hope. For a lot of cash on the line.

Terry now began a routine. She drove down to Mexico on Thursdays, stayed through the weekend to keep her father company, then drove home on Mondays. During the week Steve had her doing errands for him he couldn’t handle while in Mexico.

Every now and then when the coast was clear—that is, no photographers lurking about—he would go into town for ice cream and other junk foods.

The tabloids were relentless. As soon as they found out where Steve was, they went to incredible lengths to get pictures of him, which by now would have revealed a desperately sick man. When I was there they even had a helicopter flying overhead in the hopes of catching Steve walking around. One of the guards told me that one tabloid had offered $50,000 for pictures of Steve. If that story is true, I give those guards enormous credit. The temptation had to be tremendous. tttt

Sensing the end was coming closer, I notified Bill Maher that Steve was dying. The very next day Bill called to tell me Steve had sent a note asking him please to come and see him. The meeting between the two men had been a very emotional one. Bill had had no inkling of Steve’s condition and had been appalled at Steve’s physical appearance. It was a new Steve who asked that bygones be bygones and it was the old Bill who accepted Steve’s apology without hesitation.

WHEN THE CALL came for us to come to Mexico, we were ready.

Terry was in Los Angeles running errands (picking up money, picking up medicine). The cash Terry was picking up was necessary for Steve to have since everything at the clinic was cash on delivery.

Barbara, on this day, was in Los Angeles. She had checked in at the L’Hermitage for a change of scenery. Steve, although sick and weak, was still feisty and ornery, as always. My daughter had told me there were many times when Steve would tell Barbara to leave the room. Terry attributed it to nothing more than a sick person’s irrationality. I think Barbara did too, but I’m sure it was hard to take at times. Especially when she was there all the time and was so easy to pick on.

I wonder if he could have lived a little longer had he not gone to Mexico. Maybe not. Who knows? I’m convinced the treatment did nothing for him at all except cause him to bear unnecessary pain. And, of course, it gave him hope.

The “clinic” wouldn’t (or couldn’t) prescribe painkilling drugs to him. They were said to be “incompatible” with the treatment. To ease the pain, morphine would have been offered to him, I’m certain. It must have been frustrating to him not to be allowed his beloved pot, just when he needed it most. tttt

I somehow wish he’d opted for interferon. It was an experimental drug and the culture done by his U.S. doctors to test the possible effectiveness of the drug showed very positive signs. The drug seemed to be compatible with his form of cancer. However, in order for interferon to be administered, three conditions had to be agreed to.

One: He would have to stop all other treatments. It was the only way doctors could tell whether the drug was working. Two: He would have to go to a Texas clinic for six weeks to be monitored. And Three: The medication would cost Steve $900,000 for a six-week supply. But he was one of the few people who could have afforded it.

It certainly doesn’t matter now. Steve refused to give up the Mexican treatment. He wanted them both. Unfortunately, in a cruel twist of fate, the unconventional treatment he had put his faith in even robbed him of his dignity

“I’ve sure learned how to be humble, baby” Steve said

The treatment, as far as I could see, consisted of several daily coffee enemas, tremendous amounts of vitamin and mineral pills, freshly squeezed juices, body shampoos, image therapy, and a revolting concoction of raw liver, chopped and blended with either apple juice or pineapple juice, which Steve drank every day.

I remember the nurse gleefully saying she was planning to take movies while Steve drank the mixture because “he looks so cute and makes such funny faces.” Chad and I had looked at each other in astonishment at the lack of taste and sensitivity this woman had exhibited. I shudder at the thought that somewhere there could be 8mm prints of Steve in that clinic at Rosarito Beach.

It was impossible to ask too many questions at the clinic. I could only observe. Steve had chosen this place and I couldn’t show my disapproval, no matter what my opinions or my observations were.

And at that, the conversations were limited to ten to fifteen minutes at a time. He would either tire and fall asleep or a treatment would have to be administered by the nurse. I was struck by the vacant and pained look in his eyes. It was obvious he was suffering greatly;

Terry told me one day the pain had been so great that Steve, out of despair, had picked up a table and had thrown it against the glass door. tttt

Had Steve gone into cardiac arrest he might have been mercifully spared the pain he valiantly endured each day. I was told by a nurse this clinic had no equipment for any sort of emergency. Nor was there a laboratory or any X-ray equipment. The clinic offered only its own concept of health food care and hope.

Steve, like my mother before him, vacillated between denial and acceptance of what lay ahead. “Can you believe this? Me, of all people. The doctors in town gave me no hope at all, you know. And here ... why, I’m actually feeling better. Praise the Lord. They say I’m gonna make it.”

His raspy voice, the shortness of breath, and the tumors that were visible on his body gave lie to that opinion. I was glad he had his newfound religion to hang on to.

Before I left the room after that first conversation, he had grabbed my arm and had pulled me toward him. “Frankly, I think they’re all full of shit! I’m not gonna make it! If it weren’t for the kids I would have given up a long time ago!”

The hoarseness of his voice and the weakness of his body couldn’t hide the anger he felt as he said those words. And then just as suddenly we were back to the accepting person. “But I’ve made my peace with the Lord.” And again, “Praise the Lord.”

Throughout the day we talked, anytime it was possible for him. When he slept, Chad and I went for short walks. And then we’d talk again. There was so much ground to cover.

Ali, who had been sending notes to Steve all along without getting a response in return, was desperate to see Steve. I again asked him to see her. She had, after all, spent five years of her life with him—four of them married to him. His answer to my request had been, “It’ll make her feel better, but it’s not going to make me feel better.”

I never understood the deep hostility he felt toward Ali. Most especially at this time, when he was so heavily involved with religion that he carried a Bible everywhere he went. Even when dying, he still couldn’t find it in his heart to see this woman who had once loved him. And all she wanted was to tell him she would always be there for either of his children if she was ever needed

One incident occurred in Mexico that absolutely chilled my heart. I felt as if I had suddenly gone mad.

Chad and I were coming round the bend toward Steve’s bungalow (it was nap time inside and Chad and I went for some fresh air) when we saw Steve’s truck come to a stop right in front. There were two women in it. Chad identified the woman driving as Judy, the caretaker’s wife at the Santa Paula ranch; he didn’t recognize the other woman

As they jumped out of the truck we quickened our steps and were directly behind them as they entered Steve’s bungalow. I heard the unidentified one excitedly say to the nurse that her agent had booked her for another engagement later on in the evening. “It’s imperative I see Steve right now!” she said.

Obviously this was no stranger. But my mind couldn’t decipher it all. Not on the instant. The words “agent” and “booked” threw me in this somber atmosphere. Was this woman an actress? What would she be doing here? Could she be an entertainer? A singer, perhaps? Maybe Steve wanted some live entertainment after being shut off from the rest of the world. That wouldn’t be too farfetched—not for Steve. Hell! Why not?

Then under my breath I said, “Holy Moses, the actors’ strike must be over!” This insane bit of logic continued for a few more seconds. And then, as I again focused on the woman—whom I now surmised to be a nurse moonlighting as an entertainer or vice versa—the conversation between her and the nurse penetrated and began making sense. I realized, much to my dismay, the woman was in fact a “healer.”

There to do her special brand of magic on Steve.

Where she came from or who found her is a matter of conjecture. Her flip show-biz attitude and her “let’s hurry up, I’m booked at another place” comment nauseated me.

I stood there thinking silently as I surveyed the beautiful and peaceful scene around me, with my son standing next to me. Life is so strange, I thought. A few years ago, when this very same place was a hotel welcoming travelers, I stayed here for a weekend trying to heal the wounds after the final split. Now here I am again. Only this time this place is a clinic welcoming travelers who are outward bound, and Steve is among them.

I had to calm down so as not to upset Chad any more than he was. Chad was in a bewildered state. He had clung to the hope that somehow Dad would beat this dread disease. He believed with all his heart his father was indestructible. But after our arrival in the morning, when he had seen his father through the window looking frail and with eyes sunken in, logic would no longer let him deny the inevitability of the ending.

I longed to spare my children the pain awaiting them. Steve was making plans for all of us to spend Christmas in Sun Valley. Terry, Chad, Steve, Barbara, Al, and me. The new log cabin had just been completed and Steve wanted to roast marshmallows in the open fire.

I wanted Chad to face the possibility Steve wouldn’t be with us come Thanksgiving. I wanted him to see that Steve’s dream for Christmas with all of us together was, in a way, the hope he was buying in this place in Mexico.

It was only a year ago that Steve’s sentences became peppered with “Praise the Lord”—much to my amusement, at the time. The first time I heard him utter the phrase, my reaction was to laugh and ask, “I beg your pardon?” When he told me he was going to church one morning, my reaction had been the same. His response had been to change the subject.

He embraced this new religion with a fervor. He and Barbara attended church every Sunday, and the first time he insisted Chad join them, the devilish kid couldn’t wait to get out and call me.

“Get ready, Mom. The next time you see Dad, he’ll have a plastic Jesus sitting on his dashboard!”

We had made fun of him, I think, because he had shown no signs of having flown into a calmer and happier space. He was still the same Steve—rebellious and troubled and cocky.

Chad was forced to take flying lessons and forced to go to church or “he’d have thrown me out of the house!”

On the days Chad and Steve went to church, the first thing Steve would reach for in the truck, afterwards, was a joint, and then they’d stop and pick up two six-packs of beer before heading home. Chad has said, “I was generally cross-eyed on those Sunday mornings!”

Terry was never forced to do anything. His independent daughter had a mind of her own, and she was the only one who dared say “no” when she felt like it. Over the phone she would hang up on him when he became abusive. He admired her tremendously for that.

As we approached Steve’s bungalow on our left, I caught sight of Steve coming toward us from the right. He was surrounded by the healer, the nurse, and one of the clinic’s doctors. Steve told me, rather proudly, that with the help of the healer, he had been able to surmount his weakness long enough to take a swim in the pool.

We stood there talking for a bit while the healer handed me a brochure proclaiming the wonders of her art.

Steve was obviously tired and in pain. I tried to help him back into the bungalow but he refused any help. He was determined to make it back on his own steam. And he did.

Before he went to bed and just as I was leaving, he said two things to me. “Would you bake me a chocolate cake for tomorrow? Bill Maher is coming to see me. He can bring it down.” I felt as if I were being asked by a very sick child.

And the other was his way of asking me to forgive him for the pain he had caused me a long, long time ago.

In a hoarse voice and in between spasms of pain, he whispered in his own primitively poetic way, “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep my pecker in my pants, baby. I never loved anyone more than I loved you. And that’s the truth.”

The Oscar winning actor she fucked was Maximilian Schell.

The one thing I had been able to accomplish in Mexico was the prevention of the complete exploitation of Steve McQueen. It was a minor victory, but a victory nonetheless.

During the course of a conversation Steve and I had had on the porch of his bungalow, he had explained the reasons why he felt he should permit Life, Time, and Newsweek magazines to photograph him. “I think I should hold a press conference with my doctors here from the clinic. I want to help them spread the word. So what if I look like a broken man? My spirit is whole. The fact is, I’m alive and they’ve helped me. I owe them that. People should know about this place.”

He told me the doctors running the clinic were pressing him to do this on the premise that it would help countless people who might otherwise be stuck with the conventional American treatment.

I had looked at him with horror. A press conference! It was insanity! In his present state it hadn’t occurred to him to make sure there was real merit to the treatment before influencing others to come to Mexico. “My God, Steve. Please. I beg of you. Don’t let anyone con you into holding a press conference now. Wait till you get well. Then hold all the press conferences you want and parade around as much as you want. And above all, don’t let anyone photograph you now. If you get well, you’ll regret those pictures and if you don’t, why not leave the world and your fans with the memory of the Steve McQueen they know! Don’t you think that’ll be kinder to everyone, including the children?”

That had reached him. He looked about him, his dull blue eyes darting back and forth. Slowly he said, “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

“What about your biography? Did you and Chuck [Charles Champlin] ever get together?”

“No.” He shook his head regretfully. “Bill [Maher] and his agent had a couple of meetings, but I couldn’t hack it no more. I was just too tired.”

Steve was very fond of Chuck Champlin. He admired him and respected him and wanted very much for Chuck to write an “as told to” type of biography. I’m sorry it never came to pass. Chuck would have done him justice. tttt

Bill Maher?! Thanks, OP. xoxox

Steve dry humping Duke Wayne.

Shortly after our visit in Mexico I was stunned to hear Steve’s voice on the radio praising and congratulating his doctors at the clinic for helping in his recovery from cancer. His shortness of breath was even more pronounced as the microphone amplified the sound. But the doctors were quick to explain that “Steve was just too close to the microphone.”

I just prayed Steve had refused to be photographed.

He had.

Around October 22, 1980, Terry called me to tell me that Dad was coming home. He was expected the following day. But the following day turned into a day later and another day later and one more day later. He had stopped at a hospital in Tijuana that had all the modern equipment for detecting cancer. He was given a CAT scan and the news was dire. There was cancer in places they never even thought of.

Knowing him as well as I did, his journey home by car could mean only one thing. Steve was coming home to die. By car, he could see and savor his beloved California one last time. Why else would he elect to come home by car? The bumps and jolts had to be painful.

Barbara told me she had driven slowly and had stopped when the pain had proved unbearable to Steve.

By Saturday they were safely home in Santa Paula.

On Sunday, Terry, Chad, and I went to the ranch. Steve was sequestered in the bedroom with one nurse standing guard just outside the room and another in the kitchen.

Before leaving the ranch to go into town to pick up some supplies, Barbara gave me the news that Steve was now being urged by the clinic doctors in charge of his case to go to another clinic in Juárez to have the tumors in his neck and his stomach removed.

I was horrified because I had consulted with our doctors here and I knew there was no way Steve would survive much longer, no matter how strong his heart. There was no pulmonary function to support his system. But I could do nothing, legally or otherwise. I suspect, neither could Barbara. Steve still had his faculties and the decision would be his. There was nothing to do but wait.

While the kids busied themselves about the ranch, I snuck around the back of the house and climbed the stairs that led to the porch and Steve’s bedroom. I tried the French door and to my surprise it was unlocked. I moved ever so gently so as not to startle Steve in case he awoke.

I had seen him lying in bed with a blue T-shirt and nothing else and had correctly assumed he was asleep. The overhead fan was gently whirring. I stood at the foot of the brass bed and watched this emaciated man who had once been so strong and handsome. Except for his heavy breathing and the softly turning fan, everything was still inside this room.

It smelled of ... death. tttt I must have been standing there for fifteen minutes before he opened his eyes. It took him a minute to focus on who I was “Is that you, Nellie?” His voice was barely audible.

“Yes, it’s me, honey.”

He smiled. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Oh ... I’ll always be around.”

“God, I’m so tired.”

“Go to sleep, honey. I’ll see you later.”

I left as quietly as I had come in.

The irony of the day hadn’t escaped me. It was November 2. On this day we would have been married for twenty-four years, had we been kinder to each other. And this day, I knew for certain, would be the last day I would ever see Steve alive.

On Monday, Steve had decided to go ahead with the operation in Juárez. Why Juárez? As usual, everything was done in secrecy and on the spur of the moment. But, as usual, as soon as Steve reached his decision, there was no stopping him. This time what probably had gone through his mind was the inevitability of his death. (Let’s do it now and make me comfortable, if that’s at all possible. If I don’t make it, then I don’t. I’m not gonna, anyway.)

Evangelist Billy Graham, at Steve’s request, had gone to the ranch to see him and spent about three hours with him, praying with him and talking of spiritual matters.

By late afternoon, Steve was ready to depart for Juárez in the rented Lear jet with his clinic doctor and the two nurses to submit to the unorthodox operation.

Barbara drove to Juárez by herself. Chad arrived at the hospital on Tuesday evening, and Terry arrived on Wednesday morning. The insistence on absolute secrecy had thrown everybody into a state of conspiracy.

It was the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. Barbara had completely forgotten to inform Terry where her father had been taken to. My daughter was hysterical until Steve’s office finally tracked Barbara down.

Barbara sent word back to Terry that she would be calling within the hour, “but only if she promises not to get mad at me.” My God, I thought. It’s as if they’re children!

Steve and Chad had the same blood type. So it was left to Chad to give his father the blood he so badly needed. Chad was told to eat steaks before he was transfused. At one point Steve had asked, “Does it hurt, son?”

Sometime Wednesday afternoon, Steve informed the children that as soon as he recovered from this operation, he intended to go to Germany to try a new treatment. He wanted both Terry and Chad to go with him.

The following morning, Thursday, November 6, both children, incredibly, in their effort to be closer to their father, watched the entire operation.

The vigil had begun. tttt

I went about my business during the day waiting for the phone to bring me the bad news..... And then, in the middle of the night, the jarring sound of the telephone ringing awoke us. It was around four o’clock in the morning, and as Al handed me the phone, I held on tightly to his hand. “Hello?”

It was my daughter. Her voice was steady although it was obvious she had been crying.

“Mom ... Dad’s dead.

I called Ali as soon as I was able to pull myself together. I had made it a point to inform Ali all through those last weeks of Steve’s rapidly deteriorating state. I knew how sad she felt over the alienation from Steve. I felt strongly that she deserved to feel a part of all of us.....

We arrived at the ranch in Santa Paula a half hour before Terry, Chad, and Barbara arrived from Juárez. Chad couldn’t sit still. He wanted to walk around the ranch and obviously needed someone to talk to. Al went outside with him while I stayed inside the house with Terry and Barbara, listening to these two young people make the funeral arrangements

Chad, in the meantime, as he walked around the grounds of the ranch with Al, was reliving what had gone on the last few hours in Juárez.

“After the operation, when we were told Dad was responding well, we all went back to the hotel.”

Then sometime in the middle of the night, Terry, whose room was right next to Barbara’s, heard the phone ring. She jumped out of bed, opened the door, and waited to see whether Barbara would open her door. As soon as Terry saw her, she knew what the news was. Barbara then went to Chad’s room to wake him up. Chad refused to believe the news.

“I want to see for myself.”

With that, Chad woke Grady up and asked him to take him to the hospital. Grady was the ranch hand at Santa Paula and had arrived the day before to be of whatever help he could.

When Chad reached his father’s room at the Santa Rosa Clinic, he didn’t know what he’d find, but he knew he wanted to be alone in there

The room was dark and he groped for the light switch. When the light came on, he saw Steve still in his bed and his eyes were open. He thought, How blue they are! as he closed them gently with his fingertips

He noticed Steve was clutching the Bible Billy Graham had given him.

“And then I felt his hands and they felt cold. Then I felt his feet. They, too, were cold. And then, you know? I touched his heart. And his heart was still warm. I was surprised. I leaned over and kissed his heart and then said, ‘So long, Pop. I love you.’”

The funeral service itself was short, simple, and beautiful. It was held in the garden of the land he loved so much. Al held Ali’s trembling hand on one side and my hand on the other. We were crying openly and copiously.

Barbara stood in an Indian cloth dress with cowboy boots and stoically held herself together. She didn’t show any emotion. I thought it was admirable and strange at the same time.

Terry felt faint and went inside the house. Chad stood there with tears streaming down his face.

Many of Steve’s friends from long ago wanted to come but hadn’t been invited—people like Jim Garner, George Peppard, Bob Culp. Elmer Valentine and Bud Ekins were the only familiar faces. The rest were strangers to me.

Before our divorce, Steve had said to me, “‘When I die, I want you to have my body cremated, have a big memorial service for me with all of my buddies, and I want you to have my motorcycle in that church at the altar to represent me. Then I want everybody to have a big party!” That had been a while ago, and his friends and acquaintances had changed drastically in the last two years.

The most touching tribute to Steve that day was the “fly-by.” Several planes in a cross formation flew overhead immediately after the pastor’s final words as a farewell to Steve from his flying buddies at Santa Paula.

Earlier in the day, Ali and Barbara finally met. They had never set eyes on each other until then.

When the time came to say good-bye to my children and Barbara, I kept thinking how Steve used to say, “Life is a scam, baby.” In the end, the greatest scam had been perpetrated on him in Mexico. He had unknowingly and bravely brought it about in his quest and fight for hope and life

They put out a press release that said he died of a heart attack. Technically, perhaps. But there’s no question he died of cancer.

There are few good ones in Hollywood. Rock Hudson was a lovely man. Steve McQueen was not.

Heterosexuals. For the most part lead such depraved lives.

Wow! Another Steve McQueen book I won't have to buy. Post the rest of it, OP!

Thank you OP. I really enjoyed reading this.

He's abusive, and he also seems really stupid. Cunning and relentlessly self-obsessed, but also stupid. This is the guy women flocked to because he was hot, and they told themselves he was authentic. A guy who bought jeans in bulk, had them bleached by a movie studio and then tailored to him. Vain beyond belief. Obsessed with his looks. Everything about his cool image was contrived.

I never found him attractive. I don't think I've seen one Steve McQueen movie. I've read that he was photogenic because his head was perfectly shaped - that's what I read. That he had a perfectly shaped head and his body was well-proportioned. It just seems to me that a few otherwise intelligent women hooked up with him and kept projecting complication onto him and never caught on he was dumb. Dumb and violent.

When a man holds a gun to your head shouldn't that be a deal breaker?

Was he packin'?

I was a teen around that time and saw The Graduate but never bothered to see Bullitt. The Getaway was a bomb, as I recall. He had done a TV western, "Wanted: Dead or Alive," when I was a kid and he seemed trapped in that milieu. Honestly, Newman, Hoffman and Redford were far cooler. I had no idea he was a sociopath and am surprised he was so vain about his looks. He had an interesting face but had a bunch of moles and was far from an Adonis. He was short, too. IMDB lists his height as 5'10", which is Hollywood for 5'5".

I can't comprehend why all these women catered to this asshole. Pre-feminism, I guess. Or maybe he was their meal ticket.

He was a real good, old-fashioned, classic asshole. The staple ingredient in most hetero relationships. Hot or ugly, rich or poor, feminist or no- most women get pushed around by brutes like this. I don't think most people even come close to knowing what their own mothers go through right under their noses because it's the woman's job to absorb and cover up all the ugly in a relationship. Things aren't any better now than they were in the '70's. Thank providence there are a few redeeming coins in famewhoring and writing tell-alls. Seedy and insightful! Thanks OP!

Both McQueen and Dunaway looked their best in "The Thomas Crown Affair".

Natalie Wood :

When Steve and Natalie Wood starred together in Love with the Proper Stranger, Natalie developed a crush on Steve, perhaps because she and Warren Beatty were already on very shaky grounds. Warren was extraordinarily handsome and rather shy. Maybe it was a pose to disarm unsuspecting females. I can’t presume. But I liked him. He had a way of talking to a woman that made her feel desirable, as if she were the only female around. His concentration is intense, if brief, and it’s a tough combination to ward off.

Natalie tried every which way to ensnare Steve short of using a butterfly net, including resorting to adolescent tricks like sticking her leg out of her trailer steps, pretending she was talking to someone inside just as Steve would pass by. It gave her an opportunity to “chat.” Steve was amused by the methods she employed and actually looked forward to the next day’s shoot to see what her next move would be.

But he resisted her advances for two reasons (at least during this period; after he and I split up he succumbed to Natalie’s charms, but that was years later). She had been married to a man he was fond of, Bob Wagner, and she was at present living with another man he liked, Warren Beatty. I doubt the fact that Steve was married to me even entered his mind. Marriage had nothing to do with it. I was his old lady and that was that.

I not only heard about Natalie’s exploits from Steve, but also from other persons I knew who were working on the picture. I found these stories annoying as hell! She was going after Steve in such a blatant way....

In September 1964 France’s premiere of Love with a Proper Stranger , with the two stars in attendance. Natalie apparently arrived at our hotel the day before the premiere. Alone. Gone was Warren Beatty.

We had already enjoyed several days of celebration in Paris and we were riding high. Natalie called a few hours before we were to leave for the theater. She asked Steve if she could ride along with us. Steve didn’t commit to an answer as he wanted to discuss it with me. I felt fate had dropped opportunity in my lap and I seized it. Sweetly, I reminded him that at the moment he was the most popular person in Paris. Neither press nor public could get enough of him and they watched his every move. “Naturally your co-star would want to come with us. Otherwise she would miss out on all that publicity,” I said. “But it’s up to you, honey. Let’s do whatever you want. It makes no never-mind to me.”

He thought a minute and then said, “Yep, you’re right. I’ll tell her we’re going someplace beforehand and we’ll meet her there.”

Natalie was smart enough to detect what was going on and directed her driver to alert her the moment we appeared in the lobby. As I glanced back, I saw Natalie hurriedly get into her limousine. I nudged Steve. As soon as he saw what was happening he yelled to our driver, “Vite, let’s go!” A wild chase scene ensued, but we managed to arrive at the theater a good three or four minutes ahead of Natalie. Those minutes were crucial. The press descended on us as soon as our car appeared and were making a great fuss over us while Natalie Wood’s arrival went unnoticed.

Natalie was annoyed over the incident, as well she should have been, and complained to Stan Kamen. Being the gentleman that he is, Stan passed this information on to me so I could bring it up to Steve so he could make amends to Natalie. Over my dead body, I thought.......

We gave our first big “Hollywood Party” in August of 1964. We invited everyone we knew.......Among our guests were Lois and Jim Garner , Tuesday Weld, George Hamilton, the Kirk Douglases, and Sharon Tate (still lovey-dovey with Jay Sebring). Janet Leigh ,Eva Marie Saint....

For some reason, I can vividly remember Natalie Wood’s shoes although I cannot remember whom she came with. Probably her sister Lana. Natalie had clear plastic wedgy “spring-a-lators” with what looked like live guppies in her heels. I had to smile at that as I thought, Well, she was never one of our snappy dressers.

I'm just still stuck on the fact that there was no "there, there" with McQueen other than the obvious - abusive, a sociopath, and stupid. Barbara Minty seems the only one who is the proper speed - probably as dumb as he is. But Neile McQueen went through fifteen years believing there was a connection when it was simply manipulative abuser bullshit, and Ali MacGraw STILL dreams they could have had a soul to soul conversation about everything they went through. Meantime I bet this guy could barely read - not because of education, but he lacked the capacity. The story about him fretting over billing is a good one - his inability to process the options was just flat out stupidity.

He must have had some primal thing going on in bed. If he were a dud in bed, no way these women could have kept up the fantasy that he was all that. I could see rationalizing that he's deep, complex, tortured, but not going years putting up with bad sex and projecting that it's good sex. With MacGraw and with Adams, it seems like they were addicted to him physically and then pretended it was something else.

In MacGraw's book, she talked about how being with him made her feel desirable or the most desirable woman in the world, and he was the most desirable man in the world. Setting aside how silly these ideas were, what makes these women WANT that? I want the most desirable man IN THE WORLD. I want to feel like I'm the most desirable woman IN THE WORLD. Since they were movie stars, they meant that literally. They believed it. It's so ridiculous in grown people.

To be continued....

Neile Adams (born Ruby Salvador; July 10, 1932 in Manila, Philippines) is a Filipino-American actress, singer and dancer who made more than 20 appearances in films and television series between 1952 and 1991.

Look at Natalie Wood up there with her hand inside Steve MacQueen's shirt.

So was Sharon Tate still with Jay Sebring after her marriage to Polanski? Sebring was murdered along with her while Polanski was out of town.

LOL at Natalie Wood's shoes. She'd die if she knew Neile MacQueen said she was never a snappy dresser. After she died her sister Lana said that there were so many clothes you could have filled an entire house with them. Wood looked fabulous at the Oscars with Beatty, but too many other times she was very try hard. I think she's exquisite looking but I think she wore that heavy eyeliner even to bed.

who was the Cassanova

Maximilian Schell was the Cassanova.

There's more than a little something sick about Steve MacQueen's unending obsession over Neile MacQueen's cheating. It comes off that he is an irredeemably violent man who needed an excuse to beat the shit out of his wife, and the affair gave him the excuse. I don't think he was jealous or obsessed with her infidelity. It seems that he was simply violent, didn't struggle to hard to control his violence, and her infidelity liberated him to abuse her and just fully indulge himself in that pattern of abuse/reconciliation. He was a sick fuck. Amazing they went to counseling and the counselors recommended separation instead of legal action or a protection order.

IT WAS JUNE of 1976....I was to meet with Steve at noon in the suite he kept at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Alone. For the very first time since our divorce in 1972.... As he led me into the suite... we exchanged self-conscious small talk to level out the uneasiness we felt being in each other’s presence once again.

I began to feel uneasy, but I was determined to play it cool. He was now married to Ali MacGraw and I was involved with somebody else on a more or less impermanent basis. However, we had never been out of touch with each other for longer than a few days at a time, although our conversations centered mostly around our children.

Now, in this quiet room, my uneasiness shifted to controlled hysteria as he leaned over to speak. He looked at me intensely God, let this be a good meeting. Don’t let it get out of hand. I wanted more than anything finally to lay to rest the pain and sorrow we had inflicted on each other.

He started speaking—very slowly—which was sometimes an ominous sign. (Steve when wounded reacted like an animal in the jungle. He would become still as his eyes fixed on his prey, and then he’d pounce without warning.) I was on my guard.

“I never expected you to file for divorce,” he said. “Why did you do that?”

I was speechless. Words refused to form in my mouth. Then he continued, “I never expected you to connect with somebody else so soon ... I wish you had given me time. I needed that time ... I needed it, goddamn it! I couldn’t cope with ... things as easily as other men!”

I sensed the anger rising in him and almost by reflex I started checking out the exits and the telephones. Oh God ! Is this going to start all over again after all these years?? How did I allow myself to get in this situation? I should have known better! If he goes berserk it’s going to be all over the papers!

But to my surprise and relief he continued talking and revealed to me for the very first time that he wished I had stayed at the Oakmont house until he was able to exorcise the demons that had plagued him.

It was wishful thinking on his part. I had tried to wait him out, but God, his behavior had made it humiliating and impossible. For me, a clean break had been the only answer. I had to get my life back in order and my self-esteem back, or I would have been lost.

He studied me for what seemed a long while then asked if he could hold me. I slipped into his arms ever so gently. And then he asked, “Do you suppose we could try again?”When I didn’t answer he blurted out, “Christ! What the fuck did I do?”

I don’t remember how long I slept, but when I opened my eyes, I panicked before I realized I was still in the Don Quixote Suite. With him. I turned my head and saw the familiar face still sleeping. I reached for a cigarette, lit it, and stared at the man who had given me so much happiness and so much pain. I still loved him with all my heart. And I expected I always would. But there was a difference this time around. I knew I was no longer in love with him, and somehow I felt stronger for that knowledge.

This much I was certain of: I could never again be a complacent partner. I was now wiser and I had also rediscovered my strength. He, on the other hand, seemed to be more troubled than ever before. The spirit that had personified Steve was gone. This man who had radiated magic had let his physical being crumble. He looked unkempt and his body had ballooned to un-movie star proportions. The intensive amount of time spent with his psychiatrist seemed to have been for naught.So what, then? What kind of relationship are we to develop here?

I knew instinctively that the only successful kind of relationship I could have with him was to be his friend. And if we tumbled into bed occasionally, well, that was all right, too. Then I was assured of having the best of him without having to contend with the worst of him.

I checked my watch and slid silently out of bed and left him a note that simply said, “I love you.” I dressed, left the suite

Once in a while, Steve would solicit my advice on other matters. I guess habits, once established—especially when my tastes and judgments had proved right in the past—never die. One of those matters concerned a new movie that had been offered him called The Towering Inferno.

He had been offered the leading role of the architect, but he wasn’t too keen on the part. He was more intrigued by the role of the fire chief that had been penciled in for Ernest Borgnine.

“But it’s a smaller part,” he said.

“Smaller, how? Are you saying it’s a cameo role?”

“No, no. But he doesn’t come in until halfway through the film. What do you think about that?”I

f Steve was considering a smaller role I knew the part had to be of heroic proportions. So, what was being asked of me was a little reassurance. A little stroking, as he used to say. Every once in a while he needed that from me. I suppose because I had been there for him since the beginning and he knew that, no matter what, I could be counted on to support him

Candice Bergen :

Steve’s love interest in The Sand Pebbles was the ever-beautiful nineteen-year-old Candice Bergen.

My first impression of Candy was that of a Jewish American Princess stranded in a strange land with strange people. I remarked to Steve how very pretty she was and that I found her to be very shy and so young underneath all her seeming bravado.

“And horny,” Steve said. I wasn’t sure I heard him right.

“Say that again?”

“She’s horny, I said,” Steve repeated.

I looked at him and shook my head in exasperation. “For you, I suppose?”

“No, in general, is what I’m sayin’,” said my all-knowing master.

Poor Candy Bergen, I thought. Those guys who are here without their wives are going to be hitting on her. But Candy was smart. Much smarter and much more of an intellectual than I had initially given her credit for.

From what I observed she wasn’t particularly keen on socializing with the cast of ruffians. Instead she became friendly with the very gentle Sheila and Dickie Attenborough, who were more on her wavelength.

Candice Bergen Talks About Steve McQueen :

".....No sooner would I return than Steve McQueen would take off on his motorcycle, while the insurance representative blanched, or jump onto the back of a passing water buffalo and get bucked off in the mud. And the crew would settle down to wait again.

Steve was friendly during the shooting, inviting me to dinner in the house rented for him with his wife, Neile, and kids; advising me-in a well-meant attempt to get me to "loosen up"-that what I really needed was to "get it on" with some of his buddies.

His buddies were hardly my idea of heaven: he'd arrived in Taiwan with a commando unit of six stunt men, none under six feet and all ex-Marines. They were like his personal honor guard, and when he moved, they jumped. Hard- drinking, hard-fighting - as time on the island ticked by,

McQueen and his gang grew increasingly restless and often spent nights on the prowl, roaming the little city, drinking, heckling, picking fights and pummeling.

Coiled, combustible, Steve was like a caged animal. Daring, reckless, charming, compelling; it was difficult to relax around him-and probably unwise-for, like a big wildcat, he was handsome and hypnotic, powerful and unpredictable, and could turn on you in a flash.

McQueen aseemed to trust no one and tried constantly to test the loyalty of those around him, to trap them in betrayal. Yet for one so often menacing, he had a surprising, even stunning, sweetness, a winning vulnerability.

But he seemed to live by the laws of the jungle and to have contempt for those laid down by man. He reminded me of one of the great outlaws, a romantic renegade; an outcast uneasy in his skin who finds himself with sudden fame and fortune. One had the sense that it came too late and mattered little in the end. And that he tried to find truth and comfort in a world where he knew he didn't belong.

R144, Meet R122.

I am not quite sure if the excerpt at R146 means that they continued as fuckbuddies after divorce. It seems so.

Faye Dunaway :

Steve’s leading lady was the terrific Faye Dunaway (Steve called her Fade Gone-away at first) Having come off the very successful Bonnie and Clyde, Faye was the hottest actress around. The teaming was an electric one. Faye’s clothes were sumptuous and her hair and makeup were perfect. Steve, playing the self-made Boston millionaire, was fabulously outfitted. And the creative Jay Sebring decided to lighten Steve’s blond hair, thereby accentuating that great head for the camera. I don’t think Steve or Faye had ever looked as good as they did in Thomas Crown.....

On the first day of rehearsing Thomas Crown Steve arrived on the set totally unprepared for Faye Dunaway’s brand of professionalism.

She already had her character and her dialogue nailed down. He came home that evening awed by Faye, who had come to work “so ready, so prepared that she threw everything at me but the kitchen sink! I couldn’t believe it!” Steve said

As soon as dinner was over he and I spent the next few hours on the script memorizing his lines. Norman Jewison was not going to see him again lagging behind his less experienced co-star

....There was that dune buggy sequence filmed on the sand dunes of Cape Cod. My admiration for Faye Dunaway tripled the day she gamely lowered herself into that buggy and took off with Steve at the wheel. It took a whole day to film this rampage but Faye managed to keep on smiling despite the skids and the spins into the surf. Take after take .....

James Garner :

One morning Jim Garner called from L.A. with some aggravating news. As soon as I was assured that nothing had happened to our house (he was, after all, our next-door neighbor), I handed the phone to Steve. I sensed something was very wrong and when he bid Jim good-bye Steve stared straight ahead, not saying anything. I waited patiently for him to collect his thoughts.

Then slowly and deliberately he said, “That fucker. He’s just signed to do Grand Prix! Wanted to tell me himself before I read about it or heard it from somebody else. How about that? You see, baby, you just cannot trust anybody in this business.”

“Honey, come on now, be reasonable,” I pleaded. “I hate to tell you this, but you’re overreacting. Look. You were asked to do the picture, but you didn’t want to. Jim is an actor. You cannot begrudge him for accepting a part that somebody’s going to do. I mean, it could have been Paul Newman or Jim Coburn just as easily. Obviously the producers have to go for a big name. They’re not dummies. They’re not going to hand the picture to some unknown just because these stars are your friends! Honey, you do see what I mean, don’t you?”

He did see, but he didn’t like it. It was two years before Steve would speak to Jim, although even then he really never felt the same way about the man again.

Steve pouted and felt he had been betrayed and that was that. I felt bad because we had shared so many good times with the Garners.

For instance, just before we left for Taiwan, Paul Newman, Jim, and Steve and I went to the races at Riverside. On our way home, the man became annoyed because I had insisted on stopping at the next service station restroom. They had hoped to beat the traffic home. When they did stop I discovered to my dismay that there was a long line of women ahead of me. Unable to stand the delay any longer, I came up with a brilliant idea. I said to the girls standing there. “Hey, do you know there’s a car full of movie stars around the bend?”

“Who?” they cried in unison.

“Why, there’s Steve McQueen, there’s Paul Newman, and there’s James Garner!”

The girls looked at each other and ran like crazy, leaving me in sole possession of the facilities. I never did tell the fellas how a swarm of females suddenly discovered them

James Garner on Steve McQueen (From Garner Files - A Memoir) :

"In the middle of the Great Escape shoot, McQueen walked out of the picture. He’d seen about an hour’s worth of dailies and didn’t like how he looked. Wanted to reshoot the whole thing. Of course, they couldn’t reshoot that much footage—it would have taken too long and cost too much money. Steve’s agents flew in from the States and had a showdown with Sturges.

The next day Sturges called me in and said, “Jim, McQueen’s out and you’re the star of the picture. We’ll change a few things here and there. It’ll work.”

I didn’t see how it could possibly work, and neither did Jimmy Coburn, so the two of us sat down with Steve at my rented house in Munich and asked him what the problem was.

“I don’t like the part. I’m not the hero. And the stuff they have me doing is corny.”

“Well, Steve, the reason you’re not the hero is because it’s an ensemble cast. There are a lot of heroes.”

Steve could be a stubborn little cuss, but Jimmy and I finally convinced him to stay on the picture. To pacify him, Sturges added some motorcycle stunts and changed his character,

There were no Americans in the actual escape; they’d all been transferred to other camps before the tunnel was finished. And there never was a motorcycle chase, but I think it’s the most exciting and memorable part of the movie. When people think of The Great Escape, they think of Steve on that motorcycle

The bike was actually a 1961 Triumph 650 painted green and dressed with Nazi insignia, including swastikas. Steve did most of the driving, including the part of a German soldier chasing him, but not the now famous leap over the barbed wire barricade at the Swiss border. The insurance company wouldn’t allow it, and Sturges didn’t want to risk injury to Steve, so the racer and stunt driver Bud Ekins made the jump

Steve went nuts over there. He was always getting into scrapes. When he wasn’t working, he’d race that motorcycle with the swastikas on it all over Munich just to annoy the Germans. And people would yell. He also totaled a Mercedes Gullwing. Stuck it right into the pine trees. The police finally set up a roadblock and nailed him. They put him in jail for a few hours and took his driver’s license away.

Hilts was a great character and Steve did a good job. He had a persona he brought to every role, and people loved it, which is fine, but you could always see him acting. That’s the kiss of death as far as I’m concerned.

Someone once asked me if Steve was “trouble.” Steve was trouble if you invited him for breakfast. He didn’t like anything. Like Brando, he could be a pain in the ass on the set. Unlike Brando, he wasn’t an actor. He was a movie star, a poser who cultivated the image of a macho man.

Steve wasn’t a bad guy; I think he was just insecure. His wife Neile told me that he’d coveted the turtleneck sweater I wore in the picture. If I’d known that, I’d have given him the damn thing.

Neile said that Steve had always been envious of tall, dark men, and that he was jealous because she and I had known each other during the Broadway years, when she was in Kismet and I was in Caine Mutiny. Though Neile and I were only casual acquaintances, Steve was convinced, she said, that we’d had an affair.

Yet Steve and I were good friends for a long time, probably because we had a couple of things in common besides acting. We both liked cars, and we raced together in the Baja 1000. We were also next-door neighbors.

Steve and Neile had a unique house in the hills above Los Angeles. It was built like a castle, out of stone, with turrets and secret passageways. Lois and I were there one day and noticed the property next door. It was a good-size piece of ground and we could see the potential. I told Steve, “I think I’ll try to buy that,” and he was all for it. We wound up building our dream house there.

As neighbors, Steve and I hung out a lot. We’d tinker in the garage and ride our motorcycles on a nearby fire trail. After The Great Escape, we both brought Mini Coopers back from Europe and we’d race them up and down our street. There were big speed bumps, so we’d shoot down either side, just a few inches from parked cars.

One thing Steve and I didn’t have in common was our politics, because Steve was a Republican. The only saving grace was that he somehow made Nixon’s enemies list, an honor I would have given anything to have achieved.

Steve liked to lob his empty beer cans into my backyard. Claimed he couldn’t resist because it was always so neat, with the flowers trimmed and no newspapers lying around. He thought I didn’t know it was him. That was Steve.

Deep down, he was just a wild kid. I think he thought of me as an older brother, and I guess I thought of him as a younger brother. A delinquent younger brother.

Late in 1965, I heard that John Frankenheimer was about to direct a big-budget, CinemaScope feature about Formula One racing. I’d done a series of small films and felt I needed an “epic,” so I had my agent get the script. I didn’t know that Steve McQueen had already been signed for the part

As it happened, Steve couldn’t get along with the producer, Ed Lewis, so he backed out of the picture, flew to Taiwan to make The Sand Pebbles instead, and I got the part, even though Frankenheimer had wanted an unknown to play Pete Aron. I think he was looking for someone he could control. He had worked a lot with Burt Lancaster, and Burt always had an opinion, so Frankenheimer didn’t want anyone with an opinion. But both Ed Lewis and the studio wanted me, and they overruled Frankenheimer.

Just to be nice, I called Steve to tell him. When I said, “Steve, I’m gonna do Grand Prix,” there was about a twenty-five-dollar silence.

He finally wished me luck, and I didn’t think any more about it. But Steve wouldn’t talk to me for a long time afterward. He eventually made his own racing picture, originally called The Champions, directed by John Sturges. It came out in 1971, retitled Le Mans. Years later, Steve’s wife, Neile, said he resented me for taking the part, even though he’d already turned it down

Did this guy have any redeeming qualities?

I guess he was a decent father, when he wasn't busy beating up his wife.

Continued from James Garner' Memoir :

Steve McQueen and Bud Ekins, who’d done the motorcycle jump for Steve in The Great Escape, drove the Vic Hickey–designed Baja Boot, a four-wheel-drive vehicle custom-made by GM. Steve was a good driver, but nobody else was as good as he was, according to him.

He was competitive with me, but it wasn’t mutual. I’d go through a checkpoint and they’d say, “McQueen just came through and wanted to know where you were.” I didn’t give a damn where he was.

On the way to the Baja one year, McQueen, Cliff Coleman, and I flew from LA to Nogales, Mexico. As soon as we got off the plane, the local police arrested us, herded us into a room, and made us take off all our clothes.

That’s right: strip-searched in a Mexican jail!

There we were, lined up with our backs against the wall, side-by-side, buck naked. It was a humbling experience in more ways than one: not only was it demeaning to stand there bare-ass next to your peers (more or less), it was also deflating that the policemen, most of whom were snickering at us, didn’t seem to know or care that Steve and I were movie stars.

They kept us locked up for a few hours and then let us go without explanation or apology

Steve McQueen, James Garner on passenger seat

Garner was so much more handsome, and likeable.

I couldn't ever jerk off to himthough, too much like my father.

Women go nuts for tough guys who can also be sweet and vulnerable at times.

They both sound like insufferable cunts. He was a shallow, vain, insecure thug. She was an enabling, passive aggressive, willing victim. They kind of deserved each other.

As much as I hate to admit to such weak behavior, I concur with R160. There is something about bad boys with an inner tender side which is like catnip to many women. Especially women who are highly desired by men yet do not have a great deal of self esteem.

You feel like you are somewhat deserving of the tough guy behavior, and when they switch into teddy bear mode you melt like a popsicle in the sunshine and forgive them for their asshole-ishness. Women like that(me) are never attracted to men who treat them well. It's a sickness, and one that even years of therapy could not change. Having said that, Steve McQueen just isn't that appealing to me, but he could be very charming and handsome as seen in The Thomas Crown Affair.

Thanks for your honesty, R162.

R149 "Steve was like a caged animal. Daring, reckless, charming, compelling; it was difficult to relax around him-and probably unwise-for, like a big wildcat, he was handsome and hypnotic, powerful and unpredictable, and could turn on you in a flash.."

I think this quote from Candice Bergen sums up the other women' opinion/view about McQueen

R162 claimed to be a gay man on another thread.

from Mary Wilson's 1990 autobiography, "Supreme Faith" :

"Hollywood offered many more opportunities to meet men, and I'm not ashamed to admit that by the 1970s, I was definitely husband hunting.

I was at a Hollywood party when across the room I spotted actor Steve McQueen. After sneaking a few glances Steve's way, I was certain he was looking at me too. Someone introduced us, and we hit it off from the start.

He had undeniable charisma. Like many movie stars, Steve was interested in and intrigued by people from the music business. Despite Steve's reputation for being wild, he was very, very quiet and didn't like being around too many people. He was very gentle, sensitive, and could spend hours talking about anything: animals, comic books, the music business, or weighty philosophical issues.

He could be very childlike and sweet. We usually met at his house in Malibu, where we smoked grass on the beach.

Steve kept our relationship a secret. It was more an intense friendship than an affair, but there was a physical side to it. He called me his "exotic doll".

Steve with Barbara Minty - 1978

Barbara Minty (McQueen' 3rd wife) interview about Steve :

how did you meet Steve in July 1977?

Nina Blanchard, my modeling agent in Los Angeles, called me in Idaho and said, “I want you to fly to Los Angeles to meet the star of The Towering Inferno. He’s thinking about casting you for a part as an Indian princess in his new movie."....So I went to Los Angeles, thinking I was meeting Paul Newman because I didn’t know who Steve McQueen was.When I met him at the Wilshire, in walks this grungy looking guy. I thought, “That sure doesn’t look like Paul Newman to me,” and so I finally figured out who he was. Like all the stories say, I fell absolutely in love with him. It was like, “Whoa, someone sent me a present!” I didn’t talk during the entire two-hour meeting, but it was very clear there was an attraction.

Was Steve a driven individual when you first met him?

I got Steve at a very good time, the last three-and-a-half years of his life. He was never mellow, but he was probably mellower than what I’ve heard about him.

When he decided to fly, he was sitting down one day reading his trade-a-plane magazine, and before you could even blink, he calls up and buys an airplane. A couple of weeks later, he has an instructor, and we’re living in an airplane hangar in Santa Paula. Steve thought it was great when I told him I wanted to fly. He immediately went out and bought me an airplane. I was like, well, honey, I don’t need an airplane, I just want to learn how to fly.

It pissed Steve off to no end when we went down to take our flight test, and I was the one who came away with a license. I had never set foot in the cockpit of an airplane, I passed the first time, and I only missed three or four questions at the most. Steve took it three times, and he passed on the fourth. He only passed because the flight guy behind the counter gave Steve a cheat sheet for a few minutes. Steve was so mad at me that I had to leave and go outside and wait for him to finish.

Talk about Steve’s sense of humor a bit?

Steve was very funny with a dry sense of humor. He didn’t have a comedic sense of humor, but he liked to get you. I remember, one day we were fighting like cats and dogs. I’m not one to back down; we were screaming and yelling, so I ran into the bathroom and locked myself in. I could hear him banging on the door, still screaming, although he would never lay a hand on me or anything like that. He just enjoyed our verbal arguments. I thought, “Alright, I’ve got him, I’m going to crawl out the bathroom window, because he’ll never find me, and I can go hide in the chicken coop.”

I was almost all the way out the window, my foot was about to hit the ground, when Steve grabbed me from behind, around my waist, and yelled “Gotcha!” We just ended up rolling around on the ground, laughing, because I got busted crawling out the window, so that’s the kind of sense of humor he had.

Is it true that Steve got a perm during the zenith of disco fever in early 1978?

Steve came home one day with a perm in his hair at the beginning of our relationship when we were living in Malibu. Oh my god, everybody laughed at him. Steve’s son Chad and I were rolling on the floor because it was funny. I got the tail end of the — pardon my French — the movie star bulls — t with him. I found it very hilarious and humorous.

Did Steve exhibit any chauvinism?

Steve was a sweetheart underneath all of it, but he was old fashioned and liked to be the man. If there was a big bad situation, it was always nice to have him there, since there wasn’t much he couldn’t handle.

As sweet as he was, Steve could have a very menacing outward appearance and personality. Those eyes could become quite cold, and let’s just say, I wouldn’t want to mess with him.

Did Steve ever carry any money on him?

Steve always feigned broke, but he wasn’t. He’d have a couple hundred stashed in his pocket. If you were out having lunch or coffee, he never had any money, so you just had to bite the bullet and pay for him.

Steve had a special bond with children?

Yes, he was so wonderful with kids. One day we were sitting around having coffee when we read in the paper about this little kid dying of cancer. All this kid wanted to do was go to Disneyland.

The next thing you know, Steve was on the line with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and made arrangements for the trip. A big car picked up the kid’s family, and they got to spend a weekend at Disneyland. I don’t think they ever knew who did that for them, because Steve did it anonymously. That sort of thing Steve never did for the publicity, and that truly shows you Steve’s heart.

you and Steve later raised a young girl ?

I call Karen Wilson my “insta-kid.” We didn’t legally adopt her, but she was basically ours. We brought her home to Santa Paula from Chicago [Author’s Note: During location shooting for The Hunter in late 1979, the McQueens realized that Wilson’s mother wasn’t able to raise her properly]. When Steve died, I took her in, and she’s turned out pretty well. Today she’s been married for 20 years, has a nice family, and her life is good. She was very important to Steve Steve’s son,

Chad, often stayed with you guys, too.

Well, Chad lived with us, and he was a hoot. We’d fight like cats and dogs, and Steve would have to break us up. One time we got into a fight in the baked goods section of a grocery store, and we were throwing bread, muffins, and bagels at each other.

Was Steve just as friendly with animals?

Very much so, he definitely had a soft spot for animals. I had a horse that I couldn’t get into the back of a horse trailer for anything in the whole wide world. Whenever I had to haul that stupid horse, I called Steve, and he would come up and put the horse in the horse trailer for me.

Are there any nude shots?

....

Continued, Barbara Minty' interview :

Describe a typical day with Steve ?

Malibu was a lot different than the later airport/Santa Paula years. I remember the Santa Paula years, since we spent most mornings in the hangar. we just lived. We never went out to do things, but the days were so full. He’d come home sometime and say, “Okay, pack your stuff, because we’re leaving.” My job was to fetch a six-pack of Old Milwaukee and pack some clothes in the back of the pick-up.

I didn’t even ask where we were going, because I don’t think he knew half of the time, so we’d just head north. Steve was a spur of the moment guy, which was great, because he met a spur of the moment girl.

You guys had many adventurous road trips?

There was a pick-up for everyday of the week; Steve had all kinds of vehicles. It was awesome, almost like a lady going into her closet to decide what to wear that day. In this case, he would go into his garage and decide what to drive that day.

When I was still modeling and on the cover of three magazines, we were in one of the old trucks going up Interstate 5 to a swap meet in Bakersfield. A carload of girls drove up beside us and started squealing, pointing, and waving. Steve said, “Keep your head down, and don’t look at them. They’ve recognized me, so just ignore them.” I said “Oh god, I’ve got to pee in the worst way, please just pull over at the next rest stop.”

Steve wasn’t happy, and so when we pulled in, the car followed us, and the girls got out and came screaming after me into the bathroom. When I walked out of the bathroom, I was signing pieces of paper and posing for pictures with these little girls.

Steve was a bit jealous, since I was getting this attention, and his chest puffed out, and he said, “Well, I’m Steve McQueen, the actor!” One of them said, “But she’s on the cover of a magazine!” They didn’t care or know who he was, because he had a beard and long hair. Even so, they still wouldn’t have known who he was, because they didn’t come from that era that grew up with Steve. Every once in awhile, if Steve didn’t get what he wanted, he’d let them know he was Steve McQueen.

Did you meet many famous people while you were with your husband?

I didn’t meet a lot of people, or if I did, I don’t remember really meeting them. I wanted to socialize a bit more, but Steve was jealous. He liked his women with him by his side.

Keith Moon

Steve shot out Keith’s window one night.. The drummer wasn’t there, but he had this light that shone through our bedroom window. Steve called first and no one answered, so Steve mumbled a few choice words.

Steve finally got fed up, fetched his gun out from under the bed and blew the window out. There were sparks and glass flying, and I thought his house was going to burn down. Turned out nobody was home, no alarm went off, and no people came out. We waited for a little bit to make sure the house wouldn’t catch fire. But that’s the last time that light turned on in that bathroom. I never got a chance to meet Keith, but I’ve heard some wonderfully crazy stories about him. He probably would have scared me to death.

Lee Majors

Lee Majors was a friend of Steve’s and I really liked him. He was a regular guy and always wanted to bring his wife, Farrah Fawcett, to the house. I said, “Nope, you do, and I’m leaving.” She was so gorgeous and a big star that I was completely intimidated. Steve asked, “Why, she’s so nice?” I later talked to her on the phone, and she was the most wonderful person in the world. I told her, “You’re so beautiful and cool, I just can’t meet you.” There was nothing wrong with her, I was just terrified.

Steve and Lee hung out a lot, and I snapped a lot of great photos of them when Lee visited us in Santa Paula in May 1979, when Steve soloed the Stearman for the first time. Lee remains a good friend to this day.

James Garner

James Garner came to the door one time, and I was so shocked to see him. I loved The Rockford Files, and so there he was, standing at our front door. He asked, “Is Steve here?” I replied, “Mr. Rockford, hold on a minute.” I called to Steve, and those two got a good laugh out of that since I couldn’t remember his real name.

What was funny about that incident was that I looked pretty young for my age, wore short shorts and long, almost knee-high socks. I’m almost sure Garner thought I was some high school chick that Steve had secretly stashed away [laughs].

Peter Fonda

I met Peter Fonda a couple of times through Steve, too. Fonda is sort of an enigma. I don’t even know what to think of him, but he’s always been good to me. He’s one of those people that I look at and say “Wow!”

One time he and his wife, Becky, came over for breakfast in Malibu, and Steve asked me to cook them two eggs. Well, I’m not a great cook by any stretch of the imagination, and my eggs didn’t look very tasty judging by the look on Peter and Becky’s faces.

Steve didn’t want my feelings hurt, so he gave them a look that said, “You’d better eat my ol’ lady’s eggs.” He was serious, but it’s funny to look back and laugh.

Paul McCartney

I truly wanted to meet Paul McCartney, and one day Steve said he was coming to our house, along with Lee Eastman, Linda McCartney’s brother. Eastman was an attorney who represented both Steve and Paul. I was so excited to meet Paul that I was literally bouncing off the walls.

I was a first generation Beatles fan and was about 10 years old when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. I’ve been a fan ever since. Because I was so giddy over the fact that Paul McCartney was coming to our house, it got nipped in the bud real fast, due to Steve’s apparent jealousy. I was furious.

[quote] Are there any nude shots?

Funny how I was expecting Barbara Minty to answer.

When you first met McQueen, he had recently completed An Enemy of the People. Have you watched the film?

I’ve never seen An Enemy of the People. I refuse to watch his movies today, because it’s such a heartbreaking, painful experience. All I know is it was an Ibsen play, it was trouble for everybody, and it tanked at the box office.

I know he wanted to do the film, but I don’t know why. He never mentioned that to me, and we never really discussed his film career. Because I was so young when I married Steve, I didn’t want to pry into his business. Now that I’m older, I wish I would have asked a lot more questions

Tom Horn was your first film shoot with Steve. How do you remember that experience?

I’ve never sat down and watched Tom Horn. But I was there, and the film was just the best adventure and my absolute favorite experience. But god, it was cold.

Would Steve often go over the script with you?

I remember sitting in the trailer at night and Steve would throw a script at me. He’d say, “Here, read the other part,” and when he read his part, I’d laugh at him. I’d answer, “Good god, you’re horrible.” Steve often retorted, “Shut up and just read it please!”

Now I understand Steve was memorizing the lines. He wasn’t putting any emotion into it. He was dyslexic, so he didn’t read very well, and he went over and over that script. We laughed and giggled, I teased him, and it was just a good, fun time for us.

What are your memories of being on the set of The Hunter, Steve’s final film?

The Hunter was not as much fun; it was more of a “city” movie. I don’t know where or why the thought came over me, but I had the distinct feeling that this was going to be Steve’s last picture.

Were you guys really in the Chicago ghetto?

Absolutely, and I’d never been exposed to the real slums before that experience. It was interesting. I knew Steve always had my back, so I didn’t have to worry about anything bad. They had us downtown in a nice little hotel, and this is where the goodness of Steve’s heart came out.

Steve realized the crew was staying in a stinky, old, horrible Holiday Inn. So, of course we had to move there and endure those conditions. I completely understood where he was coming from, though. Steve always viewed the crew as part of his family. He worked when they worked, ate when they ate, and slept when they slept.

During the making of The Hunter, Steve’s generosity rose to the forefront.

One time Steve saw some local kids throwing a football stuffed with rags. He dispatched [stuntman] Loren Janes to a sporting goods store. Before you could blink, hundreds of baseballs, footballs, mitts, and bats were left in a large recreational field.

Although he had practically stopped giving autographs a decade before, Steve freely handed out several thousand signed 8 x 10 glossies. When Steve discovered that a local Catholic church was in need, he wrote a check covering all expenses.

Before he handed over the check, he stopped by to see the film’s producer, Mort Engleberg, and said, “Mort, this is what I’m giving to the church. I’d like you to match it.”

What was it like being married to Steve McQueen?

It’s very strange when people mention, ‘Oh, you were married to Steve McQueen, He was such a normal guy and unlike most Hollywood stars that I often say, ‘I could have just as easily been married to a plumber or electrician.

Steve was so sweet to me because he didn’t like me working. I worked a little bit here and there until I finally said, “Hey, I’ve got to make a living. I’ve got bills to pay.” From that day forward I never had another bill to pay. Steve, however, did have a grocery list on the counter, expecting me to cook. I don’t cook, and he wisely hired a little old lady to cook for us.

Every time we got into a fight, he would bring a kitten home. When he passed away, I had thirteen cats that I drug up to Idaho with me. Altogether, we had thirteen fights the whole time we were together. That’s not bad considering we were together for three-and-a-half years.

If Steve was still with us, what would he be doing today?

To tell you the truth, Steve hung out with me for the longest time. I’m a firm believer in spirits or ghosts. I guess when he figured I had regained my footing, he left me to my own devices. But he still checks on me every now and then. I think Steve gets a better giggle out of me more than anything else.

This is complete speculation, but I think he would have done age-appropriate movies that meant something to the world. McQueen couldn’t always play the sexy, shoot ’em up, bang-bang cop or cowboy. I don’t think he would have worked that often, but he liked the paychecks that came from the movie industry.

How did you pick up the pieces after Steve’s passing?

Actually, I don’t know what I did. You do what you do to emotionally get by and try to forget the pain. I began traveling, and I tried to learn to fly again, but my heart wasn’t in it.

It was a longer healing process than I probably would care to admit. To be honest, I’m still not over it. There are times when I’m cool and everything’s fine, but then all of a sudden, one day something will hit me in the face like a brick. I have to sit down and regroup. Thirty five years later, it’s still incredibly painful to talk about, but I know I am healing.

R165 That is a bald faced lie. I have never claimed to be anyone I am not. What in the name of god would be the purpose of such on an anonymous board?

I used ignore -dar just now on myself in an attempt to see what I might have written which could possibly have been misinterpreted by you.

I could find nothing whatsoever which even referred to my gender or my sexual orientation. Nada, zip bupkus.

Please inform us to why you would type something so patently false? People here who ignore-dar everyone in order to categorize them as Trump hater, Trumpkin, rich, poor, male or female intrigue me. I have never felt the urge to delve into the psyche of other posters in that manner, so I am curious as to why you did so.

In the late 70s, I worked in an intensive care unit at a Midwest hospital. A nurse was hired who had relocated from L.A. and had worked at Cedars Sinai. She told us that Steve McQueen was deathly ill and was dying of lung cancer. None of us could believe it because there hadn't been one word of it in the press. She told us he'd been going to Mexico to take laetrile treatments, which were completely worthless.

Okay, weird question, but who actually typed in 100 excerpt from the book?

How bizarre. And what's with all the 'tttt's after every other sentence?

"They aren't members of the "greatest generation" either, so I don't know what you would call them"

They're called The Silent Generation." Said nothing, did nothing. Thank you R103 for corecting that dumb ass R37 on the Baby Boomer question, thought at the beginning it was 1946 - 1959. 1960-64 had nowhere to go so they were later added in.

"Steve’s favorite show on the tube was The Love Boat. He never failed to watch the damn thing"

I wonder what Steve thought of that crap "Love American Style"!

"He must have had some primal thing going on in bed. If he were a dud in bed, no way these women could have kept up the fantasy that he was all that."

Um, don't think so. Do not underestimate the power of celebrity, especially movie star celebrity. Nothing else required.