Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [83]
Another film that caught Steve’s eye, even though it wouldn’t be a Solar Production, was the screen version of Truman Capote’s bestseller, In Cold Blood. Director Richard Brooks was putting together the cast and had approached both Steve and Paul Newman to play the two killers, something that set Steve into enthusiastic overdrive. However, early on, Brooks decided the film should be shot in neo-documentary fashion with the leading roles played by two relative unknowns, Robert Blake and Scott Wilson.
Two for the Road, directed by Stanley Donen, was a film Donen wanted Steve for, but before it could happen, Albert Finney was cast opposite Audrey Hepburn. It was one of those that got away, a letdown to Steve who had always wanted to work with Hepburn.
Solar then acquired the rights to Man on a Nylon String, a short story that had appeared in Life, about a man who dies in front of the entire population of a town while stuck on a mountain in the Swiss Alps. It was the kind of quirky, physical story that appealed to Steve. He got as far as attaching a director, George Roy Hill, and was set to go into production when Hill pulled out to do Thoroughly Modern Millie starring Julie Andrews, and the project then died.
The previous May, while filming The Sand Pebbles, Steve had sent director George Stevens, the director of such classic films as 1953’s Shane and 1956’s Giant, a telegram asking if he would like to do a western together. Two days later Stevens sent back a telegram saying the idea sounded good and asked Steve what he was thinking about. Steve said he would be home in two weeks and was looking forward to talking about it, but the meeting never took place and there was no further communication between the two.
APRIL 10, 1967, the night of the awards, finally arrived. The ceremonies were held at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, with the reliable and always funny Bob Hope officiating.
The red carpet wasn’t yet the commercial TV pre-show phenomenon it is today, but the public still lined up by the hundreds to catch a glimpse of their favorite stars. Steve, looking radiant in a custom-fitted tuxedo and accompanied by Neile in a white gown, received one of the biggest crowd ovations, causing him to whisper to her, “Listen, in Taiwan most people don’t know who Lyndon Johnson is, but they sure as hell know who John Wayne is.” One reporter shoved a microphone in Steve’s face and asked him what he attributed his great success to. Steve turned to Neile, nodded, and said, “Right here.”
The event was broadcast live over the ABC television network but very nearly wasn’t televised at all because of a thirteen-day-old strike by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) that had sent the Academy into a panic. If the strike continued, virtually no actors could appear without crossing picket lines, something that did not happen very often in Hollywood. The strike was settled barely three hours before airtime, but the damage had been done, as dozens of those scheduled to appear were suddenly unavailable, having been “called out of town at the last minute.” Among the two biggest stars absent from the proceedings were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, who had been nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress in Mike Nichols’s groundbreaking adaptation of Edward Albee’s sensational Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Liz and Dick were in Paris and claimed they could not get away in time, she saying that Burton was afraid of flying and that he wouldn’t allow her to fly alone (her third husband, Hollywood power player Michael Todd, had been killed in a plane crash eight years earlier). No one at Warner believed them, and Bob Hope quipped that night that if Liz left Richard alone in Paris it would be like leaving Jackie Gleason locked in a delicatessen, which brought a good-natured laugh from the audience.