Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [130]
IN THE spring of 1977, Ali went to New Mexico to make Convoy and Steve stayed behind. He made a rare appearance beyond the confines of Trancas when he attended his daughter’s eighteenth-birthday party, a black-tie affair thrown by Neile at the Castle and attended by many of Steve’s friends, including Jim Coburn, the David Fosters, and the George Peppards. When asked where Ali was, Steve just said she was in Albuquerque, scouting locations for a project.
Ali later described Peckinpah’s location shoot as “a study in drugs, alcohol and insanity, and I was certainly a manic participant.” Once again Steve showed up without warning, and this time Ali, feeling safe and creatively sparking, welcomed him with open arms. What she didn’t know was that while she was away, Steve had started an affair with a twenty-eight-year-old dark-haired beauty he had “interviewed” at the Beverly Wilshire for a film that didn’t exist. Her name was Barbara Minty, and she was a gorgeous Ford model with a resemblance to a young Jackie Onassis. He was already planning to move with her up north.
He made no secret of the affair. Liz Smith, writing in her syndicated column, had these observations about Steve, Ali, and Minty: “Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw were just steeped in too much ‘togetherness.’ They had become virtual recluses.… [T]he story goes that Steve has taken an interest in a beautiful Ford model, Barbara Minty. You have seen her in the pages of Vogue or in the Cole of California [bathing suit] ads.… Steve likes dark-haired girls with bushy eyebrows … Steve is also being seen lately in the Beverly Wilshire bar with an unidentified redhead (he keeps sleep-in offices in that hotel).”
According to Minty: “I had no idea who he was when we met over lunch at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. I thought I’d be meeting Paul Newman—that was the face I’d put on the name ‘Steve McQueen’ in my mind’s eye. But with his beard and long hair, he seemed more like a beach bum than a movie star.”
CONVOY OPENED in the summer of 1978 and took in the biggest box office gross of Peckinpah’s career—nearly $50 million in its initial domestic release—and gave Ali her fourth hit movie in a row.
To celebrate the opening, Steve, Ali, and Chad went for a vacation to Paradise Valley, where they had a great time until Steve, who had been drinking a lot of beer, cornered Ali and relentlessly grilled her about what he thought he had just seen, her flirting with one of the other guests. He kept it up during the drive all the way back to Los Angeles until Ali could no longer take it and screamed at him that she wanted a divorce, scaring Chad with the force of her anger.
She meant it. Less than a month later, at her insistence, they formally separated. Steve did not try to persuade her to change her mind. Ali found a house nearby, so Josh’s schooling wouldn’t be interrupted. According to Ali, shortly after she moved into it, “I called Steve on an impulse to tell him that I thought we had made a terrible mistake. His reply sent a dagger through my heart: ‘I am not in love with you anymore. I love you, but I am not in love.’ ”
That was it for her. As soon as she hung up the phone, she alerted Mengers to get her another picture as soon as possible. She did one, then another, then some TV, and eventually mended fences with Evans.
And never married again.
Steve, meanwhile, was serious about moving