Steve McQueen—tough, tender in real life

Press, 10 November 1980, Page 8

Steve McQueen— tough, tender in real life

NZPA-Reuter Los- Angeles

Steve McQueen was very much like his film characters, combining toughness and tenderness. The combination helped to make the muscular blond American one of Hollywood’s leading actors.

McQueen came a long way since his early life in a home for wayward youths where he was placed some years after his parents’ marriage broke up. He worked as a bartender, Texas oilfied labourer, lumberjack, carnival showman, boxer and even as a salesman of ballpoint pens. For more than two years until 1950, he served aS a tank driver and mechanic in the United States Marines where he developed a talent for repairing almost anything on wheels and a love of fast cars.

The blue-eyed actor, whose fans included millions of teen-age girls around the world, was also devoted to motor-cycles. He often refused to have a Hollywood stunt-man take his place for some of the most hazardous scenes in his films. In 1970 he made an on-the-spot film about France’s famous Le Mans car race, insisting on driving his own car — a Porsche 917 — whereas the .other actors taking part were doubled by professional racing drivers. McQueen’s production company, Solar Films, took over the famous racing circuit for 12 weeks. A Hollywood producer once gave as his formula for successful films: “anything with Steve'McQueen.”

The millionaire actor was once asked why he felt so devoted to racing — a devotion which frightened big Hollywood studios into insisting in his contract that he took no chances.

McQueen replied: “Acting

is like racing. You need the same absolute concentration. You have to reach inside you and bring forth a lot of broken glass. That’s painful.”

Terence Stephen McQueen was bom March 24, 1930, in Indianapolis, Indiana. His agent confirmed Indianapolis as his birthplace, although some reference books have given it as Slater, Missouri. McQueen’s father left the family soon after Steve’s birth and his mother lived with relatives before her remarriage four years later. Steve moved with her and his stepfather to California where he became too tough for them to handle.

The boy was placed in a sort of reformatory for wayward youths at Chino, California. He stayed there for two years after an unsuccessful escape bid. When the stepfather died, Steve moved to New York, rejoining his mother, but they failed to resolve their differences. At the age of 15, he ran away to join a tanker sailing to the West Indies. A ruggedly independent boy, he did not ' like life at sea and jumped ship.'to take jobs in several parts of the

United States until he joined the Marines. Although he went absent without leave in the Marine Corps and was confined'for 41 days,, he looked back on his military life with some affection. In the early 19505, he moved to Greenwich Village, New York’s bohemian quarter, and again took several jobs before deciding to attend dramatic schools and study acting. In Greenwich Village, he said, he found a way of life where people talked out their problems instead of punching you. He married the dancer Neile Adams in 1956 when they were both comparatively unknown in the entertainment industry. They had two children, a son and a daughter. Until the 19705, the union was known as one of Hollywood’s ideal marriages. But in March, 1972, Neile Adams obtained a California divorce because of irreconcilable differences and resumed her career. Court sources said the property settlement was probably more than $1 million. In addition, she obtained custody of the two children, Terry and Chadwick, and huge alimony payments. Only two years earlier, his wife was reported to have said the family was planning to move to Switzerland from their luxurious Los Angeles home because violence in America could affect their two children. McQueen later married the actress Ali McGraw.

In that year. 1970, McQueen was named as the most popular male film star in- the world by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in a poll of 41 countries conducted by Reuters news agency.

Steve McQueen often wondered why he had climbed to the top of the ladder in Hol-

lywood. “My flexibility as an actor is not terribly wide,’’ he said. “There are certain things I can do. But when I am bad, I stink.” His first acting role after two years of drama study in New York was with the former child-star Margaret O’Brien in “Peg O My Heart,” in 1952, a show produced for the summer theatres outside New York City. •For four years he accepted minor roles in television and summer theatres before appearing on broadway in “A Hatful of Rain.”

' He replaced the star, Ben Gazzara, in the powerful play about drug addiction. On the basis of this' success, he went to Hollywood in 1958 for a small TV role but ended up with his own longrunning series as Josh Randall in “Wanted — Dead or Alive.”

In addition, he starred in three low-budget films in 1958-59, “The Blob”, “Never Love a Stranger” and “The Great St Louis Bank Robbery.” The producer John Sturges liked his TV appearances as well as his brief film role in “Somebody Up There Likes Me”, starring Paul Newman.

In 1959, Sturges gave McQueen a part in “Never So Few.” One critic correctly forecast this would help to catapult McQueen to stardom.

After he had appeared as Yul Brynner’s young hench'man in “The Magnificent | Seven”, in 1960. few people i doubted McQueen was headed for the top. His succession of films included “Nevada Smith”, “The Great Escape,” “The Sand Pebbles,” “The Cincinnatti Kid,” and “Bullitt,” his own production in which he did some of the most spectacular driving ever filmed over San Francisco’s hills.