Remembering Steve McQueen, Hollywood’s All-time Best Anti-hero

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Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen was the best film actor I have ever seen, as a lifetime cinema devotee. When he was on screen in any of his 50 movies from Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) to The Hunter (1980), it was almost impossible to take your eyes off him.

Other actors, including some co-stars, were keenly aware of his dynamic screen presence. One was Frank Sinatra in 1959’s Never So Few. Another was Yul Brynner who, reportedly, openly vied with him for attention in the memorable opening scene of The Magnificent Seven (1960). 

To me, the only actor remotely approaching his cinematic magnetism was the late Rutger Hauer, who honored his work in a 1987 movie version of McQueen’s pre-Hollywood years in the TV series, “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”

When McQueen died in 1980 at age 50, my sense of loss was shared by millions who would never again feel the power of his presence on the silver screen. While his death was not a surprise—his illness, induced by heavy smoking, had been well-publicized—it was a shock to those of us who grooved on his gritty performances.

In 1990 while with the New York Daily News, I got a tearful telephone call from Teri McQueen, Steve’s daughter, following my column on the 10th anniversary of his death. Thanking me for renewing interest in her father, she said, “My dad, truly, was one of a kind.” 

Indiana-born, Missouri-raised and New York-trained as an actor, McQueen appealed to both men and women. Men liked him because of his rugged, straightforward manner, street-level humor and genuine toughness. Although not that big, he didn’t look, or act, like a guy you’d want to mess with in a bar.

On the other hand, female friends and acquaintances tell me they liked McQueen’s honesty and soft-spoken demeanor. By no means a pretty boy, he had the kind of rugged good looks a lot of men envied.

Channeling Bogart

But what McQueen’s millions of fans loved most was his realism. I feel there never has been anyone who could hold a candle to him on that score—not even Humphrey Bogart, as Roy “Mad Dog” Earle in 1941’s towering High Sierra. In The Getaway (1972), McQueen clearly channeled Bogart’s memorable early scene in the Raoul Walsh-John Huston classic.

I quickly took note of McQueen as Paul Newman’s pal in 1956’s Somebody Up There Likes Me. Newman scored as boxer Rocky Graziano, but I remember thinking that this other young guy “has something.” 

A few years later, following appearances in three or four other films—including the original version, of The Blob (1958) as Steven McQueen—I was to learn more about that particular “something.”

In 1959, in the Army at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, my wife and I and two small children, lived near the Quantico Marine base, and occasionally went to a drive-in movie. It was there, one hot summer night, we saw a low-budget, black-and-white film called The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery, with McQueen in the lead role.

Almost every time he opened his mouth or made a herky-jerky gesture, the rapt auto audience of Marines, their wives and kids—with car windows open—audibly reacted with ooohs, aaahs and “hotdamns!”

Simply Electric

Indeed, McQueen, on screen, was simply electric. About that time, America at large was discovering him in the TV series “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” His trademark, as bounty hunter Josh Randall, was an icy stare and lever-action rifle cut-down to handgun size he lugged in an oversize holster. He enhanced that tough-guy image as Frank Sinatra’s sidekick in 1959’s Never So Few.

The 1960s saw McQueen catapult to fame and popularity in many fine films, including The Magnificent Seven (1960); The Great Escape, Soldier in the Rain and Love with the Proper Stranger (all 1963); The Cincinnati Kid and Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965); The Sand Pebbles—a shattering performance that earned him an Oscar nomination—and Nevada Smith (both 1966); The Thomas Crown Affair and his car chase classic Bullitt (both 1968); The Rievers (1969); Junior Bonner (1972), and Papillon (1973). 

Scalding Anti-Hero

While I loved them all, my personal favorites were his scalding, anti-hero work in 1962’s Hell is For Heroes and The War Lover, and 1972’s big-budget smash hit The Getaway. Each took full advantage of McQueen’s smoldering volatility, which seemed to promise action in the next millisecond.

In 1974, McQueen again co-starred with Newman in The Towering Inferno, a blockbuster in which the mega-stars battled for on-screen top billing, which they finally ended up sharing.

During his career, Steve reportedly turned down several high-profile lead roles, including 1961’s The Hustler that went to Newman and, owing to ill health, Apocalypse Now (1979). The latter went to Mattin Sheen, who replaced Harvey Keitel. 

Near the end of his life, Steve’s salty performance as the legendary frontier scout and tracker, Tom Horn in the scenic 1980 film of the same name closely paralleled his own maverick ways. 

In an early scene, set in1901, McQueen’s weathered Horn was exchanging pleasantries in a Western saloon with touring heavyweight boxing hope, Gentleman Jim Corbett, his manager and some reporters touting the young fighter’s greatness.

Gazing at a photo of ferocious Apache chief Geronimo, on a wall behind the bar, McQueen said: “Geronimo is so great, that Corbett there, would have to stand on his mother’s shoulders just to kiss his ass.”

Finally, reflecting on his career longevity in his last film—as the real-life Ralph “Papa” Thorson in 1980’s The Hunter—McQueen, with a stone-face, opined: “New things are no good.”

That was vintage Steve McQueen. He was all a movie actor should be. There may never be another like him. But how could there be? And I’ll always remember him.