STEVE McQUEEN
G'day folks,
Welcome to some background on one of my favourite actors. Terence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American actor. Called "The
King of Cool", his "anti-hero" persona, developed at the height of the
counterculture of the 1960s, made him a top box-office draw of the 1960s
and 1970s.
Thirty-five
years after his death, Steve McQueen
retains a certain cache as a hipster movie star. He was dubbed the "King
of Cool" during his lifetime, and no one since has come along to seriously
challenge the title. His screen performances, particularly in his iconographic
roles in The Magnificent Seven,
The Great Escape, The Thomas Crown Affair, and
Bullitt, are marked
by an unflappable, even emotionless exterior that suggested a core of steel but
also hidden depths. Compact, blond and blue-eyed, he generally looked great,
and exuded an effortless masculinity and sense of style. And he was a racer,
associated more than any other movie star in film history with fast cars and
motorcycles.
The
racing obsession is showcased in a new documentary, Steve McQueen: The Man and Le Mans. At the top
of his career, the actor met his Waterloo with the 1971 flop Le Mans, a portrait of the
24-hour French endurance race McQueen starred in for his company Solar
Productions. Opting for a semi-documentary style, McQueen and his producing
partners neglected to come up with a script before production started, and the
actor's legendarily difficult diva behavior on set led to the early departure
of director John Sturges, who had more than a decade earlier given the star his
most crucial breaks.
Despite its failure, the film is highly regarded in racing
circles, especially for its substantial footage from Le Mans itself. The new
documentary, directed by Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna, makes use of
considerable behind-the-scenes footage and features interviews with McQueen’s
first wife Neile Adams and son Chad.
The
Man and Le Mans
may provide an exhaustive look at one aspect of McQueen’s persona, but his
infatuation with racing was perhaps a symptom rather than the key to the
actor’s psyche. The facts of his life point to a complexity that resists simple
analysis.
McQueen,
who was born in Indiana in 1930, had a textbook-level traumatic childhood.
His roustabout father
abandoned him at six months, and his mother, an alcoholic sometime-prostitute,
soon left Steve in the care of her parents and uncle, a Missouri farmer. The
boy joined his remarried mother in Indianapolis, and again after her second
remarriage in Los Angeles, but suffered beatings at the hands of both
stepfathers. Steve escaped to the streets and juvenile delinquency, eventually
ending up at California Junior Boys Republic, a progressive reform school,
where he resolved to straighten himself out.
The
GI Bill and Yiddish theatre gave him his start in acting.
After being released
from Boys Republic at age 16, Steve joined the merchant marine and then the
United States Marines, where he spent a fair amount of time in the brig. After
his discharge, he studied acting at Sanford Meisner Playhouse on the GI bill,
and made his stage debut with a small role in Yiddish opposite Molly Picon.
Broadway roles (The Member of
the Wedding, A
Hatful of Rain) followed, and then a relocation to Hollywood.
McQueen made his film debut with a bit in Somebody
Up There Likes Me (1956), which starred that other blue-eyed icon, Paul Newman.
Steve's first lead movie role came in the 1958 shock programmer The Blob, and TV stardom was
his with the Western series Wanted:
Dead or Alive, in which the actor played a bounty hunter.
Sammy
Davis, Jr. didn't break his leg, but McQueen did go on in his place.
A falling out with pally Frank Sinatra
got Davis nixed from the cast of John Sturges' 1959 Never So Few, leaving McQueen with a major supporting role. The next year,
the actor became one of Sturges's Magnificent
Seven, a smash that left him itching to leave
TV for good. His series cancelled, Steve took some time to gain his film-star
footing, but in another ensemble piece for Sturges, 1963's The Great Escape, a climactic motorcycle chase catapulted him to the A-list and
set his daredevil image in cool-cucumber stone. Other movies included Love with the Proper Stranger, The
Cincinnati Kid, and The Sand Pebbles, which earned him an Oscar nomination in 1967. Then, in 1968, a
one-two punch—stylish caper The
Thomas Crown Affair and lean detective story Bullitt—landed
McQueen firmly in the superstar pantheon. The latter film's car chase (in a
Ford Mustang GT fastback) through the streets of San Francisco became the
prototype for all movie car chases to follow.
But
was that Steve behind the wheel?
McQueen prided himself on doing his own stunt
work, but in his two most famous action scenes—the 60-foot motorcycle jump in The Great Escape, and the
often-airborne hot pursuit in Bullitt—he
was largely absent from the vehicles in question. The actor was willing, but
the productions’ insurance companies decidedly were not. His desire to drive in
the actual 24-hour Le Mans event was similarly nixed. McQueen had to content
himself with competing in a few lesser auto races and generally driving like a
maniac (with attendant crashes, tickets, and arrests) in his private life.
Steve
was on Charlie Manson’s
hit list.
The actor’s best friend and favorite partner in bad behavior (drugging,
womanizing) was hairdresser Jay Sebring. According to McQueen, a tryst with a
beautiful blonde was all that kept him from accompanying his friend to Sharon Tate’s house one night in
August 1969. The next morning, Sebring was one of those found murdered. After
Manson and his gang were arrested, a list of celebrities the cult leader
intended to kill surfaced with McQueen’s name on it.
During
his last decade, Steve was a reluctant movie star.
The failure of Le Mans seemed to zap the
actor’s taste for making films; starring roles in Papillon and The
Towering Inferno were strictly money jobs. He retreated to his
beach house with second wife Ali MacGraw (met during shooting of Sam Peckinpah’s
1972 The Getaway),
continued to indulge his penchant for pot and peyote, and packed on the pounds.
After divorcing MacGraw, he married model Barbara Minty and made three more
films (again playing a bounty hunter in his last project, The Hunter).
In 1980, McQueen became gravely ill with mesothelioma, a cancer
associated with asbestos exposure. He seemed to rally after pursuing a
controversial treatment regime in Mexico involving coffee enemas, full-body
shampoos, and the drug laetrile, but he died following surgery on November 8,
1980, at age 50. He left $200,000 to Boys Republic in his will. His personal
possessions, slated for auction, reportedly included almost 100 cars and 200
motorcycles. The aura of cool is attached to every one.
Clancy's comment: Wow, he was one cool dude. For some reason I've always liked cool actors. Clint Eastwood is another.
I'm ...
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