Steve McQueen born 1930

Love McQueen, the stunts, the love of cars, that he put in each contract , resources for an orphanage home. 

 

The Blob

 

The Magnificent Seven

a great interview with Eli Wallach about the magnificent seven
https://www.americanlegends.com/actors/eili wallach/index.html

The Magnificent Seven was produced by Walter Mirish and directed by John Sturges. An independent production, the film was released in 1961. Neither Sturges (1911-1992), nor his movie was the favorite of film school scholars or tribute directors who worship at the camera of Howard Hawks or Preston Sturges. Andrew Sarris wrote in The American Cinema: "Long before The Magnificent Seven, John Sturges seemed to be striving, albeit unconsciously, to become the American Kurosawa..."--the Japanese director whose movie, The Seven Samurai, inspired The Magnificent Seven. Sarris added: "Unfortunately, it is hard to remember why Sturges's career was ever considered meaningful." Sturges's movie, however, was an immediate hit with filmgoers who were stirred by the tale of the seven gunslingers and misfits who come to the aid of a poor Mexican village threatened by local bandits. Sturges chose two Broadway actors to play opposite leads: Yul Brynner was cast as Chris, the philosophical leader of the seven who at one point in the movie says, "Once you begin killing, you can't stop," and at another comments: "The graveyards are full of young boys who were very young and very proud." Eli Wallach, an Actors Studio veteran, played the brutal bandit Calvera. For the rest of the cast, Sturges assembled a group of then unknowns, some of whom had knocked about Hollywood for years playing off-beat parts: James Coburn, Brad Dexter, Charles Bronson. The director also recruited a young actor named Steve McQueen, whom he had spotted on television, and chose to play Vin, the boyish Tombstone gunman. The film's musical score was composed by Elmer Bernstein whose Coplandesque theme captured the bravery and idealism of the seven American samurai who set aside their own self-interest in a noble cause. This telephone interview appeared on American Legends in January 2005. Eli Wallach died in 2014 at 98. Known for his versatility and serious attention to his craft, Wallach appeared on Broadway in 1951 in Tennessee Williams's The Rose Tattoo and later patented his own version of a hard, rough "bad guy" in Westerns, including Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, and The Magnificent Seven which, with its great ensemble cast, has come to be regarded as a classic. Q: How did you get involved in the movie? A: I wish I knew. One day I was called in by John Sturges. He said, "We thought about you, and we want to cast you." I had seen The Seven Samurai and would have loved to play the crazy samurai, the role Mifume played in the Kurosawa film. It was brilliant. Q: Sturges chose Yul Brynner who was known for his Broadway roles as the lead. A: I knew Yul from New York when he was working in television as a director. Sturges told me, "We're thinking of you as the head bandit." I told Sturges that I had seen the Japanese film--and all I recalled was that the bandit wore an eyepatch and that all you saw was his horse's hoofs: he rides in, he rides out. Q: But you were cast as Calvera. A: I almost turned it down. Then I read the script carefully and I thought, Well, I'll play the part cause it's a terrific role. I went to Sturges and said, "In movie Westerns, you never see what the bandits do with the money. They hold up the trains, they steal the cattle, but you never see what they do with the money. I want to show how they spend it. I want to have silk shirts. I'm going to put in two gold teeth. I want a good horse, a wonderful saddle." Sturges said, "Okay. You got it." So I went to Mexico. We shot it on location there. I had no idea what the movie would turn out to be, but I got to see some wonderful young actors who were going to blossom into stars: Coburn, Bronson, McQueen. Q: Did the Mexican government cooperate? A: The Mexicans were furious with the Americans. There had been a movie called Vera Cruz with Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper that had angered the Mexicans with the way they were depicted. They tore the seats out of the theater and threw them at the screen. So the government had a censor on the set. When he read the script, the censor asked Sturges, "Why do you have to send to America to bring back gunmen We have plenty of our own." Sturges said, "Fortunately, or unfortunately, the money is coming from Hollywood studios, so we have to use Americans." There was also a man on the set named Emilio Fernandez. He was a Mexican movie director who had done a number of movies in the 1940s with Delores Del Rio, including Maria Candelaria which celebrated Mexican folklore. He acted as a kind of adviser to Sturges to see that nothing "non-Mexican" happened. I got along very well with him. Q: John Sturges is dismissed by auteur critics as an action-adventure director, someone who did Escape from Fort Bravo and The Great Escape. What was it like to work with him? A: There was a lot of respect for Sturges on the set. He had a wonderful eye. I had about thirty or so bandits in my outfit. Sturges told me, "I want you and your gang to go riding in the morning before you come on the set." So we'd mount up early in the morning, at sunup, and ride for an hour and then come in all wet and dirty and ready to shoot. Q: Was there improvisation in shooting the film? A: No, except Steve McQueen, who was a very skillful movie actor, said, "Listen, I want to cut some of my dialogue. I don't want to talk too much. Acting in movies is really reacting, so I want to react to things." Sturges let him do it. Q: Did the actors compete with each other on camera? A: I once stood alongside the camera and watched the seven ride across the river. Each one did another little piece of business which they thought would cause you to remember them more. McQueen reached out and scooped up some water in his hat and put it on. Another turned and looked around at the next man--at the one behind him. All of them had odd little pieces of business. I thought it very interesting--wait till they meet me. Q: Did you have much interaction with the rest of the cast? A: Bronson was a loner. He kept to himself. I liked Robert Vaughn and James Coburn very much. Vaughn is a very intelligent guy. He wrote a book on blacklisting. Coburn was one of those quiet types which fit his character very well: silent but a knife thrower of great skill. The one I became quite friendly with was Brad Dexter. Of the seven no one can remember his name. I was also adopted by my Mexican gang, one of whom, Guillermo Kramer, was an architect and wonderful horseman. Q: Brad Dexter later acted with Sinatra and co-produced his movies. Both he and Horst Buchholz died in 2004. A: Buchholz played the romantic lead. That was a part I was interested in when I read the script. But Sturges told me, "We're bringing over a young German actor. He's going to play that." Buchholz was good. He rode beautifully. He brought to the role his German training and background. Q: Was there any sense that The Magnificent Seven was going to be a great movie? A: You can never predict the outcome of a movie. I did The Misfits with a great cast: Marilyn Monroe, Monty Clift, and Clark Gable. You'd think it was going to be a great show. The critics were not that happy because Monroe, Clift, and Gable were trying to destroy the mold the studio had put them in over the years. As for The Magnificent Seven, it has become a cult classic. I think it is one of the ten best Westerns ever made. (Background information for the interview was found in the following: Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, New York, Da Capo Press ed., 1996; Neile McQueen Toffel, My Husband, My Friend, New York, Signet ed., 1986)

a book on blacklisting by Robert Vaughn
https://www.am*zon.com/Only-Victims-Study-Business-Blacklisting/dp/0879100818
 

 

The Great Escape

Article on the great escape- Bud Ekins did the motorcycle stunt but off camera, steve mcqueen and tim gibbes did it for fun
https://web.archive.org/web/20210309184609/https://www.hagerty.com/media/motorcycles/the-great-escape-was-steve-mcqueen-having-fun/

The Great Escape is how Steve McQueen outfoxed studio lawyers and kept having fun Priscilla Page 02 May 2019 At the threshold of Steve McQueen’s stardom, a studio attorney gave him just a day to make a life-altering decision: racing or acting. If McQueen were to become a true leading man, he’d have to play it safe and sacrifice the race track. “They gave me twenty-four hours to make up my mind,” McQueen recalled. “I took most of those twenty-four hours thinking about whether I wanted to go on racing, earning my money on the track, or whether I wanted to continue being an actor on the studio’s terms. It was a very tough decision for me to reach. Still, I had Neile and our two young children to consider, and that made the difference. I signed their paper.” With 1963’s The Great Escape, Steve McQueen established a career built on outfoxing his contract. He may have been unable to race for real, but he could still race in the movies. And The Great Escape was the first of such ruses — director John Sturges and McQueen “worked a hairy motorcycle chase” into the film for McQueen’s character Virgil Hilts, nicknamed the Cooler King due to the time he spent in solitary confinement. McQueen described it himself, “The idea was this Cooler King character makes good his escape by stealing a cycle, gets chased cross-country by German cyclists and loses them by jumping this big barbed-wire fence with this bike.” The bike jump in The Great Escape is legendary, but Sturges’ film is a masterpiece in its own right, based on the true story of Allied airmen’s daring escape via tunnels from Stalag Luft III during World War II. Though McQueen is ostensibly the star, the film belongs to its ensemble cast, a dream team of 1960s masculine icons and legendary actors that included James Garner, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, James Donald, Donald Pleasence, David McCallum, and Richard Attenborough. On its surface, The Great Escape seems to be a war film, but at its heart, it’s a heist movie flipped on its head: a group of specialists team up to make a plan with nothing but their ingenuity – though instead of breaking in, they’re breaking out of a German POW camp. It’s also the ultimate underdog story, a film about camaraderie, courage, self-sacrifice, and giving the enemy hell. The Great Escape brought together some of the most prominent gearheads of the 1960s, and by all accounts, the testosterone on the set was out of control. Charles Bronson started an affair with David McCallum’s wife Jill Ireland. Steve McQueen frequently fought for changes to the script, and even took issue with his rival James Garner wearing a more handsome outfit. Even Donald Pleasence brought his Jaguar with him to Germany. According to David McCallum, “Everyone drove like a maniac, including Donald Pleasence. [ . . . ] But Steve was the guy – mirroring the film, almost – who took the most risks and had the traffic police in awe of him. When he was pulled over they’d say, ‘Herr McQueen, good morning, we’re delighted that once again you’ve won the special prize,’ and cart him off to the jail. Once I asked him what he did in a crash. He told me you should aim for the smallest trees.” Tom Adams, who played RAF officer Dai Nimmo, put it plainly: “Steve McQueen was as mad as a hatter. He wrote off six or seven cars out there.” Though it may have made him difficult behind the scenes, McQueen channeled his reckless thrill-seeking, his penchant for getting locked up, and his love for bikes into his performance and character. Stuntman Bud Ekins was as essential to The Great Escape as Steve McQueen himself. McQueen met Ekins when he bought a Triumph motorcycle from him, started hanging out at Ekins’ shop, and as a result discovered desert racing. It was McQueen’s idea to fly Ekins out to Bavaria where they were shooting The Great Escape. “He said, ‘I’m going to Germany and I’m going to make a movie. Do you want to come over and double me? There’s some motorcycle work in it.’ I said, ‘Sure,’ and that was about it.” It would be the first of many films Ekins and McQueen made together. Bud Ekins prepared and choreographed the bulk of the chase, and McQueen did most of his own riding. McQueen was a better driver than many of the stuntmen playing Germans, so he put on an SS uniform for some of these scenes and chased himself. As Hilts, he rode a 1962 650cc Triumph TR6R. Production used four bikes total, modified to look like a WWII-era side-valve BMW with an olive paint job, old seat, and luggage rack. The studio’s insurers took issue with McQueen doing anything too dangerous, so Ekins doubled him for stunts where McQueen could have been hurt. Ekins also brought along Australian motocross champion Tim Gibbes, who played the Nazi officer who crashes after Hilts sets a wire trap in the road. Hilts steals Gibbes’ SS uniform and motorcycle and heads for Switzerland. On his way toward the border, he draws the unwanted attention of German officers who try asking questions that he can’t answer. Hilts kicks one of these officers off his bike and speeds away, with countless Nazis in pursuit. Though McQueen is famous for The Great Escape’s most famous stunt, it was Bud Ekins who performed it. McQueen explained, “I always felt a little guilty about that. A lot of people thought it was me making that jump, but I’ve never tried to hide the truth about it. I could handle the jump now, I’m sure. Back in ’62, I just didn’t have the savvy.” According to a few of his castmates, McQueen did have the savvy. John Leyton, aka Willie “The Tunnel King,” had his own story about palling around with McQueen, Coburn, and Bronson after the cameras stopped rolling. The men rode motorcycles together and they all managed to make the jump, aided by a ramp dug in the hill that Ekins had used as a launch pad. McQueen performed the stunt at least one other time, on camera, just to prove that he could, and Tim Gibbes did it for fun. According to second unit director Robert E. Relyea, McQueen, Ekins, and Gibbes were all filmed performing the stunt. Relyea wrote in his book Not So Quiet on the Set that he believes it could be any of these three men doing the stunt featured in the final cut, but most believe that it’s Bud Ekins on film. Ekins sped his way up and over the barbed-wire fence, jumped 12 feet high, and descended 65 feet at 60 mph. It only took one take for Bud Ekins to pull it off. Ekins said, “When I took off, I throttled right back and it was silent. You know, everything was just silent – the whole crew and everything was just silent. And then when I landed they cheered like crazy.” With Hilts surrounded on all sides by Nazis, this moment has the highest stakes imaginable, and though Hilts is ultimately captured, it is euphoric when he first makes it to the other side. The motorcycle jump is essential to The Great Escape’s legacy, a historic moment in moviemaking. It became an image seared into our collective memory, emblematic of liberation and the brief exultation of those who made it out of the prison camp. But their escape came at a cost, as the Gestapo executed the majority of the escapees. At the end of the film, Hendley asks Senior British Officer Ramsey (James Donald), “Do you think it was worth the price?” Ramsey responds, “It depends on your point of view.” Jack Lyon, a real RAF officer who’d been imprisoned at Stalag Luft III, believed the mission boosted morale at the camp, as the men felt they had a purpose, that they contributed something. Ramsey argues they succeeded in their mission: to mess up the works, and to get back at the enemy the hardest way they could.

 

The Cincinnati Kid

check out city college of new york alumni, edward g robinson in the ending of the film

 

 

The Thomas Crown Affair

song is Michel Legrand, windmills of your mind

the split screen effect was mastered in this film

 

Bullitt

a still, of McQueen riding, the head stuntman played the rival rider. McQueen tried to buy the car in the film but it is in a private collector's space

The Reivers 

based on william faulkner's last book

 

 

Le Mans

the introduction, it is calm, really an advert for driving a car on a road in the woodlands

 

Papillon

made by https://alliedartists.com/ look at the other films they helped produce

The Solitary Confinement scenes in Papillon are stark

 

 

+

 

The Towering Inferno

The tower was designed by Doug Roberts in the film.

The tower was designed by Doug Roberts, 

https://www.vaultofculture.com/vault/towering/glasstower

 

Tower-ing Fiction #9: Glass Tower, The Towering Inferno (1974) June 12, 2019 by Shawn Gilmore The Towering Inferno (dir. John Guillerman, 1974) is one of the Irwin Allen-produced disaster epics helped establish the modern blockbuster in terms of scale, stakes, and narrative setup. Without it, we wouldn’t have later films like Die Hard (dir. John McTiernan, 1988) or even Skyscraper (dir. Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2018), as previously covered in the Tower-ing Fiction series. And at its heart is the Glass Tower, a modern skyscraper, billed as “the tallest building in the world,” which of course will become the titular towering inferno, which will erupt over “a night of blazing suspense,” as promotional materials don’t attempt to hide. The plot of the film is fairly thin—architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) has returned to San Francisco for the dedication of the building he designed the builder, James Duncan (William Holden); an electrical fire breaks out on the 81st floor, likely because Duncan’s son-in-law cut corners; during the dedication ceremony itself, a full fire erupts, and fire chief Michael O’Hallorhan (Steve McQueen) is called in to try to rescue those trapped inside, many from the 135th floor Promenade Room, roof, offices, elevators, etc. The star-studded cast is populated by actors playing types (as named on the poster): Faye Dunaway as the Girlfriend, Fred Astaire as the Con-Man, Susan Blakely as the Wife, Richard Chamberlain as the Son-in-Law, Jennifer Jones as the Widow, OJ Simpson as the Security Man, Robert Vaughn as the Senator, and Robert Wagner as the Publicity Man. There is much fire, and yelling, and a few tests of wills, but the film focuses on moment-by-moment solutions to immediate danger—how will a cluster of our characters make it through the peril in front of them, and can they trust one another to do so? In the end, much of the fire is doused by blowing up roof-top water tanks, with O’Hallorhan’s ingenuity saving nearly all of those involved. ... From Prose to Screen The Towering Inferno was adapted from two fairly similar thrillers, The Tower (1973) by Richard Martin Stern and The Glass Inferno (1974) by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson. The Tower focuses on the grand opening of the World Tower Building in Lower Manhattan, built near the World Trade Center Towers (which had been completed in 1970 and 1971), and is billed as even taller, at 125 stories and 1,527’; the plot hinges on shortcuts in the electrical systems, a disgruntled sheet-metal worker with a bomb, which coupled sets off a fire that traps the important guests in the 125th floor Tower Room, some of whom are saved by a breeches buoy line secured to the nearby (and lower) North Tower of the World Trade Center. The Glass Inferno concerns itself with the “Glass House,” or more properly the National Curtainwall Building, which is some 66 stories tall an located in an unnamed American city; again, corners were cut in the construction of the tower, there are disgruntled employees, and a fire breaks out, and in this iteration, those remaining are saved from the penthouse Promenade Room by a combination of helicopter rescue and exploding water tanks to put out most of the fire. Warner Brothers bought the rights to The Tower and 20th Century Fox snagged The Glass Inferno, putting two similar films in to production. Allen convinced the two studios to jointly produce his film, splitting revenues, with domestic proceeds going to Fox and international to Warner Brothers. These parallel novels were then merged by Stirling Silliphant (who also wrote scripts for In the Heat of the Night (dir. Norman Jewison, 1967) and The Poseidon Adventure) in to one synthetic story, and copies of both novels were rolled out with film-specific branding. The two novels make their respective towers central characters. The Tower opens with a set of diegetic descriptions of the World Tower: It is the world’s tallest structure, and the most modern, an enduring tribute to man’s ingenuity, skill, and vision. It is a triumph of imagination. —GROVER FRAZEE at the World Tower dedication ceremonies. A monument to Mammon, product of man’s insatiable ego, an affront to the gods. That so much treasure should have been poured into the construction of this — this monstrosity while poverty, yes, and even hunger still stalk the land, is an abomination! There will be inevitable Divine retribution! —THE REVEREND JOE WILLIE THOMAS in a press interview. Which is then followed by an extended prologue, moving from the construction to the tower as a living thing: For one hundred and twenty-five floors, from street level to Tower Room, the building rose tall and clean and shining. […] By comparison with the twin masses of the nearby Trade Center, the building appeared slim, almost delicate, a thing of fragile-seeming grace and beauty. But eight subbasements beneath the street level its roots were anchored deep in the bedrock of the island; and its core and external skeleton, cunningly contrived, had the strength of laminated spring steel. […] Through its telephone, radio, and television systems operating at ground level, broadcasting through the atmosphere or via satellite, its sphere of communication was, quite simply, the earth. It could even communicate with itself, floor to floor, subbasement to gleaming tower. […] As the structure grew, its arteries, veins, nerves, and muscles were woven into the whole: miles of wiring, piping, utility ducting; cables and conduits; heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning ducts, intakes, and outlets—and always, always the monitoring systems and devices to oversee and control the building’s internal environment, its health, its life. Sensors to relay information on temperature, humidity, air flow and content; computers to assimilate the data, evaluate them, issue essential instructions for continuation or change. […] The building breathed, manipulated its internal systems, slept only as the human body sleeps: heart, lungs, cleansing organs functioning on automatic control, encephalic waves pulsing ceaselessly. […] Men had envisioned it, conceived it, and constructed it, sometimes almost lovingly, sometimes with near hatred, because, like all great projects, the building had early on developed a character of its own, and no man intimately associated with it could escape involvement. There is, it seems, a feedback. What man creates with his hands or his mind becomes a part of himself. And there, on this morning, the building stood, its uppermost tip catching the first rays of sunrise while the rest of the city still slept in shadow; and the thousands of men who had had a part in the building’s design and construction were going to remember this day forever. Later, in chapter 12, as the inferno rages, a character reflects that “the great shining World Tower she had visited so often during the years of its construction […] was crippled now, a helpless giant” and the people on the street gazing upon the tower, “like ghouls, spectators at a public execution lusting for more blood, more terror.” In the next chapter, an omniscient narrator characterizes the building a cursed: For some from the start it was one of those jobs you writhed in dreams about and awakened sweating. The sheer magnitude of the World Tower was frightening, but it was more, far more than that. The building taking shape seemed to develop a personality of its own, and that personality was malign. On a cold fall day a freak wind whipped through the huge empty space where the plaza would be, picked up a loose piece of corrugation, and scaled it as a boy might scale a flattened tin can. A workman named Bowers saw it coming, tried too late to duck, and was almost but not quite decapitated. The front tire of a partially off-loaded truck standing perfectly still suddenly blew out with sufficient force to shift the untied load of pipe, burying three men in a tangle of assorted fractures. On another cold fall day a fire started in a subbasement, spread through piled lumber, and trapped two men in a tunnel. They were rescued alive—just. Paul Simmons was standing outside the building, talking with one of his foremen, when Pete Janowski walked off the steel at floor 65. The Doppler effect accentuated the man’s screams until they ended abruptly with a sickening thunk that Paul, not ten feet away, would never forget. And finally, near the end of the novel, in chapter 30, when speculating on motivations of Connor, the bomber, we learn that: “[…] the World Tower building was the last real job he had. He was fired. There’s a connection, but maybe you have to be loony to see it. I don’t know. All I know are the facts.” In a vague kind of way it made sense. All three men felt it. The Establishment had killed Connors’s wife, hadn’t it? The World Tower building was the brand-new shining symbol of the Establishment, wasn’t it? Well? So, the World Tower, man’s creation (and mirror of himself) is both malign and the Man, the inferno of the novel a kind of public execution, spurred on by one man’s rage at its symbolic stakes. The Glass Inferno (1974) opens with teasing advertising copy: The snow that began falling on Thanksgiving Eve added an extra magic to the spectacular new sixty-six-story high rise known as the Glass House. It dominated the city skyline: the latest triumph of modern architecture and engineering. But unnoticed, deep within it, a tiny spark grew until it became an inferno that changed the lives of the hundreds who worked or lived in the building—as well as the architect who designed it, the contractors who built it, the newsman who first warned of its dangers, and the firemen compelled to risk their lives because of another’s man’s greed and misjudgment. A gripping story of fire in a modem high rise, The Glass Inferno is an unforgettable novel of men and women caught in crisis, their heroism and cowardice, their unforgivable weaknesses and surprising strengths. As much fact as fiction, this is the revealing account of a holocaust that no fire department anywhere is equipped to fight. A novel, as uncomfortably close to the city cliff dweller as tomorrow’s headlines, gives us a frightening insight into the new skyscrapers that march across the urban and suburban skyline—the towering apartment houses and business complexes that experts have dubbed “fire traps in the sky.” Lacking the more overt symbolism of The Tower, the Glass House is described in the first chapter as a “tower etched against the dark clouds”: Sixty-six stories of gold-tinted glass panels and gold-anodized aluminum. The location on the north side of the financial district had been selected so there would be no buildings for several blocks around that could challenge it. There had been no compromise on the size of the site itself—the plazas on each side of the building were spacious and inviting, you didn’t feel crowded as you strolled across them to the building’s entrance. Sixty-six stories—thirty commercial and office floors and thirty-six of apartment floors—straight up with no setbacks. On the southern exposure, a sheer wall marked the utility core and served as a golden backdrop for the scenic elevator to the Promenade Room at the top. […] the most popular postcards in the local drugstores were those of the Glass House at night. It had become a symbol of the city. The Glass House is a less audacious structure, described in chapter 31 as just “one of the tallest” high rises in the city, with similar construction problems as possible dangers, such as the “chimney effect” that would exacerbate a mid-building raging fire. Building the Glass Tower The Towering Inferno, along with its Allen-produced precursor The Poseidon Adventure (dir. Ronald Neame, 1972) and later films like Jaws (dir. Steven Spielberg, 1975) and Star Wars (dir. George Lucas, 1977) helped establish the modern conception of the blockbuster film, specifically in their publicity, merchandising, and the narrative of production used to pitch the films themselves. So, The Towering Inferno was not only the top-grossing film of 1974 (and was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar), but was also promoted by highlighting the story of its production, specifically how its special effects were achieved, including extensive documentation of the model-making for the film’s two main towers. Below are some of the variety of production materials that came out in relation to the film, sourced from a variety of fan sites, including The Towering Inferno Archive and The Towering Inferno Memorabilia Archive. ...

Here are some storyboards

Here are some parodies

Parodies And, as with other major blockbusters, The Towering Inferno received some light ribbing from parody magazines. Prominent among these was the six-page “The Towering Infernal,” in Cracked #126 (August 1975), with original art by John Severin: And the eight-page “The Towering Sterno” in Mad #177 (September 1975), written by Dick De Bartolo, with art by Mort Drucker:

 

An Enemy of the People

Steve McQueen plays a man from a town who finds out a local business enterprise is sickening and makes it public against the towns desires

Trailer

Original Five Act Play bu Henrik Ibsen

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2446/pg2446-images.html

 

Steve McQueen stunts

Thomas Crown Affair/ The Great Escape/Bullitt/Papillon/Thomas Crown Affair

 

 

Below is missed roles, very interesting the movies he passed up, he would have been even bigger. but the movies he passed on made others careers.

 

MISSED ROLES

uniform resource locator

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_McQueen#Missed_roles

content

McQueen was offered the lead male role in Breakfast at Tiffany's, but was unable to accept due to his Wanted: Dead or Alive contract (the role went to George Peppard). He turned down parts in Ocean's 11, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (his attorneys and agents could not agree with Paul Newman's attorneys and agents on top billing),The Driver,Apocalypse Now,  California Split, Dirty Harry, A Bridge Too Far, The French Connection (he did not want to do another cop film), Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Sorcerer. According to director John Frankenheimer and actor James Garner in bonus interviews for the DVD of the film Grand Prix, McQueen was Frankenheimer's first choice for the lead role of American Formula One race car driver Pete Aron. Frankenheimer was unable to meet with McQueen to offer him the role, so he sent Edward Lewis, his business partner and the producer of Grand Prix. McQueen and Lewis instantly clashed, the meeting was a disaster, and the role went to Garner. Later, in an interview, Garner said: Oh, McQueen. Crazy McQueen. McQueen and I got along pretty good. McQueen looked at me kind of like an older brother, and he didn't want to have much to do with me, till he got in trouble, then he'd call. He knew he could trust me to tell him just what I thought. A lot of people wouldn't do that. And then we had... it wasn't a falling out... as I did Grand Prix, Steve was originally slated to do that movie, but he couldn't get along with Frankenheimer. So that lasted about thirty minutes, and Steve was out, and I was in. And Steve went over to do Sand Pebbles, which went about a year longer than they wanted to go. Big production, spent a lot of money and stayed over in [Taiwan] too long. So, when I got the part in Grand Prix, I called him, in Taiwan. and I said, "Steve, I want to tell you, before you hear it from somebody else, that I'm going to do Grand Prix." Well, there was about a twenty dollar silence there, on the telephone. He didn't know what to say, and finally said "Oh, that's great, great, I'm glad to hear it." Because, he planned to do Le Mans, which was another title at the time, but we were going to be out, and Grand Prix released before he ever even got to that film. But he said, "Great, great, well, I'm glad to hear it; that's good. You know, if anybody's gonna do it, I'm glad, you're doin' it." He didn't talk to me for about a year and half, and we were next-door neighbors, so it did get to him a little bit. Finally, his son, Chad, made him take him to go see Grand Prix. And from that time on, we were talking again. But Steve was a wild kid. He didn't know where he wanted to be or what he wanted to do. Director Steven Spielberg said McQueen was his first choice for the character of Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. According to Spielberg in a documentary on the film's DVD release, Spielberg met him at a bar, where McQueen drank beer after beer. Before leaving, McQueen told Spielberg that he could not accept the role because he was unable to cry on cue. Spielberg offered to take the crying scene out of the story, but McQueen demurred, saying that it was the best scene in the script. The role eventually went to Richard Dreyfuss. William Friedkin wanted to cast McQueen as the lead in the action thriller film Sorcerer (1977). Sorcerer was to be filmed primarily on location in the Dominican Republic, but McQueen did not want to be separated from Ali MacGraw for the duration of the shoot. McQueen then asked Friedkin to let MacGraw act as a producer, so she could be present during principal photography. Friedkin would not agree to this condition, and cast Roy Scheider instead of McQueen. Friedkin later remarked that not casting McQueen hurt the film's performance at the box-office. Spy novelist Jeremy Duns revealed that McQueen was considered for the lead role in a film adaptation of The Diamond Smugglers, written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming. McQueen would play John Blaize, a secret agent gone undercover to infiltrate a diamond-smuggling ring in South Africa. There were complications with the project, which was eventually shelved, although a 1964 screenplay does exist. McQueen and Barbra Streisand were tentatively cast in The Gauntlet (1977), but the pair could not get along and both withdrew from the project—though according to one biographer, they had briefly dated in 1971. The lead roles were filled by Clint Eastwood and Sondra Locke. McQueen expressed interest in the Rambo character in First Blood when David Morrell's novel appeared in 1972, but the producers rejected him because of his age. He was offered the title role in The Bodyguard (to star Diana Ross) when it was proposed in 1976, but the film did not reach production until years after McQueen's death; the film eventually starred Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston in 1992. Quigley Down Under was in development as early as 1974, with McQueen in consideration for the lead, but by the time production began in 1980, McQueen was ill. The project was scrapped until a decade later, when Tom Selleck starred. McQueen was offered the lead in Raise the Titanic, but felt the script was flat. He was under contract to Irwin Allen after appearing in The Towering Inferno and offered a part in a sequel in 1980, which he turned down. The film was scrapped and Newman was brought in by Allen to make When Time Ran Out, which was a box-office bomb. McQueen died shortly after passing on The Towering Inferno 2.