Neile Adams Guests At Screening Of BULLITT

Neile Adams (aka Neile McQueen Toffel), author, performer and the former wife of the late legendary actor, Steve McQueen, will make a special appearance at a screening of the film, Bullitt, as part of the Film Series entitled, "King of Cool - The Films of Steve McQueen," being held at Seattle Art Museum; SAM Downtown, Plestcheeff Auditorium; 1300 First Avenue (between Union Street and University Street); Seattle, WA 98101, on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. The film Bullitt stars Steve McQueen, along with Robert Vaughn and Jacqueline Bisset, under the direction of Peter Yates.

"King of Cool - The Films of Steve McQueen" is being held this year in observance and celebration of the birth of the Steve McQueen 80 years ago on March 24, 1930. A Questions and Answers session will be held with Neile Adams following the screening of Bullitt that evening, after which Adams will sign copies of her autobiographical book, My Husband, My Friend, about her life with Steve McQueen. Copies of the Adams's book, which is currently in development as a major feature film in Hollywood, CA, will be available for purchase.

At this time, tickets will only be sold at the door on the day of the event for $7 each (cash only). Patrons are urged to arrive by no later than 6:45 p.m. to purchase tickets, which will be sold on a First-Come, First-Served basis. Parking is available in the museum's underground parking garage for a nominal fee. For further information about this special screening of Bullitt and other Steve McQueen movie screenings in this Film Series playing through March 11, 2010, please call the Seattle Museum Museum Box Office at 206-654-3121, E-mail boxoffice@seattleartmuseum.org and visit online at www.seattleartmuseum.org. For further information about Neile Adams (aka Neile McQueen Toffel) and Steve McQueen, please visit www.myhusbandmyfriend.com.

Neile Adams (Entertainer) first saw her name on Broadway as a teenager at Billy Rose's Ziegfeld Theatre in the original production of Kismet, with AlfrEd Drake and Doretta Morrow. She came to national attention as a featured performer for noted choreographer/director, Bob Fosse, starring in the Broadway production of The Pajama Game.

She was personally selected by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to play a lead in their first National Company Tour of Me And Juliet. Adams starred opposite the legendary Paul Muni in the original Broadway-bound production of At The Grand, and also starred in numerous regional musical productions, including: Damn Yankees, Bye, Bye Birdie, Carousel, Can Can, South Pacific, Connecticut Yankee, Where's Charley?, Desert Song, and others.

Adams has appeared in many films and television shows, including: This Could Be The Night, Buddy, Buddy, Fuzz and award-winning episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She has worked with such entertainment greats as George Abbott, Robert Wise, Billy Wilder, Eddie Fisher, Patrice Munsel, Perry Como, Pat Boone, Andy Williams and Bob Hope.

She is a member of the charitable organization, SHARE and is a board member of The Boys Republic of Chino Hills. In 1986, Adams wrote her best selling book entitled, My Husband, My Friend, about her life with her former husband, Steve McQueen. In 2006 Adams' book was re-released in a 20th Anniversary editon by AuthorHouse. The book is now in development to be made as a major feature film in Hollywood, CA. Adams' second husband, the late businessman, Alvin E. Toffel, encouraged his wife to return to her musical roots and indeed she has.

In recent years Adams has created and presented he own cabaret shows, which have received rave reviews in New York, London, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Palm Springs. She has four CD albums. To learn more about Neile Adams and Steve McQueen, please visit the website, www.myhusbandmyfriend.com.

Steven Terrence McQueen (Steve McQueen's birth name) was born on March 24, 1930 in Beech Grove, Ind., and endured a troubled childhood which included being abandoned by his father, left to be raised by a great-granduncle, and then taken by his mother to California to live with her cruel and abusive second husband. He became involved in gang life, eventually ending up in a parochial school, The Boys and Girls Republic of Chino and Monrovia, where he finally learned responsibility. After a brief stint in the Marines, he went to New York and took up acting, winning a scholarship to Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. Of the 2000 performers who auditioned for The Actors Studio in 1955, only two were accepted: Martin Landau and Steve McQueen.

McQueen impressed everyone who saw him and quickly earned a small role in Robert Wise's Somebody Up There Likes Me as well as his first Broadway role in A Hatful of Rain. After a string of low-budget movies, including the cult classic, The Blob, McQueen landed the starring role in the Western television series, Wanted: Dead or Alive, playing a soft-spoken bounty hunter with a sawed-off rifle. Within a few years, he had become a household name.

A series of movies with director John Sturges soon followed, with McQueen holding his own opposite such top stars as Frank Sinatra in Never So Few and Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven before receiving top billing in The Great Escape.

In 1963, McQueen began his own Production Company, Solar Productions, for which he starred in the gritty police drama, Bullitt. The film is still famous to this day for its car chase through the street of San Francisco. Other films which Solar Productions had involvement, and in which Steve McQueen played leading roles, include: The Cincinnati Kid, Nevada Smith, The Sand Pebbles, (for which he was nominated for an Academy Awardâ as Best Actor), The Thomas Crown Affair, (a film in which he countered his typical blue-collar, tough guy roles he had been cast in by taking the suave lead role), and Le Mans.

About the same time, McQueen's 15 and 1/2-year marriage to Neile Adams was on the rocks over his frequent affairs, and sometimes violent rages. Adams is the mother to McQueen's two children, the late Terry McQueen-Flattery and Chadwick Steven McQueen (Chad). Steve McQueen and Neile Adams divorced in 1972, after which McQueen married his co-star in the box office hit, The Getaway, Ali MacGraw. In the midst of a career high for McQueen, which included a bravura performance in Papillon, he once again was hit with personal problems, as he and MacGraw quickly found they were completely incompatible.

McQueen was also becoming disenchanted with Hollywood and forced the producers of The Towering Inferno to fork over a record-breaking $3 million for him to accept a role in the movie. Despite the enormous success of The Towering Inferno, McQueen entered a semi-retirement, appearing in only one movie during the next five years, turning down roles in such movies as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Apocalypse Now.

In 1978, McQueen and MacGraw finally called it quits, and McQueen developed a relationship with a young model named Barbara Minty. In addition, his health was beginning to fail him. He returned to the big screen for two more movies, Tom Horn and The Hunter, after which he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure. Looking towards the future and refusing to accept his doctor's prognosis, McQueen married Minty in 1980, got a new group of friends and became a born-again Christian. He then went to Mexico for alternative treatments for his illness, but the treatments did not help, and he passed away on November 7, 1980.

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