Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [84]
Nonetheless, except for Virginia Woolf, the night was shaping up as a battle between the Brits, with Lewis Gilbert’s Alfie and Fred Zinnemann’s A Man for All Seasons (the former shot in London and the film that introduced Michael Caine, in his third major role, to the American mainstream; the latter shot in Hollywood but with a screenplay by British writer Robert Bolt adapted from his own stage play, and a cast led by Paul Scofield). The two films, their directors, and their stars were generally regarded as the night’s front-runners. Also nominated were Norman Jewison’s comedy The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, which nobody cared about, and The Sand Pebbles, considered something of a dark horse without much of a chance of winning anything.
As the evening wore on, The Sand Pebbles kept losing every Oscar it was nominated for, as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and A Man for All Seasons battled it out. Then, near the end of the long evening, Julie Christie, in a polka-dot miniskirt, came out from behind the curtain to present the Best Actor award. In her breathy British-toned accent, she read the nominees: Alan Arkin, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming; Richard Burton, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Michael Caine, Alfie; Steve McQueen, The Sand Pebbles; Paul Scofield, A Man for All Seasons. After struggling for a bit with the envelope, she ripped it opened and read out loud the name of the winner: Paul Scofield.
The audience erupted in applause, even though Scofield was one of the many who did not show up. His co-star, Wendy Hiller, accepted for him. She stepped to the microphone and said, “There is something very special in being recognized in a country other than one’s own!”
And for Steve, there was something very unspecial about not being recognized in his own. After the ceremonies, Neile told a reporter that she was happy her husband had lost. “If he’d won, he’d have been impossible to live with,” she chirped. “Not because of a big head but because he’d be worrying how to top himself next. I prayed he wouldn’t win.”
Steve said nothing to anybody that night. Several years later he was still bitter about the loss of the only Oscar nomination he would ever receive and took a jab at Marlon Brando, who won an Oscar in 1973 for his role in The Godfather, who not only didn’t show up but had warned the Academy he wouldn’t accept the award if he won it. They gave it to him anyway (how could they not?) and, true to his word, he sent in his place a Native American woman who, instead of making a polite acceptance speech, spoke of widespread injustice to Native Americans. Not long after, Steve told Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky, “Perhaps if I had announced that I wouldn’t accept the Oscar, I might have won.”
AFTER THE awards, Steve spent most of his days working out in his home gym: “Lawyers sharpen up with law books, and astronauts train in pressure chambers, but an actor has to do it the way a prize-fighter does.… [I]n most pictures, actors have to take their shirts off, or even strip down to shorts. If you look like John Milquetoast, John Public says good-bye.” He put himself on a regimen of three extended at-home workouts a week.
And he spent his nights drinking, drugging, and womanizing with Sebring, whom he met up with at the Whiskey. On weekends, usually by Saturday afternoon, the always charming Sebring would stop at the house to cut and style Steve’s hair, carrying his ever-present soft black leather bag filled with scissors, combs, and drugs. According to Neile, more often than not, by early evening, both men were “high as kites.”
On the days he didn’t work out, he did very little. “He can sit at home for hours doing nothing,” Neile told one interviewer. “He doesn’t particularly like to read, and except for playing pool and his passion for cars and motorcycles … he really doesn’t have other pastimes.”
On one such afternoon Steve was relaxing when he was surprised by Paul Newman, who drove right up to the front door. Newman was greeted by Neile first before Steve came out of the