Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [19]
This pattern—Steve cheating and confessing and Neile forgiving him—would be repeated during the entire time they were married.
On their first anniversary, Neile gave Steven a gold St. Christopher medallion. On the back of it she had engraved To part is to die a little.
It was something they both believed, something that kept them together. No matter what, they were kindred souls, two kids who had grown up alone, and somehow, had miraculously found each other. Together, they believed, they could take on the whole world.
* * *
1 Rydell would go on to a successful career as a film director. Thirteen years after that night at Downey’s, he would direct McQueen in 1969’s The Reivers. In 1981 Rydell was nominated for an Oscar for Best Director for On Golden Pond.
2 Neile, perhaps choosing tact over fact, remembered their first real meeting a little differently. In an article she wrote for the March 1960 edition of TV and Movie Western Magazine, she said that “a mutual friend, actor Mark Rydell, couldn’t take it any more—he took pity on us and arranged an introduction.” Later on, in her memoir, she told the “all’s fair” version of the story.
3 Clips from this episode appeared in a 2007 episode of Shatner’s hit TV series, Boston Legal, as a flashback to the young version of Shatner’s character talking to his father, Ralph Bellamy, about the legal definition of innocence.
I like John Wayne and he’s never had an acting lesson in his life.
—STEVE MCQUEEN
NEILE’S NEXT GIG WAS HEADLINING AT THE TROPICANA hotel in Las Vegas. To get to the Nevada desert gambling mecca, she took a cross-country road trip from New York City in the Corvette with Steve and his new dog, Thor, a German shepherd he had bought for himself as a present after Studio One. They took their time, enjoyed seeing the country state by state, and arrived in Las Vegas just in time for Neile to begin rehearsals for her scheduled September opening night.
As it happened, Steve couldn’t be there for it because he had gotten a film. He sent her a congratulatory telegram, again signed “Esteban,” though this time from St. Louis, where he had gone to chase down a small role in a teen horror flick called The Blob. He hated the script when he first read it because he knew he was far too old to play the teenage lead he was up for, a privileged suburban kid with a hot rod and a “let’s go to the dance!” group of fresh-scrubbed friends who eventually have to deal with the arrival of the purply amorphous blob.
The film was produced by Jack H. Harris, a wannabe out of Philadelphia with little experience but lots of money who was looking for a way to establish himself as a player in Hollywood. To do so, he invested $150,000 of his own money and borrowed an additional $100,000 to make this little horror movie. With that kind of budget, minuscule by studio standards, big-name players were out of the question. Steve, who had no money, no prospects, and little film experience, was the actor the producer wanted for the lead, based on his live TV work and brief appearance as a tough teen in Somebody Up There Likes Me. He liked Steve’s good looks, his intensity, and the fact he was unknown, which meant he could get him for next to nothing.
To make the deal, Harris got in touch with Stan Kamen and gave him a choice: $3,000 cash up front for Steve, or no salary and 10 percent of the film’s gross profits (10 percent of every ticket sold, before any production deductions or other disbursements). Kamen took the deal to Steve, who went for the up-front cash, which he needed badly. Besides, he thought the film was so awful it probably would never open, let alone make any money. After dropping Neile off in Vegas, Steve drove to Philadelphia and reported for duty.
There was another reason, besides the cash, that Steve agreed