by Greg Laurie
Mel tells me now how his friendship with Steve McQueen evolved into something much deeper.
“The second time I met Steve was at a karate match,” he recalls. “He was married to Ali MacGraw. I shared my walk with Jesus Christ with him, and he didn’t mock me like some do. As I reflected over that conversation over the next few weeks, I realized there were wounds underneath. His childhood sometimes haunted him, and he had carried around this baggage for years.”
Mel knows a thing or two about childhood baggage. When he was young, he injured his leg so badly that doctors advised amputation. But in a sweet answer to fervent prayer, God saved the leg. Years later, the Lord healed Mel’s throat after ten operations failed to do the job. Mel calls himself a “walking and talking miracle” and is determined for as long as he has legs and a voice to use them for the glory of God.
“You’ve gotta keep going, and this is what I do,” he says. Mel averages close to twenty services a month at which “I get down to the nitty-gritty, and people express their pain and hurts to me.”
“I shared my walk with Jesus Christ with him, and he didn’t mock me like some do. As I reflected over that conversation over the next few weeks, I realized there were wounds underneath. His childhood sometimes haunted him, and he had carried around this baggage for years.”
That’s what happened with Steve McQueen.
Their friendship really blossomed in 1976 when Mel went trap shooting with directors Steven Spielberg and John Milius and studio head Ken Hyman in Sylmar, California. “I saw this guy walking down Little Tujunga Canyon Road, who had this huge, full beard and really long hair,” Mel says. “It was only after I saw his steel-blue eyes that I realized it was Steve.”
McQueen had never shot trap before, but Mel offered him his shotgun and invited him to give it a try. “Steve popped one after another, and we were all impressed,” recalls Mel. “He said Francis Ford Coppola wanted him to play the role that Robert Duvall eventually landed in Apocalypse Now. The offer was $1 million for two weeks’ work in the Philippines, but Steve said he passed because he didn’t want to leave the country at the time.”
When he called McQueen to tell him, Steve told him to go ahead with the film in Europe and not worry about it. They’d work together again, he said, “down the road.” Neither knew at the time, of course, that McQueen was running out of road.
When McQueen finally decided on his own to return to work, he requested Mel’s services on the set of Tom Horn after firing a couple of actors who couldn’t handle the dialogue.
“Steve told producer Fred Weintraub to call me because he knew I didn’t drink or do drugs,” says Mel. “Fred called me at three o’clock in the afternoon and offered me the job. I asked, ‘When do I have to be on the plane?’ He said, ‘Your plane leaves at six o’clock.’ So I get there, and I didn’t get the script until the next morning. Then when I arrived on the set, they told me they wanted me to play a different part than what I was told on the phone. So I said, ‘Lord, help me here.’”
As usual, Mel didn’t require much help. He nailed his scene after a brief rehearsal, and McQueen was so delighted with his work he offered Mel a part in his next movie, The Hunter. But Mel had already accepted a part in a big-budget film in Europe in which he would get equal billing with three big stars. When he called McQueen to tell him, Steve told him to go ahead with the film in Europe and not worry about it. They’d work together again, he said, “down the road.”
Neither knew at the time, of course, that McQueen was running out of road. A week after The Hunter wrapped, Steve was diagnosed with cancer. As soon as Mel found out, he began writing letters to McQueen. The letters were filled with Scripture. Then came numerous telephone conversations about God and healing. Mel knew plenty about both. In addition to the healing of his leg and throat as a child, he had prayed for God’s healing touch of the prostate cancer.
God answered Mel’s prayer.
“I was a good encourager, and I’d uplift and edify Steve. When I would write him letters, he’d call me back and tell me, ‘That really encouraged me.’”
“When you get healed from cancer,” he says, “people call you, and they know you’ll be faithful to pray for them, as I did for Steve. They know that prayer can invade the impossible. Sometimes they get miracles; sometimes they don’t. But they know I will never give up. That’s why I’m even alive. I battle all the time.”
Mel was one of the first people to know about McQueen’s condition and one of the first to pray for him.
“When I knew he was really, really sick, I’d write letters and call him every two to three days and encourage him,” Mel says. “There’s a lot of healing passages in the Bible, like Luke 1:37 which says, ‘Nothing’s impossible for God.’ I was a good encourager, and I’d uplift and edify Steve. When I would write him letters, he’d call me back and tell me, ‘That really encouraged me.’”
The last time Mel spoke to him, Steve’s coughing fits had become so intense and prolonged Mel would need to momentarily put the phone down because it was so painful to hear. “It was this deep, horrible cough I’d first started hearing on Tom Horn, and it just got worse over time. It was haunting. It gave me the chills. Oh dear, that cough was just brutal.”
Mel’s prayerful outreach to McQueen by mail and phone continued until Steve stopped responding. Then Mel read that McQueen had gone to Mexico for cancer treatment, and figured the end was near.
It was. But this end was gloriously preceded by a new beginning.
THE VISITOR
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A few days after meeting Mel Novak at Fred Jordan Missions, I’m surprised to get an email from Barbi McQueen. When we said good-bye in Idaho, I made an open-ended offer for her to come visit Cathe and me in Orange County, see firsthand what our ministry was like, share a few meals, and generally get to know each other better.
Now that the holidays are over and her guests have all gone home, Barbi says she wouldn’t mind at all starting the new year in the California sunshine. And while she’s at it, and if I’m interested, she would be happy to show me what her and Steve’s life in Santa Paula was like.
I’m doubly thrilled. Barbi and I may appear to be polar opposites in some things, but we also have a lot in common, including a love of ’60s music and a crazy sense of humor. We’re also the same age, so there are a lot of familiar cultural touchstones Barbi, Cathe, and I share.
Barbi arrives on a Saturday in mid-January. Cathe and I pick her up at John Wayne Airport, and the two of them hit it off immediately. Cathe is instantly charmed by Barbi’s openness, and Barbi just as quickly responds to Cathe’s natural warmth and beauty. This is a very good start.
We head for El Cholo, our favorite Mexican restaurant in nearby Corona Del Mar. Hanging on the wall is a photo of a man I was blessed to befriend toward the end of his amazing life. Louis Zamperini ran in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and ran so fast in his races that Hitler himself made a point of shaking his hand.
Cathe is instantly charmed by Barbi’s openness, and Barbi just as quickly responds to Cathe’s natural warmth and beauty. This is a very good start.
Louis enlisted in the military when World War II broke out, and while flying a search and rescue plane called “The Green Hornet,” a mechanical failure forced Louis down. After forty-seven days adrift at sea, a Japanese ship spotted and picked him up. He spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner. His truly inspiring story is told in the best-selling book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and also in a film by the same name.
Louis said one of the things that kept him going in that hellhole of a POW camp where he was singled out for harrowing torture because of his Olympic fame was thinking about his favorite item on the El Cholo menu—the hallowed #1 plate, consisting of a rolled taco, cheese enchilada, and beans and rice. In honor of this great man, I order the same.
Over dinner Barbi, Cathe, and I chat away like old friends about whatever comes to mind. I make a point of not bringing up Steve. (That w
ill wait for another time.) For now we just enjoy a great meal and one another’s company.
Afterward we get Barbi settled at her hotel and tell her we’ll pick her up in the morning for church. She says she can’t wait to see me in my “element.”
And after church is over, she seems satisfied. I’m happy about this, to be sure.
By afternoon, the three of us are driving up the coast to a great seafood place. Barbi has a fondness for Dungeness crab. We grab a table on the patio with an expansive ocean view. It’s the perfect day to be outside. Gazing out at the blue Pacific, Barbi reflects somewhat wistfully, “The only thing I miss about California is the ocean. And Steve, of course.”
Afterward we get Barbi settled at her hotel and tell her we’ll pick her up in the morning for church. She says she can’t wait to see me in my “element.” And after church is over, she seems satisfied. I’m happy about this, to be sure.
It’s the first time his name has come up.
Barbi came along in McQueen’s life when he was broken. The heartache brought on by the failure of his marriage to Ali MacGraw, as well as the professional failure of An Enemy of the People (Warner Brothers refused to distribute the movie) pushed Steve to his lowest point and left his heart hanging by a thread.
Then he saw a picture of international model Barbara Minty in a Club Med advertisement and was so taken by her beauty that he contacted her agent and said she was perfect for the part of an Indian princess in Tom Horn, a movie he was contemplating making.
A meeting was set up. As Barbi recalls it, when she walked into the room at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, she got her first look at the bearded, long-haired McQueen. “To me he looked more like a San Pedro beach bum than an international movie star.”
But as they talked during the next two hours, Barbi found the actor’s gentle demeanor so appealing that after he left she announced to her agent that one day she would marry Steve McQueen. Of course her agent was astounded but, after watching them interact with each other, not totally surprised.
“To me he looked more like a San Pedro beach bum than an international movie star.”
“It clicked for me right away,” she tells Cathe and me. “And I think it did for him too. He was exactly what I’d been searching for . . . the love of my life.”
But, she adds, “My relationship with Steve wasn’t exactly flowers and chocolates in the beginning. Even though he made quite an impression in our first meeting, I was starting to have second thoughts.”
“I might as well have worn a sign around my neck that read, ‘Fresh off the farm,’” she laughs.
Those second thoughts started the day after that meeting with McQueen and her agent, when she was lying on a lounge at the hotel pool and Steve appeared, sat next to her, and “started yapping away.” In midsentence he sprang up and left. A few minutes later he returned with a couple of glasses of iced beer and said to Barbi, “Come with me for a second.”
She followed him into the men’s sauna, where he gave the attendant on duty a hefty tip and instructed him not to let anybody else inside.
“We sat down in the sauna, and Steve began asking me some very personal questions, wanting to know about me,” Barbi recalls. “Perhaps my appeal was that I was a little naïve. I was not part of the regular Hollywood scene, and he sensed I wasn’t looking for a Rolex or Porsche. Whatever I said must have passed the test because he asked me out to dinner that night. We set a time for seven o’clock.”
Still jet-lagged from her flight, Barbi was sound asleep in her room when seven o’clock rolled around, and fifteen minutes later he called to ask if she was still coming to his suite.
“Yeah, I guess so,” she groggily replied—and promptly fell asleep again as soon as the receiver hit the cradle. Steve called back at 7:30, then again at 8:00, and finally Barbi got up and dressed. She wore no makeup and put her hair into a simple ponytail. “I might as well have worn a sign around my neck that read, ‘Fresh off the farm,’” she laughs.
He was coming to the end of one life and stood on the verge of another. He just didn’t know what or who he was searching for. Not yet.
She wasn’t laughing when McQueen answered her knock on the door of suite 220. “Right behind him were two of the tallest, most beautiful blonde-haired women I had ever seen in my life,” Barbi recalls. “They were typical Hollywood chicks with tight designer jeans, gold chains, and heavy makeup. They didn’t look like they were there for choir practice.”
Barbi told McQueen she would see him another time, but he quickly ushered her inside and said the women were just leaving. They went, and Barbi and McQueen ended up having a lovely dinner in the suite—sand dab fish with little grapes.
So, obviously, Steve was still caught in his selfish, hedonistic world. Barbi had definitely caught his eye, but he was still playing the field, looking for something and someone that was, for lack of a better word, “good.” He had his share of sleazy, easy girls who wanted him as a conquest, and he was more than a willing accomplice. But things were changing for McQueen. He was coming to the end of one life and stood on the verge of another. He just didn’t know what or who he was searching for. Not yet.
She takes out her iPhone to show Cathe and me the very first picture she ever took of Steve.
When Barbi returned to Idaho, McQueen called her frequently. After she completed a modeling job in New York City, they got together in Denver. She was loading her luggage into Steve’s car when he noticed her 35-millimeter camera. She carried it with her everywhere, always loaded with film.
McQueen was notoriously camera shy. Except for maybe a dozen paparazzi shots and a few publicity stills for his movies, he hadn’t willingly let anybody photograph him for the last five years of his life.
“I like to take pictures,” Barbi told him, “and wherever I go, the camera goes. I don’t sell anything, and I won’t do anything with them. It’ll just be between you and me.”
McQueen halted, seemingly suspicious for a moment, then said, “Okay. That’s fine.”
And that’s how Barbi ended up photographically documenting their whole three-and-a-half-year relationship.
She takes out her iPhone to show Cathe and me the very first picture she ever took of Steve. The setting sun backlights him, lending an almost ethereal quality to the photo. The longhaired, thickly bearded McQueen isn’t smiling, but his expression isn’t stern either, and there is something so vulnerable and so questing in those famous blue eyes that it’s almost as if Barbi’s lens had peeked into the man’s very soul.
It’s the face of a weary wanderer looking for home.
He was getting very close.
BROAD BEACH MEMOIRS
_____
Around ten o’clock the next morning, Barbi, Cathe, and I are in the Bullitt headed for Trancas Beach, north of Malibu off the Pacific Coast Highway. Rush-hour traffic has subsided by this time, and the seventy-five-mile-drive north is effortless and relaxing.
The two women have truly bonded already. In Cathe’s presence, Barbi is open, unguarded, and engaging as she talked about her husband.
“I was twenty-six when Steve died, and he was fifty,” she says. “When I approached my own fiftieth birthday, I really sank into a deep depression. Friends threw a party for me to celebrate the occasion, but I left early, went home, locked the doors, closed the windows, and went right to bed.”
The next day, Barbi says, it was as if a veil had been lifted. She could finally look back at her three-and-a-half years with Steve without the deep anxiety she’d been feeling.
Barbi, Cathe, and I have planned a nice lunch at Neptune’s Net, a Malibu landmark on Pacific Coast Highway. Barbi and Steve came here often in the ’70s. The original restaurant was established in 1956, and the fryer and grill haven’t changed in more than fifty years. Same goes for the fare—live, fresh, and fried seafood, plus ham-burgers and tacos.
“I was twenty-six when Steve died, and he was fifty,” she says.
Barbi orders a cup
of clam chowder and Dungeness crab. Cathe orders halibut.
I’m tempted by the Dungeness crab. After all, it’s their specialty and I love it, but I’ve always felt it was too much work with too little payoff. So I go for a medley of street tacos.
The area has changed plenty since the McQueens lived here. It’s now crowded with restaurants and boutique office buildings. Old beach hideaways have been replaced by ornate modern-style homes, and traffic is bustling.
“The town at the time was very quaint and intimate,” Barbi says. “It had two gas stations, the Trancas Supermarket, and a country and western bar. That was it.”
Their immediate neighbors were Arthur E. Bartlett, owner of the Century 21 real estate empire; garment district millionaire and recording studio owner Howard Grinel; and the irrepressible Keith Moon, legendary drummer for the Who. Finding out that Moon was Steve McQueen’s next-door neighbor makes me chuckle involuntarily, and I remark, “That must have been interesting.”
“It most definitely was, Greg,” Barbi laughs.
Moon had earned the nickname “Moon the Loon” for his wild behavior, usually fueled by alcohol and drugs. He was famous for trashing hotel rooms, hanging from chandeliers, destroying plumbing fixtures with firecrackers, and driving expensive automobiles into swimming pools.
Next to Moon, McQueen was St. Francis of Assisi.
“Steve told me he once found Moon passed out on the beach after an all-night drinking binge,” says Barbi. Instead of a swimming suit, “he was dressed in a full Nazi uniform. There was no time to ask questions because he was about to be swept to sea, so Steve pulled him to safety and deposited him on his doorstep for someone else to deal with.”
“He grabbed a shotgun from under the bed, walked out to the patio, and blasted Moon’s stained-glass window,” Barbi recalls with a smile. “The blast reverberated throughout the neighborhood. Then Steve marched calmly back into the house, put the shotgun away, walked to the kitchen, and cracked open an ice-cold Old Milwaukee.” Another day in the life of Steve McQueen.