Alkylation of myosin's Cys-707 (SH1) and Cys-697 (SH2) has profound consequences for myosin's ability to interact with actin and hydrolyze MgATP. Pre-steady-state measurements of myosin-S1 alkylated at SH1 and SH2 by N-phenylmaleimide (NPM) in the presence of ATP were taken to identify the steps of the reaction that are altered. It was found that the rate constant most affected by this modification is the apparent rate of the ATP hydrolysis step. This rate constant is reduced 20000-fold, an effect comparable in magnitude to the effect of the same modification on the binding of MgATP to S1 or acto-S1 [Xie, L., and Schoenberg, M. (1998) Biochemistry 37, 8048]. In contrast, the rate constants of phosphate release and dissociation of acto-S1 by ATP were reduced <20-fold. For unmodified S1, the enhancement of fluorescence seen after addition of ATP had the same rate constant as the ATP hydrolysis step (S1.ATP if S1.ADP.Pi) measured by single-turnover experiments in a quench-flow experiment. This is consistent with results previously observed [Johnson, K. A., and Taylor, E. W. (1978) Biochemistry 17, 3432]. However, NPM-modified S1 exhibited virtually no fluorescence enhancement upon ATP binding. This provides further evidence that M.ATP is the predominant intermediate of NPM-S1-catalyzed ATP hydrolysis.