Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [96]
And a young Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, gave it only two and a half stars out of four, calling it “possibly the most under-plotted, underwritten, over-photographed film of the year. Which is not to say it isn’t great to look at. It is.”
Nonetheless, everywhere it played, people pushed each other out of the way to buy tickets. Made on what was then considered a hefty budget of approximately $5 million, The Thomas Crown Affair wound up grossing $14 million in its initial domestic release, a lot of money in 1968 dollars. It was enough to place Steve third on the list of the highest-drawing actors that year.1
Everyone was happy with the financial results, including Norman Jewison, who was thrilled by the film’s success but in private told one associate, “I can’t honestly say Steve was the most difficult person I ever worked with because the rewards were so great. But of all the actors I’ve worked with, he was the most alone.”
STEVE NEVER liked to work in the summer, and this year was no exception. He spent more and more time alone in the Palm Springs house, using as an excuse his desire to help the Navajo Indians by giving them clothing, food, and medical supplies. He almost always left Neile behind during these trips, as if the Palm Springs residence was intended only for him, to unwind and relax in solitude, while she took care of the children and the house in Brentwood. Only he wasn’t exactly alone out there, and it didn’t take much time to accomplish his voluntary obligations. All of his L.A. friends knew what he was really doing when he went to Palm Springs. One described Steve’s place as “an upscale whore-house for a permanent clientele of one.” It was also the perfect place for him to indulge in his favorite drug, high-quality peyote, which he could easily get from his Navajo friends.
The desert wasn’t all fun and games for Steve, and occasionally he even paid some attention to his film career. That summer, while in Palm Springs, he had settled on his next film, a choice that would have been hard to predict after The Thomas Crown Affair and with Bullitt waiting in the wings. Perhaps he longed to do some real acting, rather than contributing to the kinetically driven performance in Bullitt, and on-screen romance with high-strung actresses didn’t hold a candle to the real thing for him. Romance in front of a camera always made him feel a little uneasy, whether it was for a detective magazine in his youth or a big Hollywood movie. He was a Method actor; he wanted to Method-act.
After the box office success of The Thomas Crown Affair every studio except Warner Bros. wanted to get next to Steve. Money offers flew to him like metal filings to a magnet. Everywhere he turned, more and more of them came his way.
Steve was approached by Columbia Pictures to star in a film adaptation of William Faulkner’s final novel, The Reivers, which had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize after Faulkner’s death.2 Looking to add to Solar’s bank, Steve and Relyea agreed that he should make the film. However, before the film went into production the executive in charge of the product, Gordon Stulberg, left the studio. As part of his buyout package, he was allowed to take a number of projects with him. One of them was The Reivers.
Relyea struck a three-picture, $20 million deal for Solar with CBS’s Cinema Center Films, the network’s new branch devoted to feature films. The new deal called for Steve to star in all three of the films, the key project being the one Steve had originally created Solar for, Le Mans (the new title for Day of the Champion). The other two projects were an adaptation of Whit Masterson’s novel Man on a Nylon String, which Steve had considered once before, renamed Nylon, and The Reivers. As it happened, Stulberg had landed at Cinema Center Films, and wanted Steve to honor his commitment to star in the film. After discussing it with Relyea, to keep their three-picture deal running smoothly, Steve agreed.
Meanwhile, Solar took over the old Republic Studios in Studio City, at