Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [24]
Foster’s other chores for his client involved helping the regular roundup of syndicated Hollywood columnists to “explain” Steve’s self-imposed, Village “hipster” language that he loved to use whenever he was interviewed, part of his “cool” image (largely a product of Foster’s star development program for Steve). Some of the more colorful McQueen/Foster jargon: Steve owed his success to being married to Neile, “one of the reasons I’m in successville.” As for his feelings of love for her, “She’s a swinger, man. She belts me.” When Neile brought Steve home to meet her mother, he later described it as “hatesville.” Having a discussion was “beating gums with” someone. Foster was superb at explaining what Steve “really meant.” Other times, Steve was quite adept at explaining himself. When a reporter asked him if Steve McQueen was his real name, he exploded, “Of course! What do you want me to be called? ‘Racy Danger’ or something?”
IN THE midst of Steve’s professionally coordinated drive to major stardom, Neile was thrilled to land a part in a new show that everyone involved hoped was bound for Broadway, At the Grand, a musical adaptation of Grand Hotel, co-starring the aging but still great Paul Muni. It was slated to play the Curran Theater in San Francisco for a six-week tryout, during which it fell quickly into disarray, with discord among the stars, director, producers. It quickly closed, effectively marking the end of Neile’s professional career in show business. She would, from now on, have to be content being Mrs. Steve McQueen.
Steve, meanwhile, was raking in the bucks. During breaks in his grueling TV series shooting schedule—“I get up at 5:30 in the morning to be at the studio by 6:30. I come home at 9 [at night], dog-tired”—he managed to find time to put together a collection of cars and motorcycles that would eventually total 35 antique autos and 135 bikes worth millions.4 Neile, meanwhile, decided to put her own considerable savings into what she felt was more practical use and bought a house for the two of them in the Hollywood Hills. “We can look down and see all of Los Angeles,” Steve enthusiastically told gossip columnist Louella Parsons for an article she was writing about him at the time called “A Rebel Is Anchored.” “The view is beautiful. We also killed a baby rattlesnake this morning and last week a centipede came through the wall.”
“And we can see coyotes and deer practically every day,” Neile added.
DURING REHEARSALS for At the Grand, Neile had discovered she was expecting. According to her memoir, Steve was “ecstatic” that she was now going to be “barefoot and pregnant,” corralled, as it were, while he was free to roam around Hollywood as its newest Mr. Cool. Neile made one brief appearance on The Eddie Fisher Show in November 1959, just before she began to show.
For Steve, it meant that he was now the family’s breadwinner. No problem. He was delighted that Neile was home where she belonged, with “one in the oven.” To celebrate her pregnancy Steve went out and bought another car, a black 1958 Porsche Speedster that happened to be a newer version of the same car that James Dean had been driving the day he died.
His other hobby besides his cars and motorcycles was really an old one kicked up a notch: bedding young and willing starlets and female fans. It was behavior he not only could not keep from Neile but did not want to. He made it easy for her to find out about each and