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Steve McQueen

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Steve McQueen in The Great Escape
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Steve McQueen in The Great Escape

Steve McQueen (March 24, 1930 – November 7, 1980) was a American movie actor. Nicknamed "The King of Cool", he was considered one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s due to what many film goers consider a captivating on-screen persona. McQueen was considered combative and the archetypal "difficult movie star" who disliked working with directors or producers. To compensate, he would work only if paid an extremely large salary for his films; he was one of the highest paid actors of the 1960s and 1970s.

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Early life

He was born Terence Steven McQueen in Beech Grove, Indiana. He never knew his father—although McQueen did find the house where he lived approximately a year after his father's death. McQueen's father abandoned his wife and child shortly after McQueen was born. He was raised in Slater, Missouri by his uncle, where his mother left him at an early age. At the age of 12, reunited with his mother, McQueen moved to Los Angeles, California. When he was 14, his mother sent him to the Boy's Republic reformatory school in Chino Hills, California. Soon McQueen left the school and drifted before joining the United States Marine Corps in 1947. In 1952, with financial assistance of the G.I. Bill, McQueen began studying acting and auditioned to study at Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio in New York. Of the 2000 people who auditioned that year, only McQueen and Martin Landau were accepted. McQueen made his Broadway debut in 1955 in A Hatful of Rain.

Key appearances

Wanted: Dead or Alive

After various live and filmed television guest appearances in the mid-1950s, McQueen gained both regular employment and his 'break-out' role with the Western series . From 1958 to 1961, McQueen played Josh Randall, a lone bounty hunter whose weapon of choice was a sawed-off Winchester repeating rifle nicknamed the 'Mare's Leg.' While the character of Randall traveled the Wild West helping various people he met, it was the anti-hero image of a bounty-hunter, played with precisely the right amount of mystery, alienation and detachment by McQueen, that made this show stand out from among the large group of typical Westerns on American TV at the time. The character had been introduced the previous year in an episode of Trackdown, another western TV series, featuring Robert Culp.

The Magnificent Seven

McQueen moved into film in the mid-1950s with bit parts in Girl on the Run (1953) and Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). He secured his first lead role in the 1958 horror movie The Blob. He later was seen in a pornographic film called "The Beast From Below" about two adolecent girls and their mission to find themselves. He then replaced Sammy Davis, Jr. in the Frank Sinatra vehicle Never So Few in 1959 when Sinatra quarrelled with Davis. The director, John Sturges, then cast McQueen in his next movie, promising to "give him the camera". Starring with Yul Brynner, Robert Vaughn, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn in The Magnificent Seven (1960), it would be McQueen's first major hit.

The Great Escape

McQueen's next big film was 1963's The Great Escape (which also starred Bronson and Coburn, as well as secon-billed James Garner). The smash hit movie told the more or less true story of a massive breakout from a World War II Nazi POW camp and McQueen has by far the most memorable role, whirling through the countryside on a motorcycle before being "crucified" on barbed wire and recaptured. A spectacular motorcycle leap marks McQueen's passage into the screen pantheon; a stuntman actually made the jump, but the general public did not know that for years.

Bullitt and later films

Another successful film came in 1968 with Bullitt, which thrilled audiences with an unprecedented (and endlessly imitated) auto chase through San Francisco. Prior to that, he earned his only Academy Award nomination for the 1966 film The Sand Pebbles. McQueen also appeared in 1973's Papillon, the 1971 car race drama Le Mans, and in The Getaway in 1972.

Personal life

McQueen was the world's highest paid actor by the time of The Getaway. After The Towering Inferno, co-starring with his long time friend and rival Paul Newman in 1974, McQueen did not return to film until 1978 with An Enemy of the People playing against type as an overweight heavily bearded character, in this adaptation of the Henrik Ibsen play. The film was little seen and has never been released on Video or DVD, but is aired from time to time on PBS. Little known, but true; Steve McQueen became a born-again Christian just shortly before he died in 1980. He was up until his death; hosting weekly Bible study devotionals in his own home A & E Biography 2004.

Marriages

McQueen married Philippines-born actress Neile Adams on November 2, 1956; they divorced in 1972. He married Ali MacGraw on August 31, 1973; they divorced in 1978. He was married lastly to Barbara Minty on January 16, 1980. McQueen and Adams's son, Chad, and Chad's son, Steven, are both actors. Their daughter, Terry, died in 1998 after a liver transplant. Steven's stepfather is Luc Robitaille. Steve McQueen is also said to have had a son with an English woman of which she has a child named Craig although this was never actually proven there is a fair resemblence to Steve Mcqueen.

Motor Racer

McQueen was a motorcycle and racecar enthusiast. When he had the opportunity to drive in a movie, he often did so himself, performing many of his own stunts.

The most memorable were the classic chase in Bullitt and the motorcycle chase scene in The Great Escape. The jump over the fence was actually done by Bud Ekins for insurance purposes (however, McQueen amused himself by dressing in a German uniform and chasing himself on another bike).

During his acting career he considered becoming a professional race car driver. In the 1970 race 12 Hours of Sebring, Peter Revson and McQueen won his (engine size) class and finished second overall with a Porsche 908/02.

The same car was used as a camera car for Le Mans in the 24 Hours of Le Mans later that year, entered by his production company Solar Productions.

McQueen himself wanted to enter a Porsche 917 together with Jackie Stewart in the 1970 Le Mans race but the backers for his film project threatened to pull their support if he drove in the race. Faced with driving for 24 hours in the race, or the entire summer making the film, McQueen opted do do the latter.

He also competed in off-road motorcycle racing. In 1971, Solar Productions funded the now-classic motorcycle documentary On Any Sunday, in which McQueen himself is featured, along with racing legends Mert Lawwill and Malcolm Smith.

He owned several luxurious and exotic sportscars including:

To his dismay, McQueen never was able to own the legendary Ford Mustang GT that he drove in Bullitt. There were two cars used for filming. It is rumored that both models of the car mysteriously disappeared after the film wrapped (similar to the Easy Rider bikes).

The film's director Peter Yates recently stated in a radio interview that both vehicles are still extant (BBC Radio 4, 7 January 2006) (see [link]).

Death

McQueen died in November of 1980, in Juárez, Mexico from a heart attack. McQueen had traveled to the Santa Rosa Clinic there for alternative treatments for mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer caused by asbestos exposure. It is unclear whether the asbestos exposure came from his racing career or from an experience in the United States Marine Corps.

In 1999, McQueen was posthumously inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

Trivia

Filmography

External links

 

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