November 8, 2024 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, we are about to hear the untold story of Hollywood legend Steve McQueen told by a McQueen expert, Marshall Terrill. Steve McQueen died this day in history in 1980.
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Episode Transcript
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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.
We are about to hear next the story of Hollywood
legend Steve McQueen, told by a real life Steve McQueen expert.
And we're telling you this story because on this day
in history, in nineteen eighty Steve McQueen died.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
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,
(00:54):
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 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 that
(01:16):
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 Beatles 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
(01:40):
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,
(02:01):
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
(02:25):
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
(02:48):
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
(03:10):
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
(03:30):
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
(03:52):
bring him out to California. And then expose him to
stepfathers who didn't necessarily have his best interest at her art.
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,
(04:15):
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,
(04:37):
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 Hal was an awlcoholic,
(05:01):
and you know, 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
(05:22):
that his 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,
(05:45):
if 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 Marines 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
(06:06):
permission 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 get
(06:29):
away with some of the shenanigans that he pulled.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
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,
(06:53):
the story of Steve McQueen, who died on this day
in history in nineteen eighty More of a life story
of actor Steve Eve McQueen here on Our American Stories.
(07:32):
Lihabibe here the host of all 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
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Alamerican Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give
(07:54):
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. And we're telling you
(08:16):
this story because on this day in history, in nineteen
eighty Steve McQueen died. Let's pick up where we last
left off with author Marshall Terrell.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
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
(08:48):
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
Messalti Leona takes to fully form the other thing that
he did. That that a sergeant told me who served
(09:11):
with him 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, you know, put his coat down
(09:34):
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 life of discipline. Well, Steve McQueen
(09:56):
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 unquote where the action was. He
(10:17):
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 of the city and then
they would buy him a meal or give him a tip.
(10:39):
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 the GI Bill he qualified for
(11:00):
for acting or any sort of college if he wanted
to do that. So he gave acting a shot. So
Steve McQueen 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,
(11:20):
and so you know, 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. And then you know,
(11:43):
once once those skills were honed, and trust me, it
took several years for him to perfect the McQueen 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, but he's starting in Broadway play,
(12:04):
which gives me 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 wife was more successful than him,
(12:27):
given that he was a male, Choven's 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 of course The Blob, which was
(12:48):
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
(13:10):
comes from outer space and starts becoming bigger and swallowing
people up, and at the time it was considered 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 Bob,
(13:31):
they partnered with 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
(13:51):
of Christian films, 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
(14:14):
and gave him a bible because he knew that McQueen,
after this production, was headed to Hollywood, and he, 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.
(14:37):
When Steve McQueen first got 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
(14:59):
of the f his quotes that he gives was, you know,
I was starting to get elbowed by the makeup people
and the assistant directors 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,
(15:22):
and said, Hilly, 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
(15:43):
some young unknown actor named Steve McQueen. And they said, well,
we want 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,
(16:08):
the Blob had 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 Diader Live
appearing at the same time.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
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
(16:43):
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
(17:03):
course he took that as a compliment or a call
to action, 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,
(17:26):
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, the King of Cool, who
died on this day in history in nineteen eighty. Here
(17:48):
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:10):
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 Great Escape 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 Faye Dunaway, The Thomas Crown Affair,
(18:33):
a slow, cool, burning, brilliant, brilliant movie. Now let's return
to Marshall Terrell to continue the story of actor Steve McQueen,
who died on this day in history in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
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
(19:11):
liked him very much, promised him for his next movie
he'd have him in the role. That next movie was
The Magnific 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
(19:31):
his friends, Charles Bronson, James Coburn 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
(19:54):
upstage Jule Brenner whenever he could. So one of the
acting choices McQueen made to upstage Brenner, there was a
scene where there 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,
(20:17):
at 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,
(20:37):
John Sturg 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.
Mcgarner had a turtleneck, and you know, James Coburn had
his suitcase, and stur just, you know, was saying, don't
(21:00):
worry about it. Steve, just like Magnus at seven, 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 to sour and
he's not getting the attention that he wants, especially regarding
his part. So he walked off the set for six weeks.
(21:22):
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,
(21:45):
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.
The Great Escape, McQueen becomes the new big star in
Hollywood and he has this attitude of, you know, I'm
(22:09):
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 the owner.
(22:31):
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 he
(22:53):
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
(23:14):
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,
(23:37):
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
(23:58):
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. 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
(24:21):
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,
(24:41):
I'm going to 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 is
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
(25:02):
because Steve McQueen was the major, major box office star,
so if he wanted to get his movie greenlit, 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
(25:24):
started 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
(25:46):
that Jay Sebring, who cut his hair, was his best friend.
In Neil McQueen's book, she says the night before the
murders that Jay Sebring had come over to their house
and given Steve a t and asked him if he
would come to the house the next night and help
babysit Sharon because she was getting ready to have a
(26:09):
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
(26:32):
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 (26:56):
And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the
riveting story worry of Steve McQueen and how he barely
escapes 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,
who died on this day in history in nineteen eighty
(27:19):
here on our American story, and we continue with our
American stories and with author Marshall Terrell. Let's continue with
(27:43):
the story of actor Steve McQueen who died on this
day in history in nineteen eighty. Here's Marshall So.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
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 backrupt, and he also severs
his relationship with his longtime agent, you know, who helped
him become very, very successful. Despite the fact that you know,
(28:13):
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. That's what makes him
(28:35):
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 two three punch of
(28:58):
The Getaway 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. So she created that new spark
(29:22):
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 he bought a ranch and
(29:43):
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
(30:04):
couple lessons, 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
(30:31):
his relationship with Steve McQueen.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
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
(30:57):
prayed over their meals, they were respectful, they were support
if 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
(31:17):
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
(31:37):
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,
(31:58):
I wonder if you'd have some time one of these
days where we can 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
(32:19):
can can you trust the Bible? Is it accurate? Is
it reliable?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
You know?
Speaker 3 (32:26):
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 going to bring about a
change that I will be happy with it. So those
are the kind of questions not only about Christ personally,
(32:49):
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. 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,
(33:14):
that's all my questions, and I just sort of smiled
and said, well, Steve, 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,
(33:38):
he said, on that particular Sunday, at the end of
the service, 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
(33:58):
anything about the Bible, so I'm going to be counting
upon you. He says, could 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
(34:20):
me about the tumor and about the cancer, we just
sat there for just a 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
(34:40):
because I'd like to share what I have found with others.
But if I don't 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
(35:02):
a relationship. And he he loved that relationship and he
was growing. He was growing in that relationship. That meant
it's just it's that became his life.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
And here's Steve McQueen in a private audio tape about
two weeks before his death, talking about his personal faith.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
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's life. And
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 Marvit
(35:48):
machtop and now my body's gone and broken, but my
spirit didn't piss him.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
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
(36:21):
all I say to them is, let's just go to
the tape.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
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
(36:49):
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 Diructor 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
(37:10):
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
(37:31):
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
(37:53):
these people when we do talk about stars. We cover
their life stories, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The story of Steve McQueen, who died on this day
in history in nineteen eighty Here on our American Stories
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people.
We are about to hear next the story of Hollywood
legend Steve McQueen, told by a real life Steve McQueen expert.
And we're telling you this story because on this day
in history, in nineteen eighty Steve McQueen died.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
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,
(00:54):
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 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 that
(01:16):
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 Beatles 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
(01:40):
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,
(02:01):
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
(02:25):
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
(02:48):
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
(03:10):
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
(03:30):
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
(03:52):
bring him out to California. And then expose him to
stepfathers who didn't necessarily have his best interest at her art.
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,
(04:15):
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,
(04:37):
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 Hal was an awlcoholic,
(05:01):
and you know, 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
(05:22):
that his 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,
(05:45):
if 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 Marines 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
(06:06):
permission 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 get
(06:29):
away with some of the shenanigans that he pulled.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
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,
(06:53):
the story of Steve McQueen, who died on this day
in history in nineteen eighty More of a life story
of actor Steve Eve McQueen here on Our American Stories.
(07:32):
Lihabibe here the host of all 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
Alamerican Stories dot com and click the donate button. Give
(07:54):
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. And we're telling you
(08:16):
this story because on this day in history, in nineteen
eighty Steve McQueen died. Let's pick up where we last
left off with author Marshall Terrell.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
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
(08:48):
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
Messalti Leona takes to fully form the other thing that
he did. That that a sergeant told me who served
(09:11):
with him 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, you know, put his coat down
(09:34):
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 life of discipline. Well, Steve McQueen
(09:56):
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 unquote where the action was. He
(10:17):
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 of the city and then
they would buy him a meal or give him a tip.
(10:39):
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 the GI Bill he qualified for
(11:00):
for acting or any sort of college if he wanted
to do that. So he gave acting a shot. So
Steve McQueen 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,
(11:20):
and so you know, 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. And then you know,
(11:43):
once once those skills were honed, and trust me, it
took several years for him to perfect the McQueen 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, but he's starting in Broadway play,
(12:04):
which gives me 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 wife was more successful than him,
(12:27):
given that he was a male, Choven's 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 of course The Blob, which was
(12:48):
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
(13:10):
comes from outer space and starts becoming bigger and swallowing
people up, and at the time it was considered 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 Bob,
(13:31):
they partnered with 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
(13:51):
of Christian films, 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
(14:14):
and gave him a bible because he knew that McQueen,
after this production, was headed to Hollywood, and he, 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.
(14:37):
When Steve McQueen first got 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
(14:59):
of the f his quotes that he gives was, you know,
I was starting to get elbowed by the makeup people
and the assistant directors 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,
(15:22):
and said, Hilly, 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
(15:43):
some young unknown actor named Steve McQueen. And they said, well,
we want 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,
(16:08):
the Blob had 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 Diader Live
appearing at the same time.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
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
(16:43):
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
(17:03):
course he took that as a compliment or a call
to action, 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,
(17:26):
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, the King of Cool, who
died on this day in history in nineteen eighty. Here
(17:48):
on our American stories, and we continue with our American
(18:10):
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 Great Escape 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 Faye Dunaway, The Thomas Crown Affair,
(18:33):
a slow, cool, burning, brilliant, brilliant movie. Now let's return
to Marshall Terrell to continue the story of actor Steve McQueen,
who died on this day in history in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
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
(19:11):
liked him very much, promised him for his next movie
he'd have him in the role. That next movie was
The Magnific 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
(19:31):
his friends, Charles Bronson, James Coburn 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
(19:54):
upstage Jule Brenner whenever he could. So one of the
acting choices McQueen made to upstage Brenner, there was a
scene where there 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,
(20:17):
at 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,
(20:37):
John Sturg 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.
Mcgarner had a turtleneck, and you know, James Coburn had
his suitcase, and stur just, you know, was saying, don't
(21:00):
worry about it. Steve, just like Magnus at seven, 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 to sour and
he's not getting the attention that he wants, especially regarding
his part. So he walked off the set for six weeks.
(21:22):
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,
(21:45):
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.
The Great Escape, McQueen becomes the new big star in
Hollywood and he has this attitude of, you know, I'm
(22:09):
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 the owner.
(22:31):
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 he
(22:53):
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
(23:14):
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,
(23:37):
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
(23:58):
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. 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
(24:21):
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,
(24:41):
I'm going to 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 is
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
(25:02):
because Steve McQueen was the major, major box office star,
so if he wanted to get his movie greenlit, 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
(25:24):
started 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
(25:46):
that Jay Sebring, who cut his hair, was his best friend.
In Neil McQueen's book, she says the night before the
murders that Jay Sebring had come over to their house
and given Steve a t and asked him if he
would come to the house the next night and help
babysit Sharon because she was getting ready to have a
(26:09):
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
(26:32):
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 (26:56):
And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the
riveting story worry of Steve McQueen and how he barely
escapes 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,
who died on this day in history in nineteen eighty
(27:19):
here on our American story, and we continue with our
American stories and with author Marshall Terrell. Let's continue with
(27:43):
the story of actor Steve McQueen who died on this
day in history in nineteen eighty. Here's Marshall So.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
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 backrupt, and he also severs
his relationship with his longtime agent, you know, who helped
him become very, very successful. Despite the fact that you know,
(28:13):
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. That's what makes him
(28:35):
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 two three punch of
(28:58):
The Getaway 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. So she created that new spark
(29:22):
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 he bought a ranch and
(29:43):
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
(30:04):
couple lessons, 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
(30:31):
his relationship with Steve McQueen.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
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
(30:57):
prayed over their meals, they were respectful, they were support
if 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
(31:17):
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
(31:37):
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,
(31:58):
I wonder if you'd have some time one of these
days where we can 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
(32:19):
can can you trust the Bible? Is it accurate? Is
it reliable?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
You know?
Speaker 3 (32:26):
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 going to bring about a
change that I will be happy with it. So those
are the kind of questions not only about Christ personally,
(32:49):
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. 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,
(33:14):
that's all my questions, and I just sort of smiled
and said, well, Steve, 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,
(33:38):
he said, on that particular Sunday, at the end of
the service, 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
(33:58):
anything about the Bible, so I'm going to be counting
upon you. He says, could 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
(34:20):
me about the tumor and about the cancer, we just
sat there for just a 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
(34:40):
because I'd like to share what I have found with others.
But if I don't 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
(35:02):
a relationship. And he he loved that relationship and he
was growing. He was growing in that relationship. That meant
it's just it's that became his life.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
And here's Steve McQueen in a private audio tape about
two weeks before his death, talking about his personal faith.
Speaker 4 (35:26):
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's life. And
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 Marvit
(35:48):
machtop and now my body's gone and broken, but my
spirit didn't piss him.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
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
(36:21):
all I say to them is, let's just go to
the tape.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
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
(36:49):
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 Diructor 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
(37:10):
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
(37:31):
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
(37:53):
these people when we do talk about stars. We cover
their life stories, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The story of Steve McQueen, who died on this day
in history in nineteen eighty Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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