Big legend in a small town

SANTA PAULA, Calif. -- For the last 18 months of his life, acting giant Steve McQueen lived a quiet existence in Santa Paula, starting with a move into an airport hangar in spring 1979.

By then, the iconic star of such films as "Bullitt," "The Great Escape," "The Cincinnati Kid," "The Thomas Crown Affair" and other classics had largely left Hollywood behind.

The so-called "King of Cool" came to Santa Paula -- with Barbara Minty, who would become his third wife -- to fly, in his case a yellow Stearman biplane he'd purchased almost on a whim.

Santa Paula also reminded him of his hometown of Slater, Mo.

McQueen blended in, willingly embracing a more normal lifestyle, and the townsfolk for the most part kept his presence in the tiny citrus burg a little secret.

It would be a short-lived one. In December 1979, McQueen was diagnosed with lung cancer. Less than a year later, on Nov. 7, 1980, he died from complications from it at age 50 in a Mexico hospital.

Now, breaking a 27-year silence, Barbara McQueen talks about their Santa Paula days in her book "Steve McQueen: The Last Mile."

The book, released several months ago, was a harbinger of sorts for a flurry of recent activity that shows just how much McQueen's legacy persists.

Ford just reissued the Mustang Bullitt as part of the 40th anniversary of the film, known for a car-chase scene. The movie was added to the National Film Registry two weeks ago for historic preservation.

This past fall, Motor Trend magazine's Matt Stone came out with a book about McQueen's cars and motorcycles, the speed machines so strongly identified with the actor, who had a lifelong love of racing.

Sheryl Crow's 2002 hit "Steve McQueen" still resonates as background music in commercials.

"He was just a normal guy to me," Barbara McQueen said in a phone interview from her Montana home, "but he was special to a lot of people. He walked his own walk and talked his own talk."

Onscreen and to the public, Steve McQueen represented a type of no-nonsense, rough-and-tumble, take-life-by-the-throat persona.

He was anti-Establishment, an anti-hero before that term became shopworn.

"In my era, he was Mr. Cool," said director Bruce Brown, who worked with McQueen on the 1971 motorcycle film "On Any Sunday." Marlon Brando, Brown said, was like that, too.

Motor Trend Executive Editor Stone, whose book is titled "McQueen's Machines: The Cars & Bikes of a Hollywood Icon," took a stab at the actor's enduring appeal.

"He's kind of the genuine Everyman's hero," Stone said. "He was a ladies' man and a man's man. He was a legitimately macho, sexy guy. He was a great-looking guy but not a pretty-boy dilettante. Guys respected him and women dug him."

Barbara McQueen saw bits of that. An Oregon farm girl who'd gone on to grace fashion-magazine covers, she met McQueen in July 1977 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel over a fake interview for a movie part that never existed. She was roughly half his age.

She claimed she didn't care about the "movie-star stuff," and there was little of it. As she writes in the book, the McQueen she knew rode bikes, drove pickup trucks, drank Old Milwaukee beer, wore grungy clothes and favored greasy spoons over trendy L.A. restaurants. He also grew a gnarly beard.

"He looked scary," she said with a laugh in the interview. "He had that dirty-old-man-up-in-the-mountains look, but he had a heart of gold."

He could be fiery and competitive -- Barbara McQueen relates a famous "Towering Inferno" story about how he had dialogue added so he had the same number of lines as co-star Paul Newman -- but she also saw little of that.

"I got him at a really, really mellow stage in his life," she said in the interview. "He loved being a regular guy."

He did two movies in their time together, "Tom Horn" and "The Hunter." Mostly, he liked to fly and hang out, talking to people. He had favorite Mexican and Chinese restaurants in Santa Paula, and loved to go to swap meets in Ventura, she said.

She has nothing but positive things to say about Santa Paula -- "we fell in love with it and its people," she writes.

They lived first in the hangar, with a king-sized bed on the floor, a dining table and chairs nearby, and a portable TV at the end of the bed. Every morning, he'd make coffee and open the hangar door to the world -- "I must say," she writes, "it was a magnificent view."

In late 1979, they moved to a 15-acre ranch on South Mountain Road. They got married in the living room there on Jan. 16, 1980, about a month after McQueen found out he had cancer.

Barbara dwells little on his death, in either the book or this interview. "I was 26 and in love," she said simply over the phone. "It was not fair."

The book, she said, is a celebration of life.

(Contact Brett Johnson of the Ventura County Star in California at www.venturacountystar.com.)