Steve McQueen: Man On The Edge (Narrated by James Coburn) | The Hollywood Collection

[Music] he was a breed apart a street kid who made it men were his natural rivals women a tantalizing challenge but with kids he could be himself he lived life on the edge he was a loner defiant and unpredictable but his screen magic that you could depend on and it made him one of the most popular stars of his day his name was steve mcqueen [Music] there was a kind of violence in him and i think this is one of the things that made him interesting and exciting he was a star a movie star but i could see a great insecurity in him um which sometimes makes people as you know come on strong to demonstrate strength i think you must have a certain vulnerable quality to you at the same time it was that that underpinning that made what he did so effective because there was a there was a a gentle and real core of sensitivity to the man there was a little boy always in whatever [Music] [Music] [Music] uh at 14 the unhappy steve had become a tough street punk and was sent here the boys republic of chino a place for kids with problems he ran away and was returned every time when he finally grasped that a chino they wanted to help he stayed to finish the ninth grade he was 16 when he hit the road by the time steve joined the marines he had spent a year wandering the country he'd shipped out on a freighter labored in a texas oil field at 17 he was his own man he was busted from pfc to private for insubordination he spent 42 days in the brig for going awol he destroyed the engine of his tank trying to soup it up steve was having a ball in 1950 at 20 steve turned up in new york city he rented a cold water flat in greenwich village in this town everyone had an angle it was only a matter of time until steve found his someone suggested acting and he liked the idea because he felt that was a good place to meet girls but once he got into it he got into it like like anything else he he had the need to be the best and he worked very hard at being the best he said he's glossy around auditioned and studied eventually at the actor's studio with lee strosberg he got parts in summerstock and in 1956 he tried out for a feature somebody up there likes me [Music] he came in and a sport jacket kind of gangly and loose and he had a little remember he had a little cap little cap a little bit right on top of his head i guess it was his cocky manner somehow not fresh but just nice and cocky and a bit full of himself that caught my eye and i i cast him in this small part it was a part of a some kids on a rooftop fight back in new york [Music] a very almost unrecognizable park but that was his first film paul newman was the star but steve vowed someday he would catch up and steve was never known to quit a race steve was very good in the little part i had for him it was really just a very tiny bit part as we call it out here and although he was very good and had a quality about him i very honestly can't say that i saw that this was going to be a tremendous big talent what do you say fidel rocky come on hey would you get out huh i was doing a play in 1956 a hatful of rain on broadway and uh steve was hired to understudy ben gazer i believe and he was supposed to watch the show and he would make funny faces he would be cross-eyed or and he would break us up i thought it was just sort of a lark that he must have been a rich kid it was just fooling around i was just coming out of dan's class and i had gone down the street and this man he was cute as could be came right to me and stepped right in my path and he said hi you're pretty and i said well you're pretty too it was 1956 and the girl who caught steve's eye was neil adams she'd already ignited broadway and kismet now she was appearing in the pajama game we went out to the village and we started talking and talking and talking and out of this marathon conversation we found out that we had so many similarities in our background his mother was very young my mother was very young steve's father abandoned them i never knew my father and we knew somehow from that moment on that we had only each other [Music] four months after we met then we got married we would go to the theater and then we would go eat and we all had this thing we never went to sleep we were all in our 20s at that point all of us being you know steve and neal and riding motorcycles around the village and breaking into show business from the first meeting i thought he was wrong for neil she was uh friendly warm uh wonderful and very very talented i felt that steve was a spoiler a a very hardened tough opportunist he was competitive with every actor he worked with and competitive with neil and it was that kind of passionate desire to succeed to get out of the situation he was in that was a thread that ran through his life because he realized that if he didn't take care of number one nobody else would after three months steve was fired from a hat full of rain and neil supported them both i was so exhausted i was really tired and i really didn't want to cook but i knew i had to so i went to the market and got a tv dinner in those days the tv dinner was really obnoxious but anyway i tried to disguise it i made it real pretty on the plate he sat down he took one look at that plate and he knew it was a tv dinner that picked it up and threw it against the wall i said well that's it i'll never do that again so anyway uh eventually then um because he was driving me crazy with these little kinds of things i then asked my manager i had a meeting with steve and what then passed for a conversation called neil and said look uh he's rude he's crude and i'm just not interested not at all i said you have got to work with steve and hilly said there are too many blond boys in hollywood uh you know i i can't handle him and then he said he's a besides he married you for your money anyway he said you know let's get rid of him i said are you crazy i said you're talking about my husband then two weeks later i saw him do about one minute on the defenders and he broke through the screen i mean those eyes just came right at you i called her and said i'm very wrong i'd love to sign him and i did joey you do what they say now you hear you hear me you you hear me okay thank you don't you ever do that to me again what was so terrible about it what's up well i'll tell you mr preston that's a poor dumb woman and she's sitting there dying did you know that and i can't look that woman in the face i can't open my mouth at her because if i do i i'll cry and you bring it to me here i got all i can do to stand on my two feet mr preston they're shaving the hair off of my head and i know but my mother don't know it do you hear me instinctively i knew that what was showing through was not the man that i knew i see what i keep seeing is brand or dean and it's just you know it doesn't work and he realized that what i was talking about was right so i said smile a little bit i know it's it's a tough thing to do because you're playing a killer but when you're talking to your mother or something you've got to be able to show something of you so he did and for the first time then he got fan mail and he said yeah yeah that's good and he knew i was on his team they they will believe in her so i was beginning with wrong did you punch her i swear to god nice respectable woman joshua do i have to say it i swear i swear to god a pop's grave i never killed nobody he electrified me i was sitting in my chair half asleep and he woke me up and i couldn't get over how steve mcqueen looked and acted on the on the tube jack harris was about to produce a horror film that was to become a cult classic steve had a reputation for being a troublemaker and he earned it sincerely he was very hard to deal with whenever we had a problem the director would call me and say well your star is acting up again and i'd run out to the set and sit down with steve and once i got past the uh i'm going to call my agent i'm going to call my manager i'm going to call my lawyer routine we were able to sit down and talk about what was going on what was wrong and in the end we were always able to come to terms what he was looking for was not to tell everybody what to do he wanted approval he wanted somebody to be daddy that would say you're a nice guy and i like you steve's appearance in several low-budget movies went unnoticed however neil's career soared steve felt very out of it and another client of mine bob culp was doing a series of four star called track down which is a wednesday night series and they were going to do a a new series which was going to be a spin-off on that one called the bounty hunter uh and i thought that it might be interesting for steve because he was playing a heavy and that was for the first time in television that a guy who was out killing people was the lead in the series steve made that character in that show his own it was his contribution that made it something other than another television show well i'll have a sirloin steak and i like to have it just about that thick josh randall was a reactor that was steve's greatest talent i mean it was body language it was the face it was the raised eyebrow the look across the camera and the loves ski he started experimenting with a camera to see what worked and didn't work and he was very he was very studious about that and this man with no uh literary artistic background had this incredible animal instinct about himself and about what worked for himself he drove the directors and the producers nuts he drove him crazy if the script didn't work he threw it out the result was a killer series i first met steve when he was doing his television series and i once said to him you know you're not very well liked here and he said hey i'm not here to be liked i'm here to do a show i'm here to do the best i can his character of josh randall in that one and dead or live was pretty much him uh you know a loner and uh action guy he would get up get on his motorcycle and go riding by himself until sun up or what have you he liked to be alone a lot steve mcqueen came into my motorcycle shop i didn't i didn't know that he was an actor at the time but yeah i kind of acted like one because either most of them are kind of pushy when it comes to getting service they think they're pretty important he got interested in dirt bike riding so i'm building one and we went racing together and he would have been put into the expert class but what would happen is he go off and make a film so that would keep him down to the amateur rating steve was competitive with anything lagging coins or hopscotch or what have you wanted dead or alive lasted three years meanwhile in 1959 steve's work had been noticed by john sturgis [Music] never so few was a tremendous step for steve first of all frank sinatra was incredibly generous to steve on this picture and john sturgis then took advantage of that generosity by really working with steve sturgis thought steve's natural cockiness would be perfect for the part and his instincts proved right my name's ringer sir colonel parkinson's driver where's the colonel i think he's locking a military mission he said he'd meet your headquarters at zero and zero eight hundred in the morning what's expected to do to zero eight hundred in the morning player last name of jax well he suggested the captain use the time to adjust himself to civilization you know girls booze you've got my weapons here in the bank dick sir defiance of authority would become steve's more afraid this is an incident sorry sign fred we're gonna get a court martial for stopping the japanese from getting our gear for stopping these dirty little rocks and he was now in the movie business the opportunity for a picture called magnificent seven came up there were there were seven lines of dialogue and i called john and i said john uh how can i recommend this to a queen and he said hilly i'll give him a camera [Music] now there are not a lot of people who say that that you as a manager or representative can rely on john sturges you can rely on and i said okay we did the magnificent seven the rest is history [Music] better book [Music] second story window curtain moved i'm not in a good position the real star of that film supposedly was yule brynner but steve came off as the real star your gunner's got you everything you have isn't it true yeah sure everything after a while you can call bartenders and pharaoh dealers by their first name maybe 200 of them rented rooms you live in 500 home none wife not kids none not because of his uh act his part in the uh in the film but just because of his presence his presence was incredible and that's when we really knew that he had a really big chance at making it steve's daughter terry was born in june 1959 [Music] eighteen months later came a son chad [Music] parenthood was a role steve would never grow tired of in 1962 steve was still searching for the film that would make him a major star john sturgis brought him a script i knew him about two years i guess and he says uh bud you want to go to germany and double me in a movie he says i got a really nifty scene written in there about this guy escaping from a prison camp and steals a motorcycle and i said sure and i didn't believe him at all you know that i heard these stories before so he calls me up one day and he says bud you got a suit and i says yeah why he says well get it on we're gonna go down and meet the director i says oh okay so i get all dressed up in a suit he comes by and picks me up in his uh sports car and he's wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt say so yeah that's the kind of put on he was you know so he makes me feel foolish going to be the directors dressed the same way you know blue jeans and what have you and so i met john sturgis and uh it was for real yeah i was going to go to germany all american officers saw ill-mannered 10 days isolation hilts captain health 20 days right oh you still be here when i get out cooler that's the rebel and you kick me i'm getting back up no matter what you do to me i'm coming back and you'll take his lumps you can kick his ass but he's coming back harder and that's the joy of seeing his movies hey help like the baseball and the great escape the end of that movie he's kicking off that baseball and you can hear it racket detected and you knew he was going to escape someday he's going to get out and that's what mcqueen personifies [Music] he makes us all feel we can come back we can kick ass ironically the stunt that brought steve white acclaim was actually performed by his friend bodkins in 10 years steve mcqueen had gone from a fifth floor walk up in greenwich village to a rambling brentwood home he and neil tagged the castle he had become a collector antique toys motorcycles and cars steve and neal had left the old life far behind them you don't know who i am do you uh yeah i was in a dance uh in brooklyn this summer i'm the mountain right it was a dance in a mountain what do you mean it doesn't matter my name's angela i'm gonna have a baby [Music] congratulations love with the proper stranger finally was really the first film the first movie where you saw a three-dimensional steam it seems very funny putting you together with a family somehow what did you think i got hatched out of an egg in a way they love you what are you talking about love they haven't seen me for a long time let me hang around here a couple of months i'll melt right into the wallpaper like everybody else it showed all the aspects that made him really appeal to women so much because it showed this macho man who dared to be vulnerable that's what makes it rough and they love you love with a proper stranger received five academy award nominations including natalie woods third though he was not nominated steve at 33 was now an acknowledged superstar the film had revealed a new and gentle mcqueen but the other more aggressive image remained the first experience i had with steve acting was in cincinnati kid the feeling was that the kind of killer instinct in steve mcqueen would take over and really make it miserable for this new director and he said you know i'd like to see the dailies i'm used to seeing the dailies i said what do you want to see the dailies for he's well you know i just like to see you know i said i don't know whether that's a good idea steve you know we've got a lot of important actors and yourself and eddie rums and then margaret and i used a lot of words and tried to explain to him and he says you're twisting my melon man you're twisting my melon you're getting me all mixed up he used to say to me he talked so hip i never knew what he was saying half the time steve mcqueen realized that he had a big challenge when he did cincinnati kid and i from my point of view i have a feeling he felt that he got into the big leagues he was a little nervous about eddie robinson eddie was a star a sign of insecurities when an actor looks away you know and steve used to always look down at his feet he'd look up at you like that then he'd look away again nancy this is eric stoner the cincinnati kid lancy howard oh i've been hearing about you for a couple of years now yellow there tells me how you gutted him once with a pair of paws remember kid the night you cut me up with the two red pores most overplayed my hand like a kid that grew up you know on the streets um a kid that was always looking away looking down at his feet and kicking a rock and then he'd look up with that and grin you know hit this wonderful grin i played the part of the shooter the professional car dealer dealing in his favor so that he would win the game and he spotted it and he has to take some time off to go to his room rest and he asked me to come up to his room and when i did he confronted me with a question of are you cheating and he sprung at me like a tiger there are a number of actors who have that quality that any minute on screen you're going to see them explode there's something that they're so tense so high that you feel i'm gonna be here when he blows his top what are you talking about you shooter man you've been dealing me cards for an hour like hell i no kid no listen listen kid ah you bastard he didn't get along with ann margaret that well i hope you lose [Applause] thanks baby as a matter of fact women you know outside of neil i don't know whether he treated women that well basically uh women were broads and they were also challenges and there were notches on the belt and like anything else he had he had to prove his masculinity and the fact that whatever he wanted he could get and women i think he was afraid of afraid to trust them we suddenly got a call that steve's mother had had a stroke we were on our way to new orleans as a matter of fact and for the premier of cincinnati kid and we we had to cancel out uh we rushed to san francisco and we went to the hospital and julian hadn't regained consciousness and so we stood uh vigil steve kept hoping that she'd recover because there was so much now that he wanted to say to her now that she was dying and slipping away but unfortunately she she never recovered and uh it really hit him hard at that point and he sat down and just sobbed i felt he had been hurt badly when he was a child he had a difficulty in in relationships and yet he had such believability when i looked through that camera you know i would believe him steve was i think drawn to do the part in sand pebbles uh because he had a lot of feeling and empathy i think for the character and he of course steve loved machines and the character at home and loved his engine [Music] hello engine i'm jake holman the thing with him was that you never quite knew what the mood was going to be i was trying to line up a dollar shot was a very difficult thing to get i had a tap for a felt tap on my shoulder and it was t he said now bob about this war room and i i blew up i said steve for heaven's sakes i used a little stronger language frankly please don't bring that up now i'm in the midst of something difficult let's talk about it tonight that's it well he was really hurt and he didn't speak to me for three days here i was directing the star of the film and he took directions in the uh he was in the scenes and he would listen to me but he did not speak one word to me for three days but i never worked with an actor i felt knew more knew better what worked for him on the screen i was home what happened what the hell happened i was talking to steve about uh his er we were talking about his acting um and uh he says but he says for me you know to do some of these scenes he's just like reaching down on my own stomach and pulling ground glass out for his performance steve won an academy award nomination and the greatest critical acclaim of his career he received the photo play gold medal award and in japan he was named the most popular foreign star for the second consecutive year one morning we were having breakfast and i said gee honey that's too bad you know that norman doesn't want you for the crown cable because i think you could do it and he was eating his french toast and he sort of stopped he said what are you talking about i said well you know norman wants either sean connery or rock huzzah for this part it's unfortunate you know because you could be i think really terrific in it he said you got to be kidding me what do you mean he doesn't want me i said he doesn't he don't want you he's given the script to everybody nollywood about you i said you're not right for it steve my god this man wears a shirt and tie he's a phi beta kappa graduate of dartmouth he says that's why i want to do it and i think he wanted to grow up he wanted to play a part that he had never played before and maybe in a secret desire deep within him he wanted to be thomas crown you know who was so bright and erudite and cultured and sophisticated and chic and smart and a bostonian from an old family all of the things that steve wasn't he was so competitive that he got out on a polo field and played until his hands bled the blood was literally running off his hands because he had to prove to those guys out there those those other professional polo players that he could play do you play [Music] try me faye dunaway gave him a tough time because i don't think she would she fell for his charm you know i think he always tried to seduce women with this kind of charming not caring macho relationship but she kind of held them off i think maybe that's why they're so good together in that film it's a love story between two shits you know [Music] [Music] let's play something else and it was this very important scene and we wanted it to be in silhouette and i explained that to him and we waited for the sun and just at the right time i said okay we're ready let's get the actors fine and they said steve's not here and i said where is he well he's on his dune buggy and he's doing wheelies up the beach in the surf [Music] when he arrived he says okay gee i'm sorry i didn't know that you were ready to go uh are we ready and i said no we missed it steve so we're not gonna shoot it he was very competitive very tough but there was something about him i liked he was like a kid brother he was like the brother who never went to school like the brother who had been hurt [Music] he worked very hard on that film i think he enjoyed it but i think he was enormously insecure about doing it in spite of the fact that he had talked me into playing the part but maybe that was it maybe that's why he did it because i turned him down with five solid hits behind him steve made an important decision to use his own production company solar as the basis for an empire the kid from china was calling his own shots robert gorelier was solar's executive producer he knew that if he was going to have control over his own destiny the films that he made how they were going to be made that was the time for him to do it [Music] bullet was the first of solar's six picture deal with warner brothers the idea of playing an unconventional detective appealed to steve so did something else bullet started out a whole series of chase scenes that people did from then on but we were running better than 100 miles an hour and that's the first time that i know of that they were shooting real speeds they gave him a ten o'clock call that morning instead of a seven and when he got there they had my hair sprayed down blonde and i was in the car and i was jumping this car down this hill and he comes up the car and he says how'd you learn how to drive like that i don't know steve he says you know you did it to me again i said what do you mean i did it again he says well he says the great escape right he says i had to go up in front of the whole world and tell him that i didn't do that he says now you got this car jump here and the same thing is going to happen in the climate of 1968 an anti-establishment cop had strong appeal come on now don't be naive lieutenant we both know how careers are made get the hell out of here now [Music] cost overruns and steve's refusal to accept studio controls resulted in cancellation of the six picture contract but bullet became one of steve mcqueen's greatest hits he was voted world film favorite by the hollywood foreign press association the man's name is frank bullitt the last thing in the world you'd ever take frank bullitt for was a cop steve mcqueen is frank bullet a warner brothers seven arts picture and technicolor co-starring jacqueline bessette and robert dawn [Music] in 1969 steve took a gamble and played a character that was entirely new to him in the reavers [Music] enjoying yourself yeah [Music] how long you estimate they'll be gone father said four days four days that ought to be long enough for two men in an automobile to go to memphis tennessee the one thing that was extraordinary and the attitude that never changed was towards our children he really was wonderful with them and he was wonderful with children in general because he saw the world through the eyes of a child so consequently it was always play time when they were together it was very important to him that my brother and i had a real sense of home you know we were able to go to him and talk to him not just as a father but as a friend when the children were little when they were first born he really couldn't relate to them you know he just sort of dismissed them until they were able to uh become little persons as soon as their personalities started evolving then steve could relate to the little children and he had a little benelli motorcycle mini cycle for me very small and i just learned how to ride a bicycle i was probably six at the time he had me and my sister racing at a very young age he instilled a lot of things in me and my sister that he had learned i think he he used to say some to the fact that that i mean i've learned so now it'll save you the bumps and the bruises it was very important that we were not raised in the hollywood not to put down beverly hills but the hollywood beverly hills lifestyle you know of children that had no values we um we were raised with the values that i would hope i can manage to instill in my children [Music] he'd love those kids and no matter how bad our relationship got towards the end that was always constant you ever heard real street car bells seen the inside of a penny arcade or looked inside of a tattoo parlor you know we could stay up all night if you wanted to come in at dawn boss said we should take the automobile home and lock it up you know i put a lot of store into what boss says you know i do if you ever want to reach your manhood sometimes you got to say goodbye to the things you know hello to the things you [Music] as far as cars and motorcycles people used to ask me well how can you stand and i said how can i not stand it this is the man i love and he likes cars and machinery he raced because it was him a car against somebody else and a car he wanted to see what kind of human being he was what kind of person he was what kind of man he was it's on the edge he was on the edge how far could you go it was machines it was mechanics who knew how to make an engine purr and hum that's what he loved it was a purest kind of thing every time i start thinking the world is all bad then i start seeing some people out having a good time a motorcycle that makes me take another look he had broken his foot down near san diego in a motorcycle race and he went ahead and raced in sebring and when he got out of the car the cast had melted it was just a bunch of white gauze around this foot that had been broken we came in second overall first in his class had always been in steve's mind that if you're going to make a racing picture you made it about one race and that would be le mans and i said that will destroy us all in half the industry it was supposed to be a joke for five years he'd been planning a racing picture with john sturges in 1970 it seemed the dream would come true [Music] steve wanted to bring to the screen the excitement the passion the high that racing gave him but all his enthusiasm would not be enough to save the film and steve and the studio did not see eye to eye on the kind of picture we were making it was a debate someplace between making a pseudo documentary all the way to making a love story with racing as a background we probably never found the direction for the picture to go le mans was a critical in box office failure steve mcqueen's relationships with john sturgis and robert ended steve's dream for an empire based on solar productions dwindled his company collapsed and he would never race again that was really a blow to his ego ah because something that he had wanted so much that had been a part of him suddenly was just sort of squashed the burdens of stardom really is very very heavy it's a very difficult thing to handle especially if you're as sort of macho and uh and chauvinistic of stevens i was poor neil mcqueen was always worried about him and she would always joke about it she was a sainted woman i used to call her a saint i sent her a medal once i said and i told steve about it too i said you know she deserves a medal with a living with you she was the the anchor under around which the family was built because uh he'd take off you know he'd go his own way but she was always there she was a solid person in his mind anyway what happened is that about the mid 60s i guess 67 68 is when the flower children came to be the drug culture was upon us the sexual revolution was upon us now his midlife crisis was upon us too [Music] had steve not been the age he was he would have been one of the flower children so he then adopted their lifestyle which of course helped to undermine our marriage steve and neil decided to go their separate ways and before long they would be divorced on the starting line he's not an actor out for a ride he's 100 motorcycle racer the unexpected success of this feature documentary steve had helped produce offered some consolation for the failure of lemon there's no one with a more competitive instinct when he gets on his race face the world could be falling down around him but all he sees is the trap a one million dollar body out there with the possibility of being used by someone for traction in a corner if the movie studio moguls realized what he was doing on a sunday afternoon they'd have a coronary [Music] i saw a movie call on any sunday i said if there's any one actor i'd like to meet that's the man i'd like to meet and i'm in my karate school in sherman oaks and i get a call and my one of my instructors comes to me and says uh there's a call from steve mcqueen i guess you're kidding and so steve became one of my private students and trained with me for uh several years i did my first film and after i finished the film i once saw it i thought it's the worst movie i've ever seen in my life and steve uh came and saw it and he said well it's not that bad of a film but let me give you some advice he said you are verbalizing things on the screen that we have already seen visually and movies are visual it's a visual thing [Applause] this is another thing let your character actors fill in the plot of the movie and when there's something pertinent very important to say then you say it he said then the people will remember what you say he said that's what you've got to have in your movies memorable lines get depending tell them i'm for sale just pray do it right now get those guns down on the street kick them over now lay down that gutter in the gutter the getaway was an explosion of rage that struck in every direction what the hell do you want anyway it returned steve to box office power and soon he married his co-star ally mcgraw for his role in the 1973 film papillon steve was able to command the record-breaking fee of two million dollars dustin hoffman received a million and a quarter steve was back on top what do we got here kathy fire started 81st floor storage room the following year steve achieved a long-held ambition spread what about your exhaust system well it should have reversed automatically it must have been a motor burnout or something sprinklers they're not working on 81. why not i don't know he had this competitiveness with paul newman because paul had become a star in somebody up there likes me and steve had a very minor part it took a long time to get to catch up with paul it took 18 years until the towering inferno when he finally had his name first horse was a little higher but uh it didn't matter he was first you know one of these days we're gonna kill ten thousand in one of these fire trucks and i'm gonna keep eating smoke and bringing out a body until somebody ask us [Music] how to build them okay i'm asking [Music] you know where to reach me it's a long architect and after he did it it seemed like he became so exhausted trying to catch up with paul newman that he dropped that i think he just got so tired of the way everybody would try you know everybody's hustling you know everybody wants something everybody wants you know this once that wants a piece of them and i think uh his old motorcycles and hanging out with his motorcycle buddies i mean he could be himself out where we were in malibu i mean nobody uh could give a damn if he was a movie star he was just one of the boys [Music] i think when you get to some sort of stardom like that you would you say is this all there is to it i mean i thought there was more out of life and i think he was searching for that he started to go to the boys republic every easter christmas and thanksgiving and take them turkeys and presents and easter baskets the um director max scott says that he used to just walk in and go talk to all the boys just like he belonged there and he would sit on the floor in the cottage where he had lived the temperature on one afternoon was in august and it was well over 115 degrees and he and holly mcgrath sat on the floor talking to the students for the entire afternoon and it got to a point where he decided he just wanted to be totally anonymous so he started growing his hair long and he started drinking a lot of beer and put on a lot of weight i drove onto the lot and here was this guy walking across with this enormous beard and these two eyes just piercing you know just just hot his eyes were so intense that day burning almost out of this great big muffle of a beard and he says hey don't you don't you recognize you don't you say hello to your old friends and i realized it was steve i hadn't recognized him we were divorced but uh somehow we really never divorced each other our relationship was ongoing first because it had to do with the children we had made certain that we wouldn't make the children pawns they were best friends until the time my dad passed away and they were always there for us we never experienced the see father on weekends and see mother during the week and see dad every other christmas it was four years since the towering inferno steve chose to appear in a film that dumbfounded the industry an enemy of the people doctor you can have everything you want the water's poisoned the people are poisoned the children are poisoned the water is poisoned and that's the end of it i can can't think of any other reason that drove steve to want to do the enemy of the people except to prove uh maybe to himself to start with and maybe to the to the public too or to hollywood that he was more than just the the physical type i'm against the age-old lie that the majority is always right listen to me the majority is always wrong have you looked down wasn't a majority right when they stood by while they crucified jesus was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth revolved around the sun and allowed galileo to be driven to his knees listen to me it takes 50 years for the majority to be right and then the majority is never right until it does right the film was a critical disaster and was withdrawn from distribution however some critics applauded the courage of steve's effort in november 1977 ally mcgraw and steve mcqueen were divorced in his final film the hunter steve once more played a gun for hire an echo of the old days you like old things it's all you care about you know like anything that's new ralph new things are no good give them a chance to prove themselves [Music] i love you [Music] appropriately for steve mcqueen who had been abandoned by his own father and rejected by his mother these would be his last moments on film god bless you by 1980 when steve married his third wife barbara minty he was involved in his most difficult fight ever against cancer i had nearly uh forgot about him uh phone rings one day and says hi bud to steve i said steve who i didn't know who it was mcqueen i said oh how are you doing he's hey could we have lunch i said sure he called me one day and asked me if i would join him for lunch at mommy's home vat immediately set my alarms up i mean steve you know steve is not you know a mama his own guy and then we walked around beverly hills for about uh three hours and we talked about really the people that he had worked with and been around since he had been in the picture business he got very very close with people and like he was trying to make amends for his past life and trying to make up for everything to clear his way you know to god [Music] at age 50 steve mcqueen the unloved kid out of nowhere who became the highest paid in one of the most popular stars of his time lost his final battle it was november 7th 1980 i think that [Music] that steve was one of the best film actors i have ever seen he was a alternatively a caring and uh and brutal human being he was determined to achieve what he saw as the right way to approach a situation be it an acting part of a mate a friend or a car race i liked him i hated him but i have the greatest respect for his inherent integrity it's kind of sad because i think he always was striving for something that maybe he felt he never got but he was a movie star and he was a great star and people responded to him they wanted him to win when he was up there in the screen [Music] when steve died we were all together at the ranch for the services and it was the first time ali and barbara had met and finally when it was time to say goodbye i just looked around and i said you know the sad part about that is that steve always used to say life is a scam yet as we left the ranch all i could think of were the happy memories really the bad times were canceled out by the good times and i could still see him with his wonderful teeth and those happy blue eyes not as he was later on i just suddenly reverted to the steve that i knew and it was incredible he'll always be there [Music] so [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: The Hollywood Collection

Views: 1,425,360

Rating: 4.7689695 out of 5

Keywords: charlton heston, theatre, clint eastwood, director, steve mcqueen, free, bio, film, actor, movie, hollywood, cinema, biography, lassie, michael caine, documentary, filmmaker, steve, McQueen, man on the edge, rebel, leading man, icon, legend, gentlemen prefer blondes, the towering inferno, paul newman, the magnificent seven, how to have the style of steve mcqueen, steve mcqueen best lines, wisdom of steve mcqueen, bullitt car chase full scene, bullitt, the cincinnati kid, the thomas crown affair

Id: YGzLmJtLXaQ

Length: 58min 14sec (3494 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2016