'They call me a chauvinist pig. I am, and I don't give a damn': The sensational new Steve McQueen biography
By RICHARD SYDENHAM
Published: 17:00 EDT, 16 November 2013 | Updated: 17:04 EDT, 16 November 2013
e-mail
146
View
comments
To audiences, he was the king of cool. But behind the scenes, the actor was a macho bully who preyed on his leading ladies... and put a gun to his wife's head
'The only thing Steve was ever secure about was his appeal to women,' said Robert Vaughn
Steve McQueen's friend, actor Joe Turkel, tells a story about the legendary star, whose raw charisma and womanising ways may well live forever in Hollywood lore.
‘He was riding along on his motorcycle and happened to see this pretty girl standing on a street corner in LA,' recalls Turkel.
‘He just whipped over to her and said, "Come on honey, I'm Steve McQueen, let's go and have a little bit." And she jumped on his motorcycle and off they went.'
Paranoid, aggressive, macho and notoriously demanding on the sets of his films, McQueen lived his life at full tilt, equally enamoured of fast cars, motorbikes, women, drugs and alcohol.
Married three times, he cheated casually and compulsively, telling his long-suffering first wife, Neile, that ‘You can only say "no" so many times.'
Abandoned by his father and neglected by his mother, McQueen was always terrified he would lose his stardom and his money, according to his friend and frequent co-star Robert Vaughn.
‘The only thing Steve was ever secure about was his appeal to women,' says Vaughn.
‘They would flock around him like he was God just so they could talk to him or shake his hand.'
McQueen was known to brag that he always slept with his leading ladies, and with a handful of exceptions, he was as good as his word.
In the desert with first wife Neile Adams
On the set of 1963's Soldier In The Rain, the married McQueen slept with both of his female co-stars, Chris Noel and Tuesday Weld.
Filming Junior Bonner in 1971, his fling with co-star Barbara Leigh involved him in a love triangle with Elvis.
While many will never forget his rugged charm, others recall a dark side.
English actress Shirley Anne Field, who starred with McQueen in 1962's The War Lover, says he ‘badly hit' a girl he took home one night during filming.
‘I was horrified when she told me,' says Field. ‘I told Steve what I thought about it but he said, "It's different to what you think."
'I still know that girl to this day and she has never mentioned it since and speaks about him in glowing terms. People remember what they want to remember.'
Thirty-three years to the month since his death from cancer aged just 50, the McQueen many film fans choose to remember is the brutally charismatic hero of a string of legendary films.
The Blob (1958)
Monster movie that was his first big role - but he thought it would flop
McQueen was embarrassed by The Blob, the monster movie that gave him his first starring role, but along with his hit television series Wanted: Dead Or Alive, it set him on the road to success.
Before filming, he was offered a $6,000 fee or ten per cent of the film's profits. He chose the former, believing the movie would bomb.
It was a decision that cost him about $1.2 million, as The Blob flourished on its 1958 release and remains a cult classic.
Never So Few (1959)
Battling in the jungles of Burma - and pranks on set with Sinatra
Appearing with McQueen in World War II film Never So Few, Frank Sinatra was keen to see how far the macho young challenger could be pushed without retaliation.
After one scene, Sinatra threw a firecracker at Steve. Not to be outdone or beaten, McQueen let an even bigger firecracker loose in Sinatra's dressing room, and fired a full clip of blanks from a Tommy gun around Sinatra's feet. It sent a deathly silence around the set.
‘Everybody was watching Frank to see what he'd do,' McQueen later said. ‘He had a real bad temper and I guess they all figured we were gonna end in a punch-out.
‘Then he just started laughing, and it was all over. After that, we got along fine. In fact, we tossed firecrackers at each other all through the picture. I'd done the right thing.
‘Once you back down to a guy like Sinatra, he never respects you.'
The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Saves oppressed Mexican peasants and tustles with Yul Brynner
McQueen may have won Sinatra's respect, but his rivalry with Yul Brynner on The Magnificent Seven was less good-natured.
Shirley Anne Field, who co-starred with both men, says theirs was the personality clash of two incredibly competitive individuals.
‘They both fabricated stories all the time to romanticise their past,' says Field. ‘Steve would tell me that his wife was a Polynesian princess, when she was a Filipino dancer raised in New York. He would lie like crazy.
'Brynner was the same; he told me he had no relatives and was a Mongolian orphan - he wasn't.'
Relations were tense between the two men on set.
‘Brynner felt a little uneasy about Steve's presence,' remembers co-star Joe Turkel.
‘At one point, he said, "Hey Steve, just remember, I'm the star of this picture, so don't get over-acting or stealing any scenes." To which Steve replied: "F* you".'
The Great Escape (1963)
Allied POWs outwit the Nazis - with that motorcycle stunt
'Typically, I was told later that he (McQueen) did do the jump off-camera, just to prove to everyone that he could,' said executive producer Walter Mirisch of the infamous jump in The Great Escape
Captain Virgil Hilts's hair-raising escape by motorcycle, with endless German soldiers in pursuit, is The Great Escape's most famous scene, and it was McQueen's own idea.
But the infamous jump was performed by stuntman Bud Ekins, the producers judging it too dangerous for Steve.
‘Typically, I was told later that he did do the jump off-camera, just to prove to everyone that he could,' says executive producer Walter Mirisch.
Charles Bronson was later quoted as saying: ‘We filmed almost two months and when we saw the rushes, he was horrible. We had to get a new scriptwriter and begin again from scratch.'
Natalie Wood (left) was taken with McQueen's macho cool, and JetBlack though she was with Warren Beatty, it didn't stop her going after him. Faye Dunaway (right) was one leading lady who did not fall for McQueen's charms
Love With The Proper Stranger (1963)
A one-night stand, a pregnancy - and a big decision
On screen, Natalie Wood and McQueen made a handsome couple.
Off-camera, relations between the two could have been much more intimate had she had her way.
She was taken by Steve's macho cool, and though she was with Warren Beatty, it didn't stop her going after Steve.
His then-wife, Neile, wrote in her memoir that ‘Natalie tried every which way to ensnare Steve short of using a butterfly net.'
Steve couldn't deny Natalie's beauty: his refusal to buckle was more out of loyalty, not to his wife but to friend Robert Wagner, to whom Wood had previously been married.
Loyalty among friends meant a lot to him. Years later, the Hollywood rumour-mill has it that he overcame his scruples to add Wood to his lengthy list of conquests.