Neile Adams, dancer and ‘aunt’ of Isabel Preysler: “There is only one great love and mine was Steve McQueen”

This petite 90-year-old dancer has come to Catalonia in search of the family of her maternal grandfather, Josep Salvador, born in Calella. But the genealogical interest of neil adams (Manila, 1932). The actor’s first wife steve mcqueenwith whom he formed, according to ‘Life’ magazine, “Hollywood’s most powerful couple” of the 60s, she is also the daughter of the landowner José Arrastia, the grandfather of Isabel Preysler. (You have to keep reading to know the intricacies).

How did you meet Steve McQueen?

It was in 1956. I was a dancer with some prestige, I was leaving rehearsal at Carnegie Hall to go to a premiere and I bumped into him. “You’re very pretty,” she told me. “You too,” I replied. When I left the premiere, he was waiting for me with his motorcycle. “Are you afraid to ride?” he asked me. “You have nothing to fear, I will always take care of you.”

Wow. They were married after four months.

It was clear to me, unlike my mother, who seemed to her “a savage” and, over time, told me: “Famous men don’t know how to contain themselves.” So it was. I didn’t see them, but I knew they were there. We had a terrible time. I wanted to match him and I had an affair with Maximilian Schell and when he told him about it, he reacted badly. At that time he used too many drugs.

“Sharon Tate invited him to a party, on the way he met a girl and didn’t go. He got rid of Charles Manson”

That was not about to kill him, but Charles Manson.

When we were already having problems, Sharon Tate invited him to a party at her house. Steve asked me if he wanted to come along and I told him I didn’t feel like it. He arrived around three in the morning looking pitiful. I bathed him and put him to bed. And at 8 in the morning he called his assistant to put on the news: Charles Manson had murdered Sharon and four other people. It turned out that, on the way, he had picked up a girl and did not go.

How was he holding up?

I felt I had to take care of him.

Even so, he put the final point.

He used to scare me, but he always took care of me and our children, Chad and Terry. We continue to maintain a relationship. When she was divorcing Ali MacGraw, she moved into the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and there she told me that she wanted to get back with me.

In a way, you cemented your career.

When we met I was the one with agency and manager. I asked them to give him a job. She was also the one who evaluated the scripts – he didn’t like to read anything other than motoring magazines – and she wrote the synopses for him. I think he only read –and discarded– the one from ‘Two for the road’, because I didn’t understand what Stanley Donen wanted.

“I asked my manager to give him a job, I read him the scripts and I recommended that he open his shirt a little”

He also recommended that he open his shirt in scenes.

Yes Yes. You see. She wasn’t jealous.

Is it true that he did not want to share scenes with Paul Newman?

It was a private joke between them. Paul was a very good friend. He even recommended that he leave the ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ series because it tarnished his film career.

For you, what is your best film?

‘The case of Thomas Crown’, without a doubt.

And what did you like about him?

He was very handsome and bright. And he had a vulnerability that we shared: he grew up without parents, like me. I had a mother, although she was a dance star who was always out and had her boyfriend. I never saw my dad.

“When my daughter Terry died, the magazine ‘Hello!’ she interviewed me. Isabel Preysler vetoed it.”

Why?

My mother met my father in Manila and they fell in love, but she found out that he was already married. [con Teodorica Reinares] and had more daughters in the other part of Manila.

One was Beatriz Arrastia, the mother of Isabel Preysler. Is she dating her ‘niece’?

Never. I don’t even want to see her. She hurt me a lot.

Damage?

When my daughter Terry died, at the age of 38, as a result of a kidney transplant, the magazine ‘Hello!’ He came to interview me and she vetoed his publication.

Well, she hasn’t had flirtations with James Dean, Marlon Brando, James Garner…

[Ríe] That was before Steve. We were very free then. We lived swinging on lamps. They were short but intense relationships. With Dean I spent a Saturday night and with Brando, who was a very strange man, it was also just one night.

“When he was about to die, he told me: ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t keep my fly closed, but it was always you’

That ‘star system’ no longer exists.

The latest star is Tom Cruise! The rest is worth nothing. The ‘streaming’ has ended with the Hollywood that I lived.

Was there another love?

I married the political publicist Alvin Toffel, but we were more friends than lovers. There is only one great love and mine was Steve.

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Beautiful, after all.

When he was dying of lung cancer, he said to me, “Sorry Neile, I couldn’t keep my fly closed, but it was always you.”

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Neile Adams, dancer and ‘aunt’ of Isabel Preysler: “There is only one great love and mine was Steve McQueen”