March 25, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Steve McQueen expert, Marshall Terrill, tells the story of the life of the undisputed "King of Cool".
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and always we're looking for your stories. Send them to
our Americanstories dot com. Our listeners stories are some of
our favorite. We are about to hear next, the story
of Hollywood legend Steve McQueen, told by a real life
(00:33):
Steve McQueen expert.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Let's take a listen. My name is Marshall Cheryl and
I'm the author of approximately thirty books and I've written
seven on actor Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen has held a
fascination for me because I remember watching him on television
and on film because he was my dad's favorite actor,
(00:57):
and so whenever there was a movie on television, my
dad would say, hey, McQueen's on, let's go watch it.
Or if a McQueen movie was out, he'd say, hey,
there's a m queen movie out. He'd take me out
of school and then we go watch that. So that
was kind of our bonding experience. And as i've traveled
around the world now talking about Steve McQueen, I've discovered
(01:19):
that I'm not the only one. And that's how Steve McQueen,
I think has been passed down down to the generations.
It's not unlike the Beagles or Elvis Presley, where these
parents and grandparents now have such a love for this
person that they want to pass that on to their
children and their grandchildren, and somehow miraculously they get filtered
(01:43):
down to the next generation. So Steve McQueen, there's a
lot of that with him, and I think one of
the reasons for that is because his look is so timeless,
you know, and that he looks like if he stepped
out of the screen today that he could fit in
with society today. Because he had that great looking haircut,
(02:04):
that great physique. He didn't look like he belonged to
any sort of time period. And then, of course there
are his films, which he was I've always said he's
kind of the template for the modern day movie star.
You know, he didn't He sort of had his own code,
and people picked that up and they want to apply
that to themselves. And so as the result of following
(02:28):
his own instincts as an actor, Steve McQueen became the
biggest movie star of the nineteen sixties and seventies. From
nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy five, he was the
number one box office movie star of the world. Steve
McQueen was born on March twenty fourth, nineteen thirty, a
couple months right after the Great Depression hit. There was
(02:51):
the Wall Street crash in nineteen twenty nine, and so
he grew up right in the middle of that, and
both of his parents were alcoholics. He didn't really know
his father because he walked out on his wife and
his child after six months. His mother, Julian, was what
they called it, a flapper. She was a kind of
(03:13):
a good time girl. She was seventeen years old when
she gave birth to Steve, and you know, was just
a kid herself. And so Steve was raised by his
maternal grandparents at first, Victor and Lilian Crawford. When he
was about four or five years old, you know, they
(03:33):
had lost pretty much everything as a result of the
Great Depression, and so they moved to Slater, Missouri, where
Steve's granduncle Claude had a hog farm, and so sometimes
Julian would come. Sometimes she'd be off in California. Sometimes
she'd come and take him because she felt guilty and
(03:55):
bring him out to California. And then expose him to
stepfathers who didn't necessarily have his best interest at heart.
Sometimes they were abusive, most almost always they were alcoholics.
And so he was just raised in this environment where
he was didn't really have a home. Turned out he
was dyslexic and couldn't read well, and so, you know,
(04:17):
he was just one of those kids who fell through
the crack. When Steve McQueen lived in Los Angeles, he
got into a lot of trouble we're talking to, like
between the ages of nine and thirteen fourteen, he got
involved in a street gang. He talked about committing some
robberies and dealing hubcaps, playing pool at pool halls and
hustling people for money. And then there was a circus,
(04:40):
a traveling circus that came to town and he had
decided that he was going to join it. And he
even tried boxing for a little bit, and once he said,
he got knocked flat on his duck. He gave that up.
So when Steve got older, his mother had married a
gentleman by the name of Holberry, and this was in
Los Angeles, and so how was an alcoholic and you know,
(05:04):
he beat Steve. I don't know how frequently, but Steve
did talk about that in interviews, and one time he
talked about him getting beat up and getting thrown in
a closet and then one time getting beat up and
being thrown down a set of stairs, and so Steve
basically he said, if you touch me again, I'm going
to kill you. And so it turns out that his
(05:26):
mother had him, declared it incorrigible and took him to
the Boys Republican Chino, which was basically a reformatory school,
and so that's where Steve started getting his act together,
started learning some discipline, started understanding the fact that he
could have a life, a life of his choosing if
(05:48):
he decided to clean up his act. And so they
gave him a pretty good education. But the furthest he
got was in ninth grade. It wasn't until he decided
to join the Marine that he was going to quote
unquote become a real man. Well, Steve McQueen joined the
Marines in nineteen forty seven, and he needed the permission
(06:10):
of his mother to do it because he was seventeen.
And the kind of thing about that was he actually
sent a portion of his paycheck to his mother, even
though she wasn't really good to him, but she did
sign that paperwork for him, and in the beginning it
did not make him a man. But what he found
out was when he was in the Marines, he couldn't
(06:32):
get away with some of the shenanigans that he pulled.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
And you've been listening to Marshall Terrell tell the story
of actor Steve McQueen and what a difficult start to
a life you can't get dealt a much worse hand
than McQueen got dealt as a young man at the
Marine Corps and reform school, with the steps towards at
least an attempt to straighten his life. When we come back,
(06:56):
more of a life story of actor Steve McQueen here
on Our American Stories. Liha Bibe here the host of
(07:33):
Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
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(07:53):
donate button. Give a little, give a lot, Go to
Alamericanstories dot Com and give and we continue with our
American Stories and the story of actor Steve McQueen. Let's
(08:15):
pick up where we last left off with author Marshall Terrell.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
They went a wall a couple of times. That was
to be with some girlfriends who lived in another state.
Part of his punishment was that he had to clean
out the hull of the ship, which was in the
naval yard in Washington, d c. They had to clean
out the pipes which was filled with asbesos. Everything in
that ship was filled with asbestos. They didn't have any
masks on, so he breathed that in. That was in
(08:42):
December of nineteen forty nine, and he was diagnosed with
cancer in December of nineteen seventy nine, so it was
almost exactly thirty years, which is what they say that
Missalti leonmotakes to fully form. The other thing that he
did that that a sergeant told me who served with him,
(09:05):
was that he offered to clean the latrines in the morning.
And the sergeant said, no one ever ever offered to
clean the latrines. So what he said was McQueen could
sleep an extra hour in if he he would wake
up and then he would go sleep inside the bathroom area,
(09:26):
you know, put his coat down and then sleep for
an extra hour or two, which was considered gold in
the Marines. And so but he would also do his
duty as well. But he said, those are the kinds
of things that McQueen would pull. You know, he couldn't
be conformed fully, but you know, he conformed enough to
where he felt like the Marines had given him a
(09:46):
life of discipline. Well, Steve McQueen was a bit aimless
after joining the Marines. He drove a taxi cab and
was a mechanic for a company in Washington, d C.
As soon as he got out, because that's where he
was discharged, was in DC. And then he worked his
way up to New York City, where he felt quote
(10:08):
unquote where the action was. He was selling encyclopedias door
to door, and he did stuff like he'd steal like
a shower nozzle in a large department store, and then
he'd bring it back for a return and cash that in.
And another buddy of mine told me that he would
walk around the street offering a single ladies a tour
(10:29):
of the city and then they would buy him a
meal or give him a tip. So he was a
real hustler. You know, he did anything that he could
to survive. Those were those were really tough days. That's
what they what I call the salad days. And then
what happened was he was dating a dancer who said,
you know, Steve, you're really kind of kooky and strange.
You would be perfect for acting. And he discovered under
(10:51):
the GI Bill he qualified for acting or any sort
of college if he wanted to do that. So he
gave acting a shot. So Steve Queen started taking acting
lessons at Sanford Meisner's neighborhood Playhouse, and Meisner was the
perfect acting coach for him because he was soft with
people and Steve was very, very insecure, and so you know,
(11:15):
for him being an actor and being vulnerable, he truly
got into it because he knew that that's where women were.
But once it was discovered he had this great raw
talent and was given great positive feedback, he really fed
on that and so then that's when he really started trying.
(11:36):
And then you know, once once those skills were honed,
and trust me, it took took several years for him
to perfect the mc queen persona. Right around the time
that he enters the actors studio is when he starts
to get, you know, a little mojo with his career.
He gets a Broadway play. He's not very good in it,
(11:57):
but he's starting in Broadway play, which gives them the
courage to ask out his first wife, Neil Adams, who
was a very successful Broadway dancer, and they start dating
and they really hit it off. But his success does
not match hers, and so that kind of drives me crazy.
At the time, she was making fifty thousand dollars a year,
he was making four thousand, and the fact that his
(12:19):
wife was more successful than him, given that he was
a male choven, this drove him crazy. But some of
the productions that he was getting were kind of just
independent films, Like he got a job as a seventeen
dollars day extra in the movie Somebody Up There Likes Me,
starring Paul Newman. He did a a B movie called
Never Love a Stranger, Great Saint Louis Bank Robbery, and
(12:41):
of course The Blob, which was like the B movie
picture of all B movie pictures. So The Blob was made.
I think it started production in August of nineteen fifty
seven and It was a very very low grade B
movie about this blob that comes from outer space and
(13:05):
starts becoming bigger and swallowing people up. And at the
time it was considered, you know, very high tech. But
the interesting thing was it was developed by a production
company called Good News Productions, which was a Christian based
film company, and so with the Blob, they partnered with
(13:26):
Jack Harris to make a mainstream movie to tap into
some of that money to make more Christian films. And
near the end of filming Russell Dawton, who later went
on to produce a movie called Thief in the Night.
He went on to produce a lot of Christian films,
(13:46):
but Thief in the Night was this big one. He said.
There was a week of overruns in which McQueen would
have to you know, either dubbing apart or react a scene,
and McQueen was basically basically said nothing doing. And so
Dawton kind of sat him down and talked to him
about his attitude in life and gave him a Bible
(14:10):
because he knew that McQueen, after this production was headed
to Hollywood, and you know, he said, you know, Steve
was heading out into the wilderness and he wanted to
make sure that he gave him a Bible. And Dawton
actually went out to Hollywood a couple months later and
he said he bumped into McQueen and McQueen said to him, hey,
I still got your Bible. When Steve McQueen first got
(14:32):
to Hollywood, you know, he he made a strike almost
right away. And the reason for that was because again
Neil had translated her star power from Broadway to Hollywood,
and so she was starting to really get a lot
of attention. And so McQueen was following her to the
studios and you know, one of the famous quotes that
(14:54):
he gives was, you know, I was starting to get
elbowed by the makeup people and the assistant direct and
they were calling me mister Adams. And he said, I
came to realize at that moment time I better become
famous real fast. Because he did not want to follow
in her footsteps, so he was driving her crazy, and
so she called her manager, Hilly Opens, and said, Hilly,
(15:17):
you got to get him a job. He's driving me
absolutely bonkers. So the first job that Hilly gets Steve
McQueen is in a series called track Down and somebody
on that show saw Steve McQueen and said, who is
that guy, and so they said, yeah, just some young
(15:38):
unknown actor named Steve McQueen. And they said, well, we
want him for something else, and so that was for
a TV series called One a Dinner Alive and One
a Deader Alive. Believe it or not, was a big
hit when it debuted in September of nineteen fifty eight,
and it had the Luckily for him, the Blob had
(16:03):
just previewed just at that time it had finally come
out in theaters, so he had the double whammy of
the Blob and won a did Her Live appearing at
the same time.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the
story of Steve McQueen. And by the way, you can
learn so much more by going to a local bookstore
and buying this book, or heck, go to Amazon or
the usual suspects wherever you get your books. Steve McQueen
The Salvation of an American Icon by Greg Glory and
(16:37):
Marshall Terrell. And Terrell has written so many books about
this subject that we chose to interview him and to
have him tell the story of McQueen and what a
story it is, I mean imagine that his entire career
almost is predicated on a girl he's dating saying you're
kookie and strange, you'd be a good actor. And of
(16:57):
course he took that as a compliment or a call
to and he gave it a shot. And he is
very lucky that he was in New York City and
ended up with the great Stanford Meisner, one of the
great acting teachers coaches of all time, who did indeed
have a gentle touch. And of course actors are the
most insecure people in the world, as you can imagine,
and having a man like that tutor and mentor him,
(17:20):
and then to end up at the actors studio around
some of the great actors of his generation, studying his
craft to become indeed what he was, which was one
of the great American actors, not just an icon, but
a real talent. When we come back more of the
untold story of Steve McQueen here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and the story
of Steve McQueen, and my goodness, go back and watch
his movies and they're so good, and the range in
depth and breadth of his talent is remarkable and Magnificent seven,
The Greatest Gape Bullet, which by the way features the
greatest car chase in American history, one of the first
great ones too, and I think his best performance alongside
(18:31):
Fay Dunaway The Thomas Crown Affair, a slow, cool, burning, brilliant,
brilliant movie. Now let's return to Marshall Terrell to continue
the story of actor Steve McQueen.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
In the summers when he was on hiatus from One
to Dead or Live, he did a couple of different movies.
He did never so few for John Sturgis. That part
was originally written for Sammy Davis Junior, who had said
something disparaging about Frank Sinatra on radio, and then he
was out and Steve McQueen was in. John stur just
(19:08):
liked him very much promised him for his next movie
he'd have him in the role. That next movie was
The Magni Seven, which again was was filmed on hiatus
the following year, and he was He starred Oppositejil Brenner,
and of course he co starred with a couple of
(19:28):
his friends, Charles Bronson, James Colburn and a few other
young upstarts. But McQueen wanted to upset the apple cart.
And you know, he was second build and but Jil
Brenner was the star. But you know, Steve McQueen emerged
as a star because he had planned and plotted to
(19:51):
upstage Jule Brenner whenever he could. So one of the
acting choices McQueen made to upstage Brenner. There was a
s where they're talking to each other and McQueen is
walking back and forth and Brenner, because he was a
little bit smaller, had built a little sandpile to stand on.
So as McQueen's walking by and going past them, at
(20:14):
each scene, he's kicking away a little bit of the
sand to the point where real Brenner is sinking every
time that McQueen kicks the sand. So that was the
kind of shenanigans that he pulled. So from that performance,
a lot of the movie producers started to take note
of this young guy, and so a few years later,
(20:34):
John stur just asked him to star in The Great Escape.
That's when Steve McQueen turned into a household name. And
you know, when he read the script, he said, everybody's
got a little bit, I don't have a bit. You know,
mc garner had a turtleneck and you know, James Coburn
had his suitcase and st just you know, was saying,
(20:57):
don't worry about it, Steve. Just like Magnus, you know,
he promised them all a camera time as opposed to lines,
that he'd take care of him. So when they get
over to Germany, McQueen's attitude really starts a sour and
he's not getting the attention that he wants, especially regarding
his part. So he walked off the set for six weeks.
(21:19):
And so what McQueen asked for was another writer to
come in and start working on his part again, and
from that rewrite, they started developing the bit about throwing
the ball up against the cell and solitary confinement, the
motorcycle chase, and these other parts that would make that
character Steve McQueen. And as it turned out, it worked
perfectly because McQueen was the breakout star of that movie,
(21:42):
and that was the one movie that catapulted him from
TV stardom to film stardom, and he was the first
actual actor to do that in that era. So he
was the very first that catapulted from television to film
after the Great Escape, McQueen becomes, you know, the new
big star in Hollywood, and he has this attitude of,
(22:05):
you know, I'm going to taste all the goodies that
Hollywood has to offer. He bought a beautiful home in Brentwood,
bought a house in Palm Springs, had tons of sports cars,
dated a lot of pretty ladies behind his wife's back.
He hung out on the Sunset Strip. He had a
booth at the Whiskey of Go Go because he knew
(22:27):
the owner, and so again he was going to sample
all the goodies that Hollywood had to offer to him.
After the Great Escape, McQueen made a couple of He
made like a trio of movies that didn't really go anywhere.
So his next big film which started a streak that
made him the biggest movie star of the sixties. And
(22:50):
he did five back to back hits in a row,
and that was The Cincinnati Kid, Nevada Smith, the Sam Pebbles,
Thomas Crown Affair, and then it all ends with Bullet,
which was his biggest hit in the sixties and made
him a cultural icon and superstar. So he was no
(23:11):
longer just a movie star. He was in that rarefied
era of Superstars. With McQueen now on this big role,
almost every movie offer came his way, with the exception
of a movie called The Thomas Crown Affair, and that
was because Steve McQueen was always kind of played these
blue collar types and Thomas Crown was a swab, devonair,
(23:34):
a white collar bank robber. And it was originally offered
to Sean Connery, offered to him right after he made
his last James Bond movie, You Only Lived Twice, and
for whatever reasons, Sean Connery decided not to take it.
Then they start, They talked to Rock Hudson, and then
they talked to a few of the people. And so
(23:55):
Neil McQueen, his wife was very very good for him
in terms of his career and picking out movies that
she thought would benefit him. And so Thomas Crown, no
one had taken up that offer yet, and it was
directed by Norman Jewison, who directed McQueen and The Cincinnati Kid.
And so one day she's talking to McQueen and she said,
you know, it's really a darn shame that Norman doesn't
(24:18):
want you, and he goes, what are you talking about?
She said, the Thomas Crown affair. He doesn't want you
for it. So she was using some sort of reverse
psychology on him. She said, yeah, you know, they've talked
to Sean Connery, Rock Hudson, everybody in town but you,
And so McQueen hit puffed out his chest and decided, Okay,
(24:39):
I'm gonna call Norman, and Norman told him you're not
right for it, Steve. You know, you look down at
your feet, you shuffle your shoes. Thomas Crown's the kind
of person that will look you in the eye and
tell you a lie. He goes, are you capable of
doing that? So McQueen told him that basically, you know,
he was ready for the part. He was ready to
do it. And it made sense for Jewison because se
(25:00):
McQueen was the major, major box office star, so if
he wanted to get his movie green lit, it would
only make sense to have Steve McQueen in the starring role.
So after Bullet becomes this major, major Hollywood hit, it
was definitely the biggest hit of nineteen sixty eight. It
was during that period of time where he really started
(25:21):
getting into cocaine, he started getting into orgies, and a
lot of that downfall had to do with the fact
that the Manson family had killed two of his friends,
Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring. Sharon Tate was somebody that
Steve McQueen said on his deathbed was a girlfriend, and
(25:43):
that Jay Sebring, who cut his hair, was his best friend.
In Neil McQueen's book, she says the night before the
murders that j Sebring had come over to their house
and given Steve a trim and asked him if he
would come to the house the next night and helped
babysit Sharon because she was getting ready to have a
(26:06):
child and her husband, Roman Planski, was out of town,
and so you know, she wanted people around just to
keep her company. And so the next night, according to Neil,
Steve McQueen was on his motorcycle ready to go over
to the house and saw either some young girl hitchhiking
or saw somebody he recognized and spent the evening with
(26:29):
her and avoided that whole massacre because he was with
somebody else. And then later on it turned out there
was a report in the paper that Susan Atkins had
claimed to someone that the Mansons had a death list
of celebrities that they were going to kill, and Steve
McQueen was one of them on that list.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the
riveting story of Steve McQueen and how he barely escaped
being at the Roman Polanski home where the Mansons did
their devilish work and escape death by a narrow chance.
When we come back more of the life of Steve
McQueen here on our American stories, and we continue with
(27:38):
our American stories and with author Marshall Terrell, let's continue
with the story of actor Steve McQueen.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Here's Marshall. So at the end of the nineteen sixties,
Steve McQueen's life is really becoming a mess. He gets
a divorce from his wife, his company goes bankrupt, and
he also severs his relationship with his longtime agent who
you know, who helped him become very, very successful. Despite
(28:07):
the fact that you know he carried on endless affairs,
he was actually, believe it or not, a family man.
He carried very deeply. He loved his wife and he
loved his two children, Chad and Terry, and he came
from a broken home and it horrified him that these
two children would now quote unquote come from a broken home.
(28:31):
That's what makes him so interesting and complex is because
you know, he on the one hand, he couldn't help
himself with women, but on the other hand, he was
a family man, and so that family was now broken
up because of him. By nineteen seventy two, Steve McQueen's
careers on the upswing again and he had the one
(28:54):
two three punch of the Getaway. Papillon was extremely successful
in The Towering Inferno, was the most successful film of
all time, with a box office gross over three hundred
million dollars in nineteen seventy five dollars, up to Jaws,
which eclipsed it six months later. He found love again
in a young model by the name of Barbara Minty.
(29:17):
So she created that new spark in him. So he
decided that he was going to move to Santa Paula, California,
which is about sixty miles north of Los Angeles. And
one of the reasons why he did about was because
he went to fly antique airplanes and at the time
that was the antique airplane capital of the world. And
(29:38):
he bought a ranch and he was living in a
town that really reminded him of the home that he
grew up in as a kid Slater, Missouri, and he
was happy again. And one of the most interesting things
that happened in Santa Paul was the gentleman that taught
him how to fly. His name was Sammy Mason, was
a former World War Two pilot, and after a couple lessons,
(30:03):
Steve picked up on his spirit or his vibe, whatever
you would want to call it, and he said, Sammy,
there's something different about you. I can't quite put my
finger on it. And Sammy said, well, Steve, I'm a
born again Christian. And so rather than that turning off Steve,
Steve was intrigued. And here's Pastor Leonard Duett talking about
(30:27):
his relationship with Steve McQueen.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Sam wasn't the preacher type. He was rock solid in
his faith and he lived the life. He saw in
Sam someone that he could trust, someone who genuinely cared
about him. Both families just embraced him, and so he
saw in them a quality of life. You know, they
(30:53):
prayed over their meals, they were respectful, they were supportive,
they were encouraging, they were just rock solid. He realizes
there's something a whole lot better than I have ever experienced.
So when they invited him to church, that was no
big deal. He was ready. I don't know what he
(31:13):
thought he was going to experience, but he trusted them,
and when he started coming, he just felt at home.
The people didn't bother him, you know, they weren't asking
for autographs or anything. The Mason family always sat up
in the balcony. They had six children, and he just
sat with the whole family. I think he'd been coming
(31:34):
about three or four months. But one Sunday, I was
out in the foyer greeting the people, and I felt
someone tap me on the shoulder and I turned around
and he said, pastor, I'm Steve McQueen, And I said, oh, hi, Steve.
I heard that you were worshiping with us. And he said,
(31:55):
I wonder if you'd have some time one of these
days where we could get together and talk. And we
met at the old the old Santa Paula Airport restaurant.
We met well, probably about two o'clock in the afternoon,
so there would be anybody there. He had a lot
of questions about Christ, but he also wanted to know
(32:16):
can can you trust the Bible? Is it accurate? Is
it reliable, you know, is it going to make me
a kook? He wanted to know what difference would Christ
make in a person's life. Is it going to be
more of what I'm used to or is Christ really
(32:37):
going to bring about a change that I will be
happy with? So those are the kind of questions not
only about Christ personally, but you know, the Bible says
that if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.
All things pass away and all things become new, and
so Steve really wanted to know it is this real.
(32:57):
So during that two hours at the airport, when he's
firing one question after another, finally he just sort of
sat back and he says, well, that's all my questions.
And I just sort of smiled and said, well, Steve,
(33:18):
I have just one and he grinned. He says, you
want to know if I'm a born again Christian, don't you?
And I said, well, that's really what's important to me.
So he said, you remember the Sunday And it was
probably maybe three or four weeks before. Anyway, he said,
on that particular Sunday, at the end of the service,
(33:39):
you gave an opportunity for us to receive Christ. And
he said, that's when I invited Christ into my life
and was born again. And he told me at that
particular point, he says, Leonard, I don't know hardly anything
about the Bible, so I'm going to be coming upon you.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
He says, good.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
We meet on a regular basis, and so we set
up a program where we met once a week and
we would spend a full hour in Bible study and prayer,
and we would do it out at his acreage or
his ranch. After he told me about the tumor and
about the cancer, we just sat there for just a
(34:22):
few minutes and finally I just said, Steve, how do
you feel about this? What's going through your mind now?
And he says, well, now that I'm a Christian, I
really do want to live because I'd like to share
what I have found with others. But if I don't
(34:45):
make it, I know where I'm going. I would say
in his conversion that Steve discovered that being a Christian
is far more than being religious. It's a relationship. And
he he loved that relationship and he was growing. He
(35:06):
was growing in that relationship. That meant it's just it's
that became his life.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And here's Steph McQueen in a private audio tape about
two weeks before his death, talking about his personal faith.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
When you mentioned earlier about a clue in my life, well,
that crew was playing the Lord in my life. I'd
like to think that I'm a good Christian. I'm trying
to be. It's not easy change from evil bying. Then
we've been out, but I know the Lord what I
had to offer, what happened the man. I know now
I've changed the lot. I used to be Marvin marschtop
(35:46):
and now my body's gone and broken, but my spirit
didn't PILs him.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
People always ask me, did Steve McQueen really become a
Christian or did he do it to save himself? Well,
other people say, well, you know, Steve wasn't that religious,
and I always just point them to Steve McQueen's own words.
He made this tape while he was in Plaza Santa
Maria in Mexico, about two weeks before his death, and
(36:18):
all I say to them is, let's just go to
the tape.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
And a great job on the production by Greg Hangler
and a special thanks to Marshall Terrell for sharing the
story of Steve McQueen to pick up his book Steve
McQueen The Salvation of an American Icon, and it's by
Greg Glory and Marshall Terrell. Go to your local bookstore
or go to Amazon or the usual suspects wherever you
get books. And also a special thanks to Pastor Leonard
(36:46):
de Witt for sharing the story of Steve McQueen's conversion.
By the way, he converted to Christianity before the diagnosis
of cancer. He met this pilot instructor and he said,
this is how to live a life, and he wanted
to know more, and he got curious, and that curiosity
led to his conversion. The other remarkable part of this
(37:07):
story is McQueen walking out on the set of The
Great Escape for six weeks. This got him the reputation
for being difficult shortly, but that was soon to be
not true, because what happened in the end is he
fought for a better version of the role he was
about to play and a writer who made it happen,
and in the end it made the film and made
(37:28):
his career too. And what's most interesting about McQueen's story
is that he did love his family, and he did
love his wife, but he was a broken man and
All he knew was what he knew, and that was
what he learned from his father and his mother. His
father was never there, his mother was an alcoholic. And
that's why we love doing these stories. We don't deify
(37:50):
these people when we do talk about stars. We cover
their life stories, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Steve McQueen's story here on our American Story
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and always we're looking for your stories. Send them to
our Americanstories dot com. Our listeners stories are some of
our favorite. We are about to hear next, the story
of Hollywood legend Steve McQueen, told by a real life
(00:33):
Steve McQueen expert.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Let's take a listen. My name is Marshall Cheryl and
I'm the author of approximately thirty books and I've written
seven on actor Steve McQueen. Steve McQueen has held a
fascination for me because I remember watching him on television
and on film because he was my dad's favorite actor,
(00:57):
and so whenever there was a movie on television, my
dad would say, hey, McQueen's on, let's go watch it.
Or if a McQueen movie was out, he'd say, hey,
there's a m queen movie out. He'd take me out
of school and then we go watch that. So that
was kind of our bonding experience. And as i've traveled
around the world now talking about Steve McQueen, I've discovered
(01:19):
that I'm not the only one. And that's how Steve McQueen,
I think has been passed down down to the generations.
It's not unlike the Beagles or Elvis Presley, where these
parents and grandparents now have such a love for this
person that they want to pass that on to their
children and their grandchildren, and somehow miraculously they get filtered
(01:43):
down to the next generation. So Steve McQueen, there's a
lot of that with him, and I think one of
the reasons for that is because his look is so timeless,
you know, and that he looks like if he stepped
out of the screen today that he could fit in
with society today. Because he had that great looking haircut,
(02:04):
that great physique. He didn't look like he belonged to
any sort of time period. And then, of course there
are his films, which he was I've always said he's
kind of the template for the modern day movie star.
You know, he didn't He sort of had his own code,
and people picked that up and they want to apply
that to themselves. And so as the result of following
(02:28):
his own instincts as an actor, Steve McQueen became the
biggest movie star of the nineteen sixties and seventies. From
nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy five, he was the
number one box office movie star of the world. Steve
McQueen was born on March twenty fourth, nineteen thirty, a
couple months right after the Great Depression hit. There was
(02:51):
the Wall Street crash in nineteen twenty nine, and so
he grew up right in the middle of that, and
both of his parents were alcoholics. He didn't really know
his father because he walked out on his wife and
his child after six months. His mother, Julian, was what
they called it, a flapper. She was a kind of
(03:13):
a good time girl. She was seventeen years old when
she gave birth to Steve, and you know, was just
a kid herself. And so Steve was raised by his
maternal grandparents at first, Victor and Lilian Crawford. When he
was about four or five years old, you know, they
(03:33):
had lost pretty much everything as a result of the
Great Depression, and so they moved to Slater, Missouri, where
Steve's granduncle Claude had a hog farm, and so sometimes
Julian would come. Sometimes she'd be off in California. Sometimes
she'd come and take him because she felt guilty and
(03:55):
bring him out to California. And then expose him to
stepfathers who didn't necessarily have his best interest at heart.
Sometimes they were abusive, most almost always they were alcoholics.
And so he was just raised in this environment where
he was didn't really have a home. Turned out he
was dyslexic and couldn't read well, and so, you know,
(04:17):
he was just one of those kids who fell through
the crack. When Steve McQueen lived in Los Angeles, he
got into a lot of trouble we're talking to, like
between the ages of nine and thirteen fourteen, he got
involved in a street gang. He talked about committing some
robberies and dealing hubcaps, playing pool at pool halls and
hustling people for money. And then there was a circus,
(04:40):
a traveling circus that came to town and he had
decided that he was going to join it. And he
even tried boxing for a little bit, and once he said,
he got knocked flat on his duck. He gave that up.
So when Steve got older, his mother had married a
gentleman by the name of Holberry, and this was in
Los Angeles, and so how was an alcoholic and you know,
(05:04):
he beat Steve. I don't know how frequently, but Steve
did talk about that in interviews, and one time he
talked about him getting beat up and getting thrown in
a closet and then one time getting beat up and
being thrown down a set of stairs, and so Steve
basically he said, if you touch me again, I'm going
to kill you. And so it turns out that his
(05:26):
mother had him, declared it incorrigible and took him to
the Boys Republican Chino, which was basically a reformatory school,
and so that's where Steve started getting his act together,
started learning some discipline, started understanding the fact that he
could have a life, a life of his choosing if
(05:48):
he decided to clean up his act. And so they
gave him a pretty good education. But the furthest he
got was in ninth grade. It wasn't until he decided
to join the Marine that he was going to quote
unquote become a real man. Well, Steve McQueen joined the
Marines in nineteen forty seven, and he needed the permission
(06:10):
of his mother to do it because he was seventeen.
And the kind of thing about that was he actually
sent a portion of his paycheck to his mother, even
though she wasn't really good to him, but she did
sign that paperwork for him, and in the beginning it
did not make him a man. But what he found
out was when he was in the Marines, he couldn't
(06:32):
get away with some of the shenanigans that he pulled.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
And you've been listening to Marshall Terrell tell the story
of actor Steve McQueen and what a difficult start to
a life you can't get dealt a much worse hand
than McQueen got dealt as a young man at the
Marine Corps and reform school, with the steps towards at
least an attempt to straighten his life. When we come back,
(06:56):
more of a life story of actor Steve McQueen here
on Our American Stories. Liha Bibe here the host of
(07:33):
Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to Olamericanstories dot com and click the
(07:53):
donate button. Give a little, give a lot, Go to
Alamericanstories dot Com and give and we continue with our
American Stories and the story of actor Steve McQueen. Let's
(08:15):
pick up where we last left off with author Marshall Terrell.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
They went a wall a couple of times. That was
to be with some girlfriends who lived in another state.
Part of his punishment was that he had to clean
out the hull of the ship, which was in the
naval yard in Washington, d c. They had to clean
out the pipes which was filled with asbesos. Everything in
that ship was filled with asbestos. They didn't have any
masks on, so he breathed that in. That was in
(08:42):
December of nineteen forty nine, and he was diagnosed with
cancer in December of nineteen seventy nine, so it was
almost exactly thirty years, which is what they say that
Missalti leonmotakes to fully form. The other thing that he
did that that a sergeant told me who served with him,
(09:05):
was that he offered to clean the latrines in the morning.
And the sergeant said, no one ever ever offered to
clean the latrines. So what he said was McQueen could
sleep an extra hour in if he he would wake
up and then he would go sleep inside the bathroom area,
(09:26):
you know, put his coat down and then sleep for
an extra hour or two, which was considered gold in
the Marines. And so but he would also do his
duty as well. But he said, those are the kinds
of things that McQueen would pull. You know, he couldn't
be conformed fully, but you know, he conformed enough to
where he felt like the Marines had given him a
(09:46):
life of discipline. Well, Steve McQueen was a bit aimless
after joining the Marines. He drove a taxi cab and
was a mechanic for a company in Washington, d C.
As soon as he got out, because that's where he
was discharged, was in DC. And then he worked his
way up to New York City, where he felt quote
(10:08):
unquote where the action was. He was selling encyclopedias door
to door, and he did stuff like he'd steal like
a shower nozzle in a large department store, and then
he'd bring it back for a return and cash that in.
And another buddy of mine told me that he would
walk around the street offering a single ladies a tour
(10:29):
of the city and then they would buy him a
meal or give him a tip. So he was a
real hustler. You know, he did anything that he could
to survive. Those were those were really tough days. That's
what they what I call the salad days. And then
what happened was he was dating a dancer who said,
you know, Steve, you're really kind of kooky and strange.
You would be perfect for acting. And he discovered under
(10:51):
the GI Bill he qualified for acting or any sort
of college if he wanted to do that. So he
gave acting a shot. So Steve Queen started taking acting
lessons at Sanford Meisner's neighborhood Playhouse, and Meisner was the
perfect acting coach for him because he was soft with
people and Steve was very, very insecure, and so you know,
(11:15):
for him being an actor and being vulnerable, he truly
got into it because he knew that that's where women were.
But once it was discovered he had this great raw
talent and was given great positive feedback, he really fed
on that and so then that's when he really started trying.
(11:36):
And then you know, once once those skills were honed,
and trust me, it took took several years for him
to perfect the mc queen persona. Right around the time
that he enters the actors studio is when he starts
to get, you know, a little mojo with his career.
He gets a Broadway play. He's not very good in it,
(11:57):
but he's starting in Broadway play, which gives them the
courage to ask out his first wife, Neil Adams, who
was a very successful Broadway dancer, and they start dating
and they really hit it off. But his success does
not match hers, and so that kind of drives me crazy.
At the time, she was making fifty thousand dollars a year,
he was making four thousand, and the fact that his
(12:19):
wife was more successful than him, given that he was
a male choven, this drove him crazy. But some of
the productions that he was getting were kind of just
independent films, Like he got a job as a seventeen
dollars day extra in the movie Somebody Up There Likes Me,
starring Paul Newman. He did a a B movie called
Never Love a Stranger, Great Saint Louis Bank Robbery, and
(12:41):
of course The Blob, which was like the B movie
picture of all B movie pictures. So The Blob was made.
I think it started production in August of nineteen fifty
seven and It was a very very low grade B
movie about this blob that comes from outer space and
(13:05):
starts becoming bigger and swallowing people up. And at the
time it was considered, you know, very high tech. But
the interesting thing was it was developed by a production
company called Good News Productions, which was a Christian based
film company, and so with the Blob, they partnered with
(13:26):
Jack Harris to make a mainstream movie to tap into
some of that money to make more Christian films. And
near the end of filming Russell Dawton, who later went
on to produce a movie called Thief in the Night.
He went on to produce a lot of Christian films,
(13:46):
but Thief in the Night was this big one. He said.
There was a week of overruns in which McQueen would
have to you know, either dubbing apart or react a scene,
and McQueen was basically basically said nothing doing. And so
Dawton kind of sat him down and talked to him
about his attitude in life and gave him a Bible
(14:10):
because he knew that McQueen, after this production was headed
to Hollywood, and you know, he said, you know, Steve
was heading out into the wilderness and he wanted to
make sure that he gave him a Bible. And Dawton
actually went out to Hollywood a couple months later and
he said he bumped into McQueen and McQueen said to him, hey,
I still got your Bible. When Steve McQueen first got
(14:32):
to Hollywood, you know, he he made a strike almost
right away. And the reason for that was because again
Neil had translated her star power from Broadway to Hollywood,
and so she was starting to really get a lot
of attention. And so McQueen was following her to the
studios and you know, one of the famous quotes that
(14:54):
he gives was, you know, I was starting to get
elbowed by the makeup people and the assistant direct and
they were calling me mister Adams. And he said, I
came to realize at that moment time I better become
famous real fast. Because he did not want to follow
in her footsteps, so he was driving her crazy, and
so she called her manager, Hilly Opens, and said, Hilly,
(15:17):
you got to get him a job. He's driving me
absolutely bonkers. So the first job that Hilly gets Steve
McQueen is in a series called track Down and somebody
on that show saw Steve McQueen and said, who is
that guy, and so they said, yeah, just some young
(15:38):
unknown actor named Steve McQueen. And they said, well, we
want him for something else, and so that was for
a TV series called One a Dinner Alive and One
a Deader Alive. Believe it or not, was a big
hit when it debuted in September of nineteen fifty eight,
and it had the Luckily for him, the Blob had
(16:03):
just previewed just at that time it had finally come
out in theaters, so he had the double whammy of
the Blob and won a did Her Live appearing at
the same time.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the
story of Steve McQueen. And by the way, you can
learn so much more by going to a local bookstore
and buying this book, or heck, go to Amazon or
the usual suspects wherever you get your books. Steve McQueen
The Salvation of an American Icon by Greg Glory and
(16:37):
Marshall Terrell. And Terrell has written so many books about
this subject that we chose to interview him and to
have him tell the story of McQueen and what a
story it is, I mean imagine that his entire career
almost is predicated on a girl he's dating saying you're
kookie and strange, you'd be a good actor. And of
(16:57):
course he took that as a compliment or a call
to and he gave it a shot. And he is
very lucky that he was in New York City and
ended up with the great Stanford Meisner, one of the
great acting teachers coaches of all time, who did indeed
have a gentle touch. And of course actors are the
most insecure people in the world, as you can imagine,
and having a man like that tutor and mentor him,
(17:20):
and then to end up at the actors studio around
some of the great actors of his generation, studying his
craft to become indeed what he was, which was one
of the great American actors, not just an icon, but
a real talent. When we come back more of the
untold story of Steve McQueen here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and the story
of Steve McQueen, and my goodness, go back and watch
his movies and they're so good, and the range in
depth and breadth of his talent is remarkable and Magnificent seven,
The Greatest Gape Bullet, which by the way features the
greatest car chase in American history, one of the first
great ones too, and I think his best performance alongside
(18:31):
Fay Dunaway The Thomas Crown Affair, a slow, cool, burning, brilliant,
brilliant movie. Now let's return to Marshall Terrell to continue
the story of actor Steve McQueen.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
In the summers when he was on hiatus from One
to Dead or Live, he did a couple of different movies.
He did never so few for John Sturgis. That part
was originally written for Sammy Davis Junior, who had said
something disparaging about Frank Sinatra on radio, and then he
was out and Steve McQueen was in. John stur just
(19:08):
liked him very much promised him for his next movie
he'd have him in the role. That next movie was
The Magni Seven, which again was was filmed on hiatus
the following year, and he was He starred Oppositejil Brenner,
and of course he co starred with a couple of
(19:28):
his friends, Charles Bronson, James Colburn and a few other
young upstarts. But McQueen wanted to upset the apple cart.
And you know, he was second build and but Jil
Brenner was the star. But you know, Steve McQueen emerged
as a star because he had planned and plotted to
(19:51):
upstage Jule Brenner whenever he could. So one of the
acting choices McQueen made to upstage Brenner. There was a
s where they're talking to each other and McQueen is
walking back and forth and Brenner, because he was a
little bit smaller, had built a little sandpile to stand on.
So as McQueen's walking by and going past them, at
(20:14):
each scene, he's kicking away a little bit of the
sand to the point where real Brenner is sinking every
time that McQueen kicks the sand. So that was the
kind of shenanigans that he pulled. So from that performance,
a lot of the movie producers started to take note
of this young guy, and so a few years later,
(20:34):
John stur just asked him to star in The Great Escape.
That's when Steve McQueen turned into a household name. And
you know, when he read the script, he said, everybody's
got a little bit, I don't have a bit. You know,
mc garner had a turtleneck and you know, James Coburn
had his suitcase and st just you know, was saying,
(20:57):
don't worry about it, Steve. Just like Magnus, you know,
he promised them all a camera time as opposed to lines,
that he'd take care of him. So when they get
over to Germany, McQueen's attitude really starts a sour and
he's not getting the attention that he wants, especially regarding
his part. So he walked off the set for six weeks.
(21:19):
And so what McQueen asked for was another writer to
come in and start working on his part again, and
from that rewrite, they started developing the bit about throwing
the ball up against the cell and solitary confinement, the
motorcycle chase, and these other parts that would make that
character Steve McQueen. And as it turned out, it worked
perfectly because McQueen was the breakout star of that movie,
(21:42):
and that was the one movie that catapulted him from
TV stardom to film stardom, and he was the first
actual actor to do that in that era. So he
was the very first that catapulted from television to film
after the Great Escape, McQueen becomes, you know, the new
big star in Hollywood, and he has this attitude of,
(22:05):
you know, I'm going to taste all the goodies that
Hollywood has to offer. He bought a beautiful home in Brentwood,
bought a house in Palm Springs, had tons of sports cars,
dated a lot of pretty ladies behind his wife's back.
He hung out on the Sunset Strip. He had a
booth at the Whiskey of Go Go because he knew
(22:27):
the owner, and so again he was going to sample
all the goodies that Hollywood had to offer to him.
After the Great Escape, McQueen made a couple of He
made like a trio of movies that didn't really go anywhere.
So his next big film which started a streak that
made him the biggest movie star of the sixties. And
(22:50):
he did five back to back hits in a row,
and that was The Cincinnati Kid, Nevada Smith, the Sam Pebbles,
Thomas Crown Affair, and then it all ends with Bullet,
which was his biggest hit in the sixties and made
him a cultural icon and superstar. So he was no
(23:11):
longer just a movie star. He was in that rarefied
era of Superstars. With McQueen now on this big role,
almost every movie offer came his way, with the exception
of a movie called The Thomas Crown Affair, and that
was because Steve McQueen was always kind of played these
blue collar types and Thomas Crown was a swab, devonair,
(23:34):
a white collar bank robber. And it was originally offered
to Sean Connery, offered to him right after he made
his last James Bond movie, You Only Lived Twice, and
for whatever reasons, Sean Connery decided not to take it.
Then they start, They talked to Rock Hudson, and then
they talked to a few of the people. And so
(23:55):
Neil McQueen, his wife was very very good for him
in terms of his career and picking out movies that
she thought would benefit him. And so Thomas Crown, no
one had taken up that offer yet, and it was
directed by Norman Jewison, who directed McQueen and The Cincinnati Kid.
And so one day she's talking to McQueen and she said,
you know, it's really a darn shame that Norman doesn't
(24:18):
want you, and he goes, what are you talking about?
She said, the Thomas Crown affair. He doesn't want you
for it. So she was using some sort of reverse
psychology on him. She said, yeah, you know, they've talked
to Sean Connery, Rock Hudson, everybody in town but you,
And so McQueen hit puffed out his chest and decided, Okay,
(24:39):
I'm gonna call Norman, and Norman told him you're not
right for it, Steve. You know, you look down at
your feet, you shuffle your shoes. Thomas Crown's the kind
of person that will look you in the eye and
tell you a lie. He goes, are you capable of
doing that? So McQueen told him that basically, you know,
he was ready for the part. He was ready to
do it. And it made sense for Jewison because se
(25:00):
McQueen was the major, major box office star, so if
he wanted to get his movie green lit, it would
only make sense to have Steve McQueen in the starring role.
So after Bullet becomes this major, major Hollywood hit, it
was definitely the biggest hit of nineteen sixty eight. It
was during that period of time where he really started
(25:21):
getting into cocaine, he started getting into orgies, and a
lot of that downfall had to do with the fact
that the Manson family had killed two of his friends,
Sharon Tate and Jay Sebring. Sharon Tate was somebody that
Steve McQueen said on his deathbed was a girlfriend, and
(25:43):
that Jay Sebring, who cut his hair, was his best friend.
In Neil McQueen's book, she says the night before the
murders that j Sebring had come over to their house
and given Steve a trim and asked him if he
would come to the house the next night and helped
babysit Sharon because she was getting ready to have a
(26:06):
child and her husband, Roman Planski, was out of town,
and so you know, she wanted people around just to
keep her company. And so the next night, according to Neil,
Steve McQueen was on his motorcycle ready to go over
to the house and saw either some young girl hitchhiking
or saw somebody he recognized and spent the evening with
(26:29):
her and avoided that whole massacre because he was with
somebody else. And then later on it turned out there
was a report in the paper that Susan Atkins had
claimed to someone that the Mansons had a death list
of celebrities that they were going to kill, and Steve
McQueen was one of them on that list.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the
riveting story of Steve McQueen and how he barely escaped
being at the Roman Polanski home where the Mansons did
their devilish work and escape death by a narrow chance.
When we come back more of the life of Steve
McQueen here on our American stories, and we continue with
(27:38):
our American stories and with author Marshall Terrell, let's continue
with the story of actor Steve McQueen.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Here's Marshall. So at the end of the nineteen sixties,
Steve McQueen's life is really becoming a mess. He gets
a divorce from his wife, his company goes bankrupt, and
he also severs his relationship with his longtime agent who
you know, who helped him become very, very successful. Despite
(28:07):
the fact that you know he carried on endless affairs,
he was actually, believe it or not, a family man.
He carried very deeply. He loved his wife and he
loved his two children, Chad and Terry, and he came
from a broken home and it horrified him that these
two children would now quote unquote come from a broken home.
(28:31):
That's what makes him so interesting and complex is because
you know, he on the one hand, he couldn't help
himself with women, but on the other hand, he was
a family man, and so that family was now broken
up because of him. By nineteen seventy two, Steve McQueen's
careers on the upswing again and he had the one
(28:54):
two three punch of the Getaway. Papillon was extremely successful
in The Towering Inferno, was the most successful film of
all time, with a box office gross over three hundred
million dollars in nineteen seventy five dollars, up to Jaws,
which eclipsed it six months later. He found love again
in a young model by the name of Barbara Minty.
(29:17):
So she created that new spark in him. So he
decided that he was going to move to Santa Paula, California,
which is about sixty miles north of Los Angeles. And
one of the reasons why he did about was because
he went to fly antique airplanes and at the time
that was the antique airplane capital of the world. And
(29:38):
he bought a ranch and he was living in a
town that really reminded him of the home that he
grew up in as a kid Slater, Missouri, and he
was happy again. And one of the most interesting things
that happened in Santa Paul was the gentleman that taught
him how to fly. His name was Sammy Mason, was
a former World War Two pilot, and after a couple lessons,
(30:03):
Steve picked up on his spirit or his vibe, whatever
you would want to call it, and he said, Sammy,
there's something different about you. I can't quite put my
finger on it. And Sammy said, well, Steve, I'm a
born again Christian. And so rather than that turning off Steve,
Steve was intrigued. And here's Pastor Leonard Duett talking about
(30:27):
his relationship with Steve McQueen.
Speaker 3 (30:30):
Sam wasn't the preacher type. He was rock solid in
his faith and he lived the life. He saw in
Sam someone that he could trust, someone who genuinely cared
about him. Both families just embraced him, and so he
saw in them a quality of life. You know, they
(30:53):
prayed over their meals, they were respectful, they were supportive,
they were encouraging, they were just rock solid. He realizes
there's something a whole lot better than I have ever experienced.
So when they invited him to church, that was no
big deal. He was ready. I don't know what he
(31:13):
thought he was going to experience, but he trusted them,
and when he started coming, he just felt at home.
The people didn't bother him, you know, they weren't asking
for autographs or anything. The Mason family always sat up
in the balcony. They had six children, and he just
sat with the whole family. I think he'd been coming
(31:34):
about three or four months. But one Sunday, I was
out in the foyer greeting the people, and I felt
someone tap me on the shoulder and I turned around
and he said, pastor, I'm Steve McQueen, And I said, oh, hi, Steve.
I heard that you were worshiping with us. And he said,
(31:55):
I wonder if you'd have some time one of these
days where we could get together and talk. And we
met at the old the old Santa Paula Airport restaurant.
We met well, probably about two o'clock in the afternoon,
so there would be anybody there. He had a lot
of questions about Christ, but he also wanted to know
(32:16):
can can you trust the Bible? Is it accurate? Is
it reliable, you know, is it going to make me
a kook? He wanted to know what difference would Christ
make in a person's life. Is it going to be
more of what I'm used to or is Christ really
(32:37):
going to bring about a change that I will be
happy with? So those are the kind of questions not
only about Christ personally, but you know, the Bible says
that if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation.
All things pass away and all things become new, and
so Steve really wanted to know it is this real.
(32:57):
So during that two hours at the airport, when he's
firing one question after another, finally he just sort of
sat back and he says, well, that's all my questions.
And I just sort of smiled and said, well, Steve,
(33:18):
I have just one and he grinned. He says, you
want to know if I'm a born again Christian, don't you?
And I said, well, that's really what's important to me.
So he said, you remember the Sunday And it was
probably maybe three or four weeks before. Anyway, he said,
on that particular Sunday, at the end of the service,
(33:39):
you gave an opportunity for us to receive Christ. And
he said, that's when I invited Christ into my life
and was born again. And he told me at that
particular point, he says, Leonard, I don't know hardly anything
about the Bible, so I'm going to be coming upon you.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
He says, good.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
We meet on a regular basis, and so we set
up a program where we met once a week and
we would spend a full hour in Bible study and prayer,
and we would do it out at his acreage or
his ranch. After he told me about the tumor and
about the cancer, we just sat there for just a
(34:22):
few minutes and finally I just said, Steve, how do
you feel about this? What's going through your mind now?
And he says, well, now that I'm a Christian, I
really do want to live because I'd like to share
what I have found with others. But if I don't
(34:45):
make it, I know where I'm going. I would say
in his conversion that Steve discovered that being a Christian
is far more than being religious. It's a relationship. And
he he loved that relationship and he was growing. He
(35:06):
was growing in that relationship. That meant it's just it's
that became his life.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
And here's Steph McQueen in a private audio tape about
two weeks before his death, talking about his personal faith.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
When you mentioned earlier about a clue in my life, well,
that crew was playing the Lord in my life. I'd
like to think that I'm a good Christian. I'm trying
to be. It's not easy change from evil bying. Then
we've been out, but I know the Lord what I
had to offer, what happened the man. I know now
I've changed the lot. I used to be Marvin marschtop
(35:46):
and now my body's gone and broken, but my spirit
didn't PILs him.
Speaker 2 (35:54):
People always ask me, did Steve McQueen really become a
Christian or did he do it to save himself? Well,
other people say, well, you know, Steve wasn't that religious,
and I always just point them to Steve McQueen's own words.
He made this tape while he was in Plaza Santa
Maria in Mexico, about two weeks before his death, and
(36:18):
all I say to them is, let's just go to
the tape.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
And a great job on the production by Greg Hangler
and a special thanks to Marshall Terrell for sharing the
story of Steve McQueen to pick up his book Steve
McQueen The Salvation of an American Icon, and it's by
Greg Glory and Marshall Terrell. Go to your local bookstore
or go to Amazon or the usual suspects wherever you
get books. And also a special thanks to Pastor Leonard
(36:46):
de Witt for sharing the story of Steve McQueen's conversion.
By the way, he converted to Christianity before the diagnosis
of cancer. He met this pilot instructor and he said,
this is how to live a life, and he wanted
to know more, and he got curious, and that curiosity
led to his conversion. The other remarkable part of this
(37:07):
story is McQueen walking out on the set of The
Great Escape for six weeks. This got him the reputation
for being difficult shortly, but that was soon to be
not true, because what happened in the end is he
fought for a better version of the role he was
about to play and a writer who made it happen,
and in the end it made the film and made
(37:28):
his career too. And what's most interesting about McQueen's story
is that he did love his family, and he did
love his wife, but he was a broken man and
All he knew was what he knew, and that was
what he learned from his father and his mother. His
father was never there, his mother was an alcoholic. And
that's why we love doing these stories. We don't deify
(37:50):
these people when we do talk about stars. We cover
their life stories, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Steve McQueen's story here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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