Steve McQueen: tough guy
On the Fourth of July, I posted a short clip from the Steve McQueen movie, “The Great Escape.” It got me thinking about the actor, one of the huge crushes of my youth (and not really limited to my youth, either). So I became curious about his life, and what might have made him the singular personality he was.
His Wiki bio tells us quite a few things. The first is that although McQueen was a good actor, he came by that tough-guy exterior honestly. He came up the hard way.
The second is that it’s not always best when a child is raised by a parent. For McQueen, the best thing that ever happened to him when he was growing up was to be rejected by his alcoholic mother and raised by his great uncle. Unfortunately, she kept asking for him back, and whenever he returned to her, trouble ensued. The next best thing that happened to him when he was young was to have been labeled incorrigible as a result of his stepfather’s petition, and placed in California Junior Boys Republic in Chino, California. The third best thing was that McQueen finally decided to get with the program when he was a Marine.
And the fourth best thing was to have discovered acting; if not for that, he probably would have lived a life of petty crime.
A few interesting factoids about McQueen’s career: he was in one film called “Never Love a Stranger” (1958) and another entitled “Love with the Proper Stranger” (1963). The first had the following improbable plot and casting:
The noir film is about Frankie Kane (Barrymore) who is brought up in a Catholic orphanage. He befriends a Jewish law student named Martin Cabell (McQueen) and becomes romantically involved with Cabell’s sister Julie (Milan). Kane learns later that he is also Jewish, and when told he will be removed from the orphanage and moved to a Jewish home he runs away and turns to a life of crime. Later, after joining a major crime syndicate, he reconnects with Julie, finally deciding to join Martin, now a District Attorney in shutting down the syndicate.
McQueen as a Jewish lawyer?
And then there’s this:
McQueen had an unusual reputation for demanding free items in bulk from studios when agreeing to do a film, such as electric razors, jeans and several other products. It was later found out that McQueen requested these things because he was donating them to the Boy’s Republic reformatory school for displaced youth, where he had spent time during his teen years. McQueen made occasional visits to the school to spend time with the students, often to play pool and to speak with them about his experiences.
And this:
McQueen was conservative in his political views and often backed the Republican Party. He did, however, campaign for Democrat Lyndon Johnson in 1964 before voting for Republican Richard Nixon in 1968. He supported the Vietnam War, was one of the few Hollywood stars who refused numerous requests to back Presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy…
Somehow it’s not really surprising that McQueen might have been a political conservative.
[ADDENDUM: How could I have written an entire post about Steve McQueen without including any pictures?
Let’s remedy that:
While in college, I worked at the Village Theater in Westwood (home of UCLA). We had a policy of allowing celebrities into the theater gratis so as to prevent them from being accosted while waiting in line. The theater would also sell “after-hours” tickets for a short time (usually about 15 minutes) after the last show had started, for latecomers who had missed the beginning. Imagine my surprise when Mr. McQueen showed up a half-hour late for the last show of a second-rate show (I don’t remember its title), asking to buy a ticket. Consistent with theater policy, we let him in for free.
He patted my stomach, and said, “Thanks, buddy.” It’s one of my fondest memories.
The post raises a couple of historical issues. There was a time long ago when orphanages were fairly common. They seem to have been superior to living in extreme poverty or with a deranged parent. Now with food stamps, Section 8 rent subsidies, AFDC, Medicaid, WIC, and free school lunches we leave kids in very bad hands.
Secondly, there was a time when poor or troubled youth went into the military to grow up. Occasionally, a judge would give a young offender the choice of jail or the military. The Marines were particularly favored. Now, 75% of young people are not eligible for the military because of obesity, health problems, low mental ability, drug use, or criminal records. The type of poverty we deal with today is extremely intractable for many.
how can you like that violent oppressor with privilege? perhaps we should all sit and meditiate on alan alda…
besides… such men are verboten by the harridens..
its not pc to like men who are men… duh
Was a fan of the “Wanted: Dead or Alive” series reruns. Favorite McQueen movie for me is “The Sand Pebbles.” He was an underrated actor.
One more thought. I’ve rubbed shoulders with a lot of Marines and Marine vets. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Exposure to the Corps never leaves them.
The farm McQueen spent time on as a young child in Slater, MO is about 25 miles from where I grew up. Sometime probably in the late 1960s or early 1970s, our family piled into the car to go to a drive-in movie featuring Steve McQueen. While I don’t remember the title of the movie (I was pretty young and more interested in the soda, popcorn, bon-bons and horsing around with my borther than watching the movie), but one of the memory nuggets I tucked away from that experience was my dad telling us that the star of the movie, Steve McQueen, was born and raised on a farm in Slater.
Now I learn from McQueen’s wiki entry that my dad had his facts confused. It’s weird to have gone most of my life thinking McQueen was born and raised in Slater, when in fact it appears he was actually born in Indiana and only spent about 5 years or so in Slater when he was a very young child.
He was also a huge fan of Indian motorcycles, had a large collection of them, and was going to try to re-open the company after buying the remaining parts and tooling. He died before he could do it.
Grackle, same here with the “San Pebbles” awesome movie, I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it. The book was good also:
http://www.amazon.com/Sand-Pebbles-Bluejacket-Books/dp/1557504466/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1310681892&sr=8-5
and the feminist response from
How Skinny Jeans, Lattes and Feminists Murdered the Marlboro Man
by Sarah Arboleda
fun at parties too..
perhaps demographic genocide through bad life choices isnt that bad a deal if this is their dominant taker..
now of course, people will say she is marginal, but if she is marginal, then how did one with the same ideas get to sit in la casa blanca?
go sit in at a NYU womens study group something or other… (you can find them burning candles with the belief that it makes sexual predators feel bad and want to stop – and it helps exploit such for donantions and more helpers), amazing things an education can get you… you’ll love “The Little Coochie Snorcher that Could” in its original form, kind of like Roman Polanski but i guess from a womens enlightened perspective…
now note this is a feminist commenting on a woman who misses men as men (lots miss women as women too…)…
but not the issue is it? reading is kind of like ping pong… but guess who loses…
then the feminist
everything she knows she learned from a book, and we know that trumps experience… which is why obama is doing so well…
To keep up with the times they’ve probably renamed the California Junior Boys Republic as the California Young Male and Transgendered Pioneers Collective.
My SO lives in Chino – and for one reason or another, when I went to visit him at Christmas one year, I found myself participating in the Chino Christmas Boat Parade — yes, it’s a couple of hundred miles from water, but all the people who own boats decorate them for Christmas and parade them through the town… and through the Boy’s Republic Home. I remember my SO telling me that Steve McQueen was their most famous alum, and of all the good that he quietly did for it and for the other boys.
Looking at all the horrible things that happen to the children of disfunctional parents, one begins to wonder if there isn’t something to be said for a good, well-organized and supervised orphanage. I remember reading an essay some years ago by a middle-aged gentleman who had been consigned to one as a child in the last decade or so before the movement to place them in foster homes instead.
Can’t recall where I read it, or who he was – but he felt that it had been a good thing, all told. Not much on the warm family encouragement – but the kids were safe, sheltered, comfortably disciplined. Those who had academic inclinations were encouraged and placed in schools that would be good for them. He felt that he had emerged fairly well-adjusted – and he felt that it was a much more satisfactory experience than bouncing from foster family to foster family, to real family and back again. What children really crave was stability, and he felt that he had gotten that from the orphanage – and also good role models, in various ways.
When I got into the military myself, I met all sorts of people from very different backgrounds, and some of them from epically disfunctional families and communities. For many of them, the military was their lifeline, and their way to grow to be a responsible and well-adjusted adult. There was one friend I most particularly remember, who told me once that his parents were actually the family next door. His birth parents were spectacularly disfunctional – abandonment, alcoholism and abuse, the whole gamut – and his refuge was the family that lived next door to his. They were one of those warm and inviting families, with a lot of children, and they sort of scooped him up with theirs.
He took his school homework to them, ate dinner with them when his parents were incapable of fixing meals, slept at their house when his parents were really incapable. In the end, they were the ones who came to his graduation, went with him to the recruiter, saw him sworn in to the Air Force … and they were on his SGLI as beneficiaries and next-of-kin. To his way of thinking, the family next door were his parents – they had been everything to him. He didn’t have any particular grudge or resentment against his blood family. They weren’t anything to him at all. They didn’t matter. The people next door were his real parents.
Grackle, same here with the “San Pebbles” awesome movie, I highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it. The book was good also …
I can also recommend the book. Read it after I saw the movie. Enjoyed every page. Never got around to any of McKenna’s other works.
On men and masculinity: We’re still out here but you will not find us anywhere the Lefty feminists hang out. The metrosexual crap is a passing fad, an artificial construct adhered to by male idiots hoping for, begging for, unwittingly abasing themselves for the possibility of a little sex within their dull, pallid, doctrinaire milieus. That is all it is.
A poet, Robert Bly, wrote an interesting book which I read, “Iron John,” in part to try to teach metrosexuals how to be a man. Even made a lot of dough holding “masculinity” seminars for these poor, self-despising souls. If have to pay for a seminar to learn how to be a man you are probably beyond repair.
Just a few weeks ago, I watched The Magnificent Seven with my youngest son (age 14). Great, great western, one of the best, and McQueen was superb in it. Son loved the movie–it was the first classic western he’s seen (yes, I know, I’ve been remiss as a parent). They don’t make them like that any more, nor actors like Steve McQueen any more.
Sgt. Mom, you made a very good point there, regarding orphanages: What children really crave was stability, and he felt that he had gotten that from the orphanage — and also good role models, in various ways. The foster care system, particularly when kids are bounced back and forth between it and their birth parents, all too often does nothing to give a sense of stability in children. In too many cases it fails the kids spectacularly, and sometimes fatally.
I joined the Navy right out of High School, and a big reason was Steve McQeen in “The Sand Pebbles.” I wanted to BE Steve McQueen in Dress Blue Cracker Jacks. Not the most well thought out reason for enlisting, I know, but good enough for an oversexed, romantic eighteen year old.
One of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.
Thanks Steve.
When McQueen was in the Marine Corps he supposedly said something the line of, “the only way I will be promoted above private is if all the corporals die at the same time.”
Watch The Blob his first starring role and see how really good he was that early in his career. He had a work ethic. It was a B movie, he could have phoned it in but he made every scene count with no help from the cast or the script. He was riveting.
Not sure how to find out, but iirc, McQueen’s character in Magnificent Seven had a lecture to a Mexican kid.
Kid wanted to be a hero like the Seven but McQueen’s character said that it took a real man to get up to farm every day when things go wrong, to look out for a family. So forth. I understand it was the writers, but the point was that they chose McQueen to say it, and it redeems some of the hero-worship implicit in the film.
If you want to see some McQueen from (pretty much) his real life, then track this movie down and watch it.
From Bruce Brown, the same producer/director who did Endless Summer.
On Any Sunday is a motorcycle documentary, largely centered on the riding friendship of McQueen, Mert Lawill (AMA Champion), and famous competitor and motorcycle buisnessman Malcolm Smith.
Regardless if you like bikes or not, this one really gives an insight into Mr. McQueen’s drive for fun, competition and winning.
And one Mr. Lee Marvin was also very well known in the desert racing circles of the day, riding the hell out of a Triumph Tiger, well before (and into) the heyday of the lighter two stroke invasion.
And racing was riskier then. A lot riskier. Just watch how very little protective gear those guys wore in those days! Of course, there was damn little gear to be had on the market then. Just the way it was.
Enjoy the show!
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
Richard Aubrey – The speech was actually made by Charles Bronson:
Village Boy 2: “We’re ashamed to live here. Our fathers are cowards.”
O’Reilly: “Don’t you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there’s nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery. That’s why I never even started anything like that… that’s why I never will.