The Untold Story of Steve McQueen

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Visit applevacations.com. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. As always, we're looking for your stories.

Send them to ouramericanstories.com. Our listeners' stories are some of our favorites. We are about to hear next the story of Hollywood legend Steve McQueen, told by a real-life Steve McQueen expert.

Let's take a listen. My name is Marshall Terrell and I'm the author of approximately 30 books and I've written seven on actor Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen has held a fascination for me because I remember watching him on television and on film because he was my dad's favorite actor. And so whenever there was a movie on television, my dad would say, hey, McQueen's on, let's go watch it. Or if a McQueen movie was out, he'd say, hey, there's a McQueen movie out. He'd take me out of school and then we'd go watch that.

That was kind of our bonding experience. And as I've traveled around the world now talking about Steve McQueen, I've discovered that I'm not the only one. And that's how Steve McQueen, I think, has been passed on down to the generations. It's not unlike the Beatles or Elvis Presley, where these parents and grandparents now have such a love for this person that they want to pass that on to their children and their grandchildren.

And somehow miraculously they get filtered down to the next generation. So Steve McQueen, there's a lot of that with him. And I think one of the reasons for that is because his look is so timeless, you know, and that he looks like if he stepped out of the screen today that he could fit in with society today because he had that that great looking haircut, that great physique.

He didn't look like he belonged in any sort of time period. And then, of course, there are his films, which he was. I've always said he's kind of the the the template for the modern day movie star.

You know, he didn't he he sort of had his own code and people pick that up and they want to apply that to themselves. And so as the result of following his own instincts as an actor, Steve McQueen became the biggest movie star of the 1960s and 70s from 1963 to 1975. He was the number one box office movie star in the world. Steve McQueen was born on March 24th, 1930, a couple of months right after the Great Depression hit.

There was the Wall Street crash in 1929. And so he grew up right in the middle of that. And both of his parents were alcoholics. He didn't really know his father because he walked out on his wife and his child after six months. His mother, Julian, was what they called a flapper.

She was kind of a good time girl. She was 17 years old when she gave birth to Steve and, you know, was just a kid herself. And so Steve was raised by his maternal grandparents at first, Victor and Lillian Crawford, when he was about four or five years old.

You know, they had lost pretty much everything as a result of the Great Depression. And so they moved to Slater, Missouri, where Steve's grand uncle, Claude, had a hog farm. And so sometimes Julian would come. Sometimes she'd be off in California. Sometimes she'd come and take him because she felt guilty and bring him out to California and then expose him to stepfathers who didn't necessarily have his best interests at heart. Sometimes they were abusive. Most almost always they were alcoholics. And so he was just raised in this environment where he was didn't really have a home.

Turned out he was dyslexic and couldn't read well. And so, you know, he was just one of those kids who fell through the crack. When Steve McQueen lived in Los Angeles, he got into a lot of trouble.

We're talking like between the ages of nine and 13, 14. He got involved in a street gang. He talked about committing some robberies and stealing hubcaps, playing pool at pool halls and hustling people for money. And then there was a circus, a traveling circus that came to town and he had decided that he was going to join it. And he even tried boxing for a little bit. And once he said he got knocked flat on his duck, he gave that up. So when Steve got older, his mother had married a gentleman by the name of Hal Berry.

And this was in Los Angeles. And so Hal was an alcoholic. And, you know, he beat Steve.

I don't know how frequently, but Steve did talk about that in interviews. And one time he talked about him getting beat up and getting thrown in a closet and then one time getting beat up and being thrown down a set of stairs. And so Steve basically said, if you touch me again, I'm going to kill you. And so it turns out that his mother had him declared incorrigible and took him to the Boys Republic in Chino, which was basically a reformatory school. And so that's where Steve started getting his act together, started learning some discipline, started understanding the fact that he could have a life, a life of his choosing if he decided to clean up his act. And so they gave him a pretty good education. But the furthest he got was in ninth grade. It wasn't until he decided to join the Marines that he was going to, quote unquote, become a real man. Well, Steve McQueen joined the Marines in 1947 and he needed the permission of his mother to do it because he was 17. And the kind of thing about that was he actually sent a portion of his paycheck to his mother, even though she wasn't really good to him. But she did.

She did sign that paperwork for him. And in the beginning, it did not make him a man. But what he found out was when he was in the Marines, he couldn't get away with some of the shenanigans that he pulled. And you've been listening to Marshall Terrell tell the story of actor Steve McQueen. What a difficult start to a life. You can't get dealt a much worse hand than McQueen got dealt as a young man.

But the Marine Corps and Reform School were the steps towards at least an attempt to straighten his life. When we come back, more of the life story of actor Steve McQueen here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country.

Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to our American stories dot com and click the donate button. Give a little give a lot.

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Visit Apple vacations dot com or call your local travel adviser to get started. And we continue with our American stories and the story of actor Steve McQueen. Let's pick up where we last left off with author Marshall Terrell. We went AWOL a couple of times. That was to be with some girlfriends who lived, you know, in another state. Part of his punishment was that he had to clean out the whole of the ship, which was in the Naval Yard in Washington, D.C. They had to clean out the pipes, which was filled with asbestos. Everything in that ship was filled with asbestos.

They didn't have any mask on. So he breathed that in. That was in December of nineteen forty nine. And he was diagnosed with cancer in December of nineteen seventy nine.

So it was almost exactly 30 years, which is what they say that Minnesota only takes to fully form. The other thing that he did that that a sergeant told me who served with them was that he offered to clean the little the latrines in the morning. And the sergeant said no one ever, ever offered to clean the latrines. So what he said was McQueen could sleep an extra hour in if he he would wake up and then he would go sleep inside the bathroom area, put his coat down and then sleep for an extra hour or two, which was considered gold in the Marines. And so but he would also do his duty as well. But he said those were the kinds of things that McQueen would pull. You know, he couldn't be conformed fully, but, you know, he conformed enough to where he felt like the Marines had given him a life of discipline.

Well, Steve McQueen was a bit aimless after joining the Marines. He drove a taxicab and was a mechanic for a company in Washington, D.C., as soon as he got out, because that's where he was discharged, was in D.C. And then he worked his way up to New York City, where he felt, quote unquote, where the action was. He was selling encyclopedias door to door and he did stuff like he'd steal like a shower nozzle in a large department store. And then he'd bring it back for a return and cash that in.

And another buddy of mine told me that he would walk around the street offering single ladies a tour of the city and then they would buy him a meal or give him a tip. So he was a real hustler. You know, he did anything that he could to survive. Those were really tough days.

That's what I call the salad days. And then what happened was he was dating a dancer who said, you know, Steve, you're really kind of kooky and strange. You would be perfect for acting.

And he discovered under the G.I. Bill, he qualified for acting or any sort of college if he wanted to do that. So he gave acting a shot. So Steve McQueen started taking acting lessons at Sanford Meisner's neighborhood playhouse. And Meisner was the perfect acting coach for him because he was soft with people. And Steve was very, very insecure. And so, you know, for him being an actor meant being vulnerable. He truly got into it because he knew that that's where women were. But once it was discovered he had this great raw talent and was given great positive feedback, he really fed on that.

And so then that's when he really started trying. And then, you know, once those skills were honed and trust me, it took several years for him to perfect the McQueen persona. Right around the time that he enters the Actors Studio is when he starts to get a little mojo with his career. He gets a Broadway play. He's not very good in it, but he's starring in a Broadway play, which gives him the courage to ask out his first wife, Neil Adams, who was a very successful Broadway dancer.

And they start dating and they really hit it off. But his success does not match hers. And so that kind of drives him crazy. At the time she was making $50,000 a year, he was making $4,000. And the fact that his wife was more successful than him, given that he was a male chauvinist, drove him crazy. But some of the productions that he was getting were kind of just independent films. Like he got a job as a $17 a day extra in the movie Somebody Up There Likes Me starring Paul Newman. He did a movie, a B movie called Never Love a Stranger, Great St. Louis Bank Robbery, and of course The Blob, which was like the B movie picture of all B movie pictures. So The Blob was made, I think it started production in August of 1957. And it was a very, very low grade B movie about this blob that comes from outer space and starts becoming bigger and swallowing people up.

And at the time it was considered very high tech. But the interesting thing was it was developed by a production company called Good News Productions, which was a Christian based film company. And so with The Blob, they partnered with Jack Harris to make a mainstream movie to tap into some of that money to make more Christian films. And near the end of filming, Russell Daughton, who later went on to produce a movie called Thief in the Night.

He went on to produce a lot of Christian films, but Thief in the Night was his big one. He said there was a week of overruns in which McQueen would have to either dub in a part or react a scene, and McQueen basically said nothing doing. And so Daughton kind of sat him down and talked to him about his attitude in life and gave him a Bible because he knew that McQueen, after this production, was headed to Hollywood.

And he said Steve was heading out into the wilderness and he wanted to make sure that he gave him a Bible. And Daughton actually went out to Hollywood a couple months later and he said he bumped into McQueen and McQueen said to him, hey, I still got your Bible. When Steve McQueen first got to Hollywood, he made a strike almost right away. And the reason for that was because, again, Neil had translated her star power from Broadway to Hollywood. And so she was starting to really get a lot of attention. And so McQueen was following her to the studios and one of the famous quotes that he gives was, you know, I was starting to get elbowed by the makeup people and the assistant directors and they were calling me Mr. Adams. And he said, I came to realize at that moment in time I better become famous real fast because he did not want to follow in her footsteps. So he was driving her crazy. And so she called her manager, Hilly Elkins, and said, Hilly, you got to get him a job.

He's driving me absolutely bonkers. So the first job that Hilly gets, Steve McQueen, is in a series called Trackdown. And somebody on that show saw Steve McQueen and said, who is that guy? And so they said, yeah, just some young, unknown actor named Steve McQueen.

And they said, well, we want him for something else. And so that was for a TV series called Wanted Dead or Alive. And Wanted Dead or Alive, believe it or not, was a big hit when it debuted in September of 1958. And it had the, luckily for him, the blob had just previewed just at that time. It had finally come out in theaters.

So he had the double whammy of the blob and Wanted Dead or Alive appearing at the same time. And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the story of Steve McQueen. And by the way, you can learn so much more by going to a local bookstore and buying this book, or heck, go to Amazon or the usual suspects, wherever you get your books. Steve McQueen, The Salvation of an American Icon by Greg Laurie and Marshall Terrell. And Terrell has written so many books about this subject that we chose to interview him and to have him tell the story of McQueen and what a story it is. I mean, imagine that his entire career almost is predicated on a girl he's dating saying, you're kooky and strange. You'd be a good actor. And of course, he took that as a compliment or a call to action.

And he gave it a shot. And he is very lucky that he was in New York City and ended up with the great Stanford Meisner, one of the great acting teachers, coaches of all time, who did indeed have a gentle touch. And of course, actors are the most insecure people in the world, as you can imagine. And having a man like that tutor and mentor him and then to end up at the Actors Studio around some of the great actors of his generation, studying his craft to become indeed what he was, which was one of the great American actors, not just an icon, but a real talent.

When we come back, more of the untold story of Steve McQueen here on Our American Stories. You wouldn't settle for watching a blurry TV, would you? So why settle for just OK TV sound? Upgrade your streaming and sound all in one with Roku Streambar. This powerful two in one upgrade for any TV lets you stream your favorite entertainment in brilliant 4K HDR picture and hear every detail with auto speech clarity. Whether you're hosting a party or just cleaning the house, turn it up and rock out with iHeart radio and room filling sound. Learn more about Roku Streambar today at Roku dot com.

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And and the range and depth and breadth of his talent is remarkable. A magnificent seven. The greatest skate, Bullet, which, by the way, features the greatest car chase in American history. One of the first great ones, too. And I think his best performance alongside Faye Dunaway.

The Thomas Crown Affair, a slow, cool, burning, brilliant, brilliant movie. Now let's return to Marshall Terrell to continue the story of actor Steve McQueen. In the summers when he was on hiatus from one of Dead or Alive, he did a couple of different movies. He did Never So Few for John Sturgess.

That part was originally written for Sammy Davis Jr., who had said something disparaging about Frank Sinatra on radio. And then he was out and Steve McQueen was in. John Sturgess liked him very much, promised him for his next movie.

He'd have him in the role. That next movie was The Magnificent Seven, which, again, was was filmed on hiatus the following year. And he was he starred opposite Yul Brynner. And of course, he co-starred with a couple of his friends, Charles Bronson, James Coburn and a few other young upstarts. But McQueen wanted to upset the apple cart.

And, you know, he was second build. And but and Yul Brynner was a star. But, you know, Steve McQueen emerged as a star because he had planned and plotted to upstage Yul Brynner whenever he could. So one of the acting choices McQueen made to upstage Brynner. There was a scene where they're they're talking to each other and McQueen is walking back and forth. And Brynner, because he was a little bit smaller, had built a little sand pile to stand on. So as McQueen's walking by and going past them at each scene, he's kicking away a little bit of the sand to the point where Yul Brynner is sinking every every time that McQueen kicks the sand.

So that was the kind of shenanigans that he pulled. So from that performance, a lot of the movie producers started to take note of this young guy. And so a few years later, John Sturges asked him to star in The Great Escape. That's when Steve McQueen turned into a household name. And, you know, when he read the script, he said, everybody's got a little bit.

I don't have a bit. You know, Garner had a turtleneck and, you know, James Coburn had his suitcase and Sturges, you know, was saying, don't worry about it, Steve. Just like Magnificent Seven, you know, he promised them all the camera time as opposed to lines that he'd take care of them. So when they get over to Germany, McQueen's attitude really starts to sour and he's not getting the attention that he wants, especially regarding his part.

So he walked off the set for six weeks. And so what McQueen asked for was another writer to come in and start working on his part again. And from that rewrite, they started developing the bit about throwing the ball up against the cell in solitary confinement, the motorcycle chase and these other parts that would make that character Steve McQueen. And as it turned out, it worked perfectly because McQueen was the breakout star of that movie. And that was the one movie that catapulted him from TV stardom to film stardom. And he was the first actual actor to do that in that era. So he was the very first that catapulted from television to film.

After the great escape, McQueen becomes, you know, the new big star in Hollywood. And he has this attitude of, you know, I'm going to taste all the goodies that Hollywood has to offer. He bought a beautiful home in Brentwood, bought a house in Palm Springs, had tons of sports cars, dated a lot of pretty ladies behind his wife's back. He hung out on the Sunset Strip.

He had a booth at the Whiskey A Go Go because he knew the owner. And so, again, he was going to sample all the all the goodies that Hollywood had to offer to him. After the great escape, McQueen made a couple of he made like a trio of movies that didn't really go anywhere. So his next big film, which started a streak that made him the biggest movie star of the 60s.

And he did five back to back hits in a row. And that was The Cincinnati Kid, Nevada Smith, The Sand Pebbles, Thomas Crown Affair. And then it all ends with Bullet, which was his biggest hit in the 60s and made him a cultural icon and superstar. So he was no longer just a movie star.

He was, you know, in that rarefied era of superstars. With McQueen now on this big role, almost every movie offer came his way with the exception of a movie called The Thomas Crown Affair. And that was because Steve McQueen was always kind of played these blue collar types. And Thomas Crown was a suave debonair, a white collar bank robber. And it was originally offered to Sean Connery, offered to him right after he made his last James Bond movie, You Only Live Twice.

And for whatever reasons, Sean Connery decided not to take it. Then they talked to Rock Hudson and then they talked to a few other people. And so Neil McQueen, his wife, was very, very good for him in terms of his career and picking out movies that she thought would benefit him. And so Thomas Crown, no one had taken up that offer yet.

It was directed by Norman Jewison, who directed McQueen and The Cincinnati Kid. And so one day she's talking to McQueen and she said, you know, it's really a darn shame that Norman doesn't want you. And he goes, what are you talking about? She said The Thomas Crown Affair.

He doesn't want you for it. So she was using some sort of reverse psychology on him. She said, yeah, you know, they talked to Sean Connery, Rock Hudson, everybody in town but you. And so McQueen puffed out his chest and decided, OK, I'm going to call Norman. And Norman told him, you're not right for it, Steve.

You know, you look down at your feet, you shuffle your shoes. Thomas Crown's the kind of person that will look you in the eye and tell you a lie because are you capable of doing that? So McQueen told them that basically, you know, he was ready for the part. He was ready to do it. And it made sense for Jewison because Steve McQueen was a major, major box office star. So if he wanted to get his movie greenlit, it would only make sense to have Steve McQueen in the starring role.

So after Bullet becomes this major, major Hollywood hit, it was definitely the biggest hit of 1968. It was during that period of time where he really started getting into cocaine. He started getting into orgies. And a lot of that downfall had to do with the fact that the Manson family had killed two of his friends, Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring. Sharon Tate was somebody that Steve McQueen said on his deathbed was a girlfriend. And that Jay Sebring, who cut his hair, was his best friend. In Neil McQueen's book, she says the night before the murders that Jay Sebring had come over to their house and given Steve a trim and asked him if he would come to the house the next night and help babysit Sharon, because she was getting ready to have a child and her husband Roman Plansky was out of town.

And so, you know, she wanted people around just to keep her company. And so the next night, according to Neil, Steve McQueen was on his motorcycle ready to go over to the house and saw either some young girl hitchhiking or saw somebody he recognized and spent the evening with her and avoided that whole massacre because he was with somebody else. And then later on, it turned out there was a report in the paper that Susan Atkins had claimed to someone that the Mansons had a death list of celebrities that they were going to kill. And Steve McQueen was one of them on that list. And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the riveting story of Steve McQueen and how he barely escapes being at the Roman Plansky home where the Mansons did their devilish work and escaped death by a narrow chance.

When we come back, more of the life of Steve McQueen here on Our American Stories. Make sure you stream your favorite entertainment in brilliant 4K HDR picture and hear every detail with auto speech clarity. Whether you're hosting a party or just cleaning the house, turn it up and rock out with iHeart radio and room-filling sound. Learn more about Roku Stream Bar today at roku.com.

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Hyundai, there's joy in every journey. And we continue with our American stories and with author Marshall Terrell. Let's continue with the story of actor Steve McQueen.

Here's Marshall. So at the end of the 1960s, Steve McQueen's life is really becoming a mess. He gets a divorce from his wife, his company goes bankrupt, and he also severs his relationship with his longtime agent who helped him become very, very successful. Despite the fact that he carried on endless affairs, he was actually, believe it or not, a family man. He cared very deeply. He loved his wife, and he loved his two children, Chad and Terry. And he came from a broken home, and it horrified him that these two children would now, quote unquote, come from a broken home. That's what makes him so interesting and complex, because on the one hand, he couldn't help himself with women, but on the other hand, he was a family man. And so that family was now broken up because of him. By 1972, Steve McQueen's career is on the upswing again, and he had the one, two, three punch of The Getaway.

Papillon was extremely successful, and The Towering Inferno was the most successful film of all time, with a box office gross of over $300 million in 1975 dollars, up to Jaws, which eclipsed it six months later. He found love again in a young model by the name of Barbara Minty, so she created that new spark in him. So he decided that he was going to move to Santa Paula, California, which is about 60 miles north of Los Angeles. And one of the reasons why he did that was because he wanted to fly antique airplanes, and at the time that was the antique airplane capital of the world. And he bought a ranch, and he was living in a town that really reminded him of the home that he grew up in as a kid, Slater, Missouri.

And, you know, he was happy again. And one of the most interesting things that happened in Santa Paula was the gentleman that taught him how to fly, his name was Sammy Mason, who was a former World War II pilot. And after a couple lessons, Steve picked up on his spirit or his vibe, whatever you would want to call it, and he said, Sammy, there's something different about you.

I can't quite put my finger on it. And Sammy said, well, Steve, I'm a born-again Christian. And so rather than that turning off Steve, Steve was intrigued. And here's Pastor Leonard DeWitt talking about his relationship with Steve McQuain. Sam wasn't the preacher type. He was rock solid in his faith, and he lived the life. He saw in Sam someone that he could trust, someone who genuinely cared about him. Both families just embraced him. And so he saw in them a quality of life.

You know, they prayed over their meals. They were respectful. They were supportive. They were encouraging.

They were just rock solid. He realizes there's something a whole lot better than I've ever experienced. So when they invited him to church, that was no big deal. He was ready. I don't know what he thought he was going to experience, but he trusted them. And when he started coming, he just felt at home. The people didn't bother him. You know, they weren't asking for autographs or anything.

The Mason family always sat up in the balcony. They had six children, and he just sat with the whole family. I think he'd been coming about three or four months, but one Sunday I was out in the foyer greeting the people. And I felt someone tap me on the shoulder, and I turned around and he said, Pastor, I'm Steve McQueen. And I said, Oh, hi, Steve. I heard that you were worshipping with us. And he said, I wonder if you'd have some time one of these days where we could get together and talk. And we met at the old, the old Santa Paula Airport restaurant.

We met, oh, probably about two o'clock in the afternoon so there wouldn't be anybody there. He had a lot of questions about Christ, but he also wanted to know, can you trust the Bible? Is it accurate?

Is it reliable? You know, is it going to make me a kook? He wanted to know what difference would Christ make in a person's life? Is it going to be more of what I'm used to? Or is Christ really going to bring about a change that I will be happy with? So those are the kinds of questions, not only about Christ personally, but, you know, the Bible says that if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.

All things pass away and all things become new. And so Steve really wanted to know, is this real? So during that two hours at the airport, when he's firing one question after another, finally he just sort of sat back and he says, well, that's all my questions. And I just sort of smiled and said, well, Steve, I have just one.

And he grinned. He says, you want to know if I'm a born again Christian, don't you? And I said, well, that's really what's important to me. So he said, you remember the Sunday?

And it was probably maybe three or four weeks before. Anyway, he said on that particular Sunday at the end of the service, you gave an opportunity for us to receive Christ. And he said, that's when I invited Christ into my life and was born again. And he told me at that particular point, I don't know hardly anything about the Bible.

So I'm going to be counting upon you. He says, could we meet on a regular basis? And so we set up a program where we met once a week and we would spend a full hour in Bible study and prayer, and we would do it out at his acreage or his ranch. After he told me about the tumor and about the cancer, we just sat there for just a few minutes. And finally, I just said, Steve, how do you feel about this? What's going through your mind now? And he says, well, now that I'm a Christian, I really do want to live because I'd like to share what I have found with others.

But if I don't make it, I know where I'm going. I would say in his conversion that Steve discovered that being a Christian is far more than being religious. It's a relationship. And he loved that relationship. And he was growing. He was growing in that relationship. That became his life.

And here's Steve McQueen in a private audio tape about two weeks before his death talking about his personal faith. When you mentioned earlier about a clue in my life, well, that clue was finding the Lord in my life. I'd like to think that I'm a good Christian. I'm trying to be. It's not easy.

Change from people's bodies and everything else. But I know the Lord, what I have to offer, what's happened to me. I know now I've changed a lot. I used to be Marvin Moscow and now my body's gone and broken.

But my spirit isn't broken. People always ask me, did Steve McQueen really become a Christian or did he do it to save himself? Well, other people say, well, you know, Steve wasn't that religious. And I always just point them to Steve McQueen's own words. He made this tape while he was in Plaza Santa Maria in Mexico about two weeks before his death.

And all I say to them is, let's just go to the tape. And a great job on the production by Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Marshall Terrell for sharing the story of Steve McQueen to pick up his book, Steve McQueen, The Salvation of an American Icon, and it's by Greg Laurie and Marshall Terrell. Go to your local bookstore or go to Amazon or the usual suspects wherever you get books. And also a special thanks to Pastor Leonard DeWitt for sharing the story of Steve McQueen's conversion. By the way, he converted to Christianity before the diagnosis of cancer. He met this pilot instructor and he said, this is how to live a life. And he wanted to know more. And he got curious.

And that curiosity led to his conversion. The other remarkable part of this story is McQueen walking out on the set of The Great Escape for six weeks. This got him the reputation for being difficult shortly. But that was soon to be not true, because what happened in the end is he fought for a better version of the role he was about to play and a writer who made it happen. And in the end, it made the film and made his career, too. And what's most interesting about McQueen's story is that he did love his family and he did love his wife, but he was a broken man and all he knew was what he knew. And that was what he learned from his father and his mother. His father was never there.

His mother was an alcoholic. And that's why we love doing these stories. We don't deify these people when we do talk about stars. We cover their life stories, the good, the bad and the ugly. Steve McQueen's story here on Our American Story.

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