Steve McQueen

Stardust – TCM’s Star of the Month

By Ed Garea

“I'm not sure that acting is something for a grown man to be doing.”     

He was known as “The King of Cool.” His anti-hero persona, carefully developed through the ‘60s, made him a top box-office draw in the 1960s and 1970s. He became the highest-paid movie star in the world in 1974, although he would not act in a film again for four years. Though a headache for producers and director, his popularity kept him in high demand, enabling him to reap huge salaries for his services.

It took more than a few life lessons for McQueen to even break into show business. Born Terence Steven McQueen on March 24, 1930, in the Indianapolis suburb of Beech Grove, his father was a stunt pilot named William Terence McQueen. He left McQueen’s mother, Julia Ann, six moths after meeting her. Julia Ann, an alcoholic, couldn’t cope with raising a young son and left him with her parents, Victor and Lillian, in Slater, Missouri. As the Depression worsened, his grandparents moved in with Lillian's brother Claude at his farm in Slater. These were the happiest years of McQueen’s childhood, as he worked on the farm with Uncle Claude. When he was eight, his mother moved him to Indianapolis, where she lived with her new husband. 

To say he and his new stepfather did not get along is an understatement. McQueen suffered many beatings from the man and at the age of nine left home to live on the streets, where he ran with a street gang, becoming a petty criminal. Unable to control him, Julia Ann sent him back to Slater. When he was 12, Julia, who married for a third time. She wrote to Claude and asked that her son be sent to live with her and her new husband in Los Angeles. But the pattern repeated itself as Steve clashed with his stepfather, who McQueen recalled as being “a prime son of a bitch” not averse to using his fists on McQueen and his mother. Again McQueen was sent back to live with Claude. This lasted until he was 14, when he left Claude's farm without a word and joined a circus. That lasted for a short time before McQueen found his way back to Los Angeles where he resumed life as a gang member and petty criminal. Caught stealing hubcaps by police, McQueen was handed over to his stepfather, who beat him severely and threw the young man down a flight of stairs, after which McQueen told him that if he laid his hands on him again, McQueen would kill him. 

His stepfather persuaded Julia to commit her son to the California Junior Boys Republic at Chino. Unpopular with the other boys at first, he ultimately became a role model and was elected to the Boys Council, a group who set the rules and regulations governing the boys. When he later became famous he regularly returned to talk to the boys in what became a lifelong association. He would also demand bulk quantities of items such as razor blades and other items from studios, which he donated to Chino.

At 16, McQueen left Chino and returned to his mother, who was now living in Greenwich Village in New York. After meeting two sailors from the Merchant Marine, he and volunteered to serve on a ship bound for the Dominican Republic. Once there he left his new assignment and drifted around, eventually finding work in a brothel in Santo Domingo. Later he made his way to Texas, working several jobs ranging from a roughneck to a carnival barker to a lumberjack.

In 1947, McQueen enlisted in the Marines, where he promoted to private first class and assigned to an armored unit. His first years there saw him as a rebellious soldier, at one point serving 41 days in the brig. After his release he resolved to mend his ways and embraced Marine discipline. He saved the lives of five other Marines during an Arctic exercise by pulling them from a tank before it broke through ice into the sea. He was assigned to the honor guard, responsible for guarding the yacht of President Truman. McQueen served until 1950, when he was honorably discharged. In later interviews he said he enjoyed his life in the Marines. 

In 1952 he used his benefits under the G.I. Bill to study acting in New York last Sanford Meisner’s Neighborhood Playhouse. To make ends meet he began competing in weekend motorcycle races at Long Island City Raceway and purchased the first of many motorcycles, a Harley-Davidson and a Triumph. He was an excellent racer taking home about $100 in winnings ($900 in 2018) each weekend. He also appeared as a musical judge in an episode of ABC’s Jukebox Jury during the 1953-54 season.  He made his Broadway debut in 1955 in the play A Hatful of Rain, starring Ben Gazzara.

McQueen left New York in late 1955 for Hollywood, seeking acting jobs. After appearing in a two-part television presentation entitled The Defenders for Westinghouse Studio One, Hollywood manager Hilly Elkins signed him. Deciding that B-movies would be a good place for the young actor to start, Elkins helped him land a bit part in Paul Newman’s Somebody Up There Likes Me. That was followed by the films Never Love a Stranger, The Blob (his first leading role), and The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery. 

But as B-movies gave way to the even cheaper Z-movies, McQueen decided to try his luck in television, which had replaced the Bs as a place for young actors to learn their craft. He appeared on Tales of Wells Fargo, starring Dale Robertson, then won the leading role in a new show called Trackdown playing bounty hunter Josh Randall. CBS pocked up the show, which was retitled Wanted: Dead or Alive in September 1958. Randall's special holster holding a sawed-off Winchester rifle instead of a six-shooter, combined with the generally negative image of bounty hunters and McQueen’s aura of mystery and detachment fostered an anti-hero image which caught on with young fans. The show ran for 94 episodes from 1958 until early 1961, keeping McQueen steadily employed.

In 1959, McQueen got a big break when Frank Sinatra cast him as Bill Ringa in his war film Never So Few. The film’s director, John Sturges, was so impressed with McQueen that he cast him as Vin Tanner in his Western remake of Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, entitled The Magnificent Seven (1960). It was McQueen’s first major hit and led him to quit Wanted: Dead or Alive. McQueen's focused portrayal of the taciturn second lead catapulted his career. 

Lead roles followed in such films as The Great Escape (1963), a fictional depiction of the true story of a historical mass escape from the supposedly inescapable German World War II POW camp, Stalag Luft III; The Cincinnati Kid (1965), with Edward G. Robinson and Joan Blondell; and The Sand Pebbles (1966) opposite Candace Bergen and Richard Attenborough, and his only Oscar nomination..

Then followed one of his best known films, Bullitt (1968), co-starring Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn and Don Gordon, the highlight of which was the auto chase through the streets of San Francisco. Though a box-office hit, Bullitt went so far over budget that Warner Brothers cancelled the seven remaining films on his contract. Warner’s realized its mistake and tried to lure him back, but he signed with The Mirisch Corporation and released his next film, The Thomas Crown Affair, co-starring Faye Dunaway, through United Artists.

In 1971 McQueen made his only critical and box-office bomb, the auto-racing drama Le Mans. In 1972 he made Junior Bonner, starring as an aging rodeo rider. Sam Peckinpah directed him once again in 1972’s The Getaway, where he met future wife Ali McGraw. He followed this with a memorable role as a prisoner who escapes Devil’s Island in Papillon, with Dustin Hoffman as his ill-fated sidekick. 

After 1974’s The Towering Inferno, with Paul Newman, McQueen dropped out of sight to pursue his interest in motorcycle racing and traveled around the country in a motor home  and on his vintage Indian motorcycles. Moviegoers did not see him again until 1978, when he starred in an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, playing against type as a bearded, bespectacled 19th-century doctor in a small southern Norwegian town who stands up against the town when he discovers their medicinal spa is polluted.

His last two films, both in 1980, were loosely based on true stories. First up was Tom Horn, a Western about a former Army scout-turned professional gunman who worked for the big cattle ranchers hunting down rustlers and was later hanged for murder in the shooting death of a sheepherder. His last film, The Hunter, was an action movie about a modern-day bounty hunter.  

On the personal side, McQueen married three times, first to actress Neile Adams, which lasted from1956 to their divorce in 1972. The couple had two children: daughter Terry (1959-88) and son Chad (born 1960). In 1973 McQueen married his Getaway co-star, Ali MacGraw. The couple divorced in 1978. His last marriage, less than a year before his death, was to model Barbara Minty. In addition he was also said to have had affairs with Junior Bonner co-star Barbara Leigh, actress-model Lauren Hutton, and actress Mamie Van Doren, who claimed they tried hallucinogens together.

McQueen was a heavy user of both tobacco and marijuana. He fought battles with cocaine in the early ‘70s and alcohol. He was arrested for driving while intoxicated in Anchorage, Alaska in 1972. He followed a daily two-hour exercise regimen, involving lifting weights and running five miles a day. He was also a practitioner of the martial art Tang Soo Do.

A persistent cough in 1978 led McQueen to give up cigarettes and undergo antibiotic treatments without improvement. The shortness of breath grew more pronounced and in 1979, after filming The Hunter, a biopsy revealed pleural mesothelioma, a cancer associated with prolonged exposure to asbestos and for which there is no known cure. McQueen believed the lines traced back to his days in the Marines removing asbestos lagging from pipes aboard a troop ship.

By February 1980, the condition worsened and the actor traveled to a clinic in Rosario Beach, Mexico after doctors in the U.S. told him there was nothing they could do. While in Mexico Steve McQueen met with Billy Graham, who gave him his personal Bible. His third wife Barbara lated said that McQueen had become an evangelical Christian in the days before he died.

On November 7, 1980, McQueen died of cardiac arrest as a clinic in Juarez, Mexico where he had gone to have a tumor on his liver removed. He was 50 years old. McQueen was cremated and his ashes were spread in the Pacific Ocean.

Recommended Films

July 5: Begin at 8:00 pm with his first starring role in The Blob (1958), a highly entertaining B-movie. McQueen never spoke about the movie unless pressed, preferring to write it off as a youthful indiscretion (he was 28 when he filmed it). Perhaps the underlying reason was that he turned down an offer of 10% of the gross in forever of a straight salary of $3,000. McQueen figured the movie would play for a week or two, then never ben seen again, Instead it grossed more than $4 million. The movie playing in the theater when the Blob invades is real. Daughter of Horror was a low-budget film made in 1953 under the title of Dementia. It was released as Daughter of Horror in 1955. The only distinction the film holds is that it was narrated by none other than Johnny Carson’s sidekick, Ed McMahon. A DVD can be purchased on Amazon.

At 9:45 comes one of the best remakes ever released, The Magnificent Seven (1960). The film is a remake of Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai set in Mexico and shot by director John Sturges. Although it received middling reviews when released, the passage of time has transformed it into a cult favorite. McQueen annoyed star Yul Brynner no end with his scene-stealing antics, which included such as shaking a shotgun round before loading it, repeatedly that y checking his gun while in the background of a shot, and wiping his hat rim. They worked, because we end up watching McQueen instead of paying attention to Brynner. It got so bad that Brynner, knowing of McQueen’s experience with Wanted: Dead or Alive, refused to draw his gun in the same scene with McQueen in fear of being outdrawn.

McQueen received his first big break in films as Cpl. Bill Ringa in 1959’s Never So Few (Midnight) a cliched war flick set in WW2 Burma. Frank Sinatra and Gina Lollobrigida star with Peter Lawford. And for McQueen completists, there’s his early bit part in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), which can be seen at 2:15 am.

July 12: The Great Escape at 8:00 pm is the one to see. McQueen, James Garner and Charles Bronson were added to the starring cast of this WW2 film to boost the box office, but the real stars as Richard Attenborough and James Donald. James Coburn made an impression as an Audie POW involved in the escape.

July 19: Three entertaining films are on tap with Bullitt (1968) leading off at 8:00 pm. McQueen, who owned a vast collection of vintage carts and motorcycles, tried to obtain the Mustang he drove in the film, but was unsuccessful. There were reportedly two; one was wrecked during filming.

At 10 pm McQueen once again stars with Richard Attenborough in The Sand Pebbles (1966). He is an American sailor aboard a  gunboat patrolling the Yangtze River in 1926 civil-war torn China. Things reach a climax when the boat is assigned to rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission. Candace Bergen and Richard Crenna co-star. 

Finally, at 1:30 am, McQueen is a young stud poker player known as The Cincinnati Kid who travels to 1930s New Orleans to pit himself against the legendary card-sharp Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson) in a high-stakes poker game.

July 26: The McQueen fest ends on a high note with four excellent films, beginning at 8:00 pm with The Thomas Crown Affair from 1968. McQueen is Thomas Crown, a rich investment banker in Boston. Bored with the ease of his life, he plans and executes a bank robbery that nets him over $2 million. The police, stumped, bring in ace insurance investigator Vick Anderson (Faye Dunaway) to solve the case. After narrowing the list of suspects to Crown and so begins a complex game of cat and mouse a complex cat and mouse game between Anderson and Crown that eventually develops into a serious romance. In the finale, Thomas puts Vicki's love to the test by revealing his plans for a final heist.

In The Getaway (1972), airing at 10 pm, McQueen is Carter "Doc" McCoy, a career robber, currently serving a 10-year prison sentence at the Texas State Penitentiary. After his request for parole is denied despite he being a model prisoner, Doc asks his loving wife Carol (Ali MacGraw) to contact crooked businessman Jack Beynon (Ben Johnson) to secure his release. In return Doc will be “for sale” to Beynon. Beynon gets Doc released, with the price being for Doc to plan and execute a robbery at a small bank branch in Beacon City, Texas where Beynon knows there is $750,000 in the vault. But rather than Doc using his own men for the job, Beynon dictates that he will choose the helpers. While the job is a success, Benyon's men betray Doc, and he and Carol must take off across Texas with the money, running from both the law and other criminals, aiming to get to Mexico before they're caught, or worse, killed.

At 12:15 am McQueen stars as convicted murderer Henri Charriere in Papillon (1973). Known as “Papillon” for his butterfly chest tattoo, Charriere is transported to Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guiana to serve his sentence in a work camp. After saving the life of the frail but notorious forger Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman). Papillon convinces him to join in an escape. Despite the harshness of solitary confinement, brutal conditions and constant threats of betrayal, Papillon leads a desperate escape off the island. However, they are betrayed and returned to prison. Years later, Dega is made a trustee and is content with his lot, but the aging, white-haired Charriere cannot be held back. Papillon is a wonderful testament to the residency of the human spirit and the transcendence of hope.

Finally, at 3 am, McQueen gives us a change of pace with his  performance in An Enemy of the People (1978). This adaptation of Ibsen’s ecological drama stars McQueen as Dr. Thomas Stockman, who discovers that his town’s local hot spring is polluted. At first the townsfolk rally behind him; they are hoping to use the springs to generate tourism. Unfortunately, the doctor insists that they be closed because waste from the town tannery has rendered the springs unsafe. After he closes the springs he becomes ostracized by the angry residents. This results in the loss of his practice, and the break-up of his family. Though the film is rather stagy and badly paced, McQueen’s performance makes it worth watching.