When not acting or writing books and screenplays, Steve helped support himself by working in restaurants and parking cars at Hollywood’s glamorous Sunset Strip nightspots like the Mocambo, Ciro’s, Villa Nova, and The Players. He also did detective work for the Fred Otash Detective Agency and painted movie stars’ homes and famous places like the Garden of Allah. Then in 1954 he became night manager of Googie’s, a popular coffee shop next to Schwab’s Drugstore that was made famous by James Dean, John Saxon, Natalie Wood, Rod Steiger, James Garner, Jayne Mansfield and other celebrities like western writer Louis L’Amour and Hollywood gossip columnist Sidney Skolsky.
During that time Steve befriended numerous movie stars like Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Clark Gable, Alan Ladd, Lana Turner, Sterling Hayden and Robert Middleton, all of whom influenced his life and gave him material for his recently published two-volume memoirs, “Googie’s: Coffee Shop to the Stars".