Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [150]
17. “I had no idea” Barbara Minty, quoted by Ian Woodward, Hello! (London), 6.12.07.
18. “I called Steve” MacGraw, p. 118.
19. Some of the background information on Steve’s rejection of film offers Several sources, including New York, 2.9.76.
20. “I could go anywhere” McQueen, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, reflecting on his overweight, bearded period, 3.9.78.
21. Streisand received $6 million for A Star Is Born Hollywood Reporter, 12.17.76.
22. “At this stage” McQueen, quoted in Us, 10.3.78.
23. Steve was crushed The actor who expressed this opinion, one of the stars of An Enemy of the People, did not want to be directly quoted.
24. “If they put a freeze” MacGraw, quoted in Ladies’ Home Journal, and Steve’s reaction, Newsweek, 11.21.77.
25. Steve considering co-starring in The Betsy Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 12.29.76. 299 “One large payment” Marvin Josephson, quoted in Variety, 8.8.79.
26. Details of the lawsuit Variety, 12.16.76.
27. Sydney Pollack’s call to McQueen Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 5.20.77.
28. Descriptions of Santa Paula and Steve’s attraction to it Ragsdale, pp. 14–15; Spiegel, p. 394.
29. “Red McQueen” Andrew Sarris, “King of Cool,” American Movie Classics, 3.98.
30. “He got up” Barbara Minty, quoted in Ragsdale, p. 26.
31. “one of those ghastly” MacGraw, p. 121.
32. Steve doing his own stunts and instructions to makeup man Army Archerd, Variety, 10.8.79.
CHAPTER 16
1. “I say to all my fans” McQueen’s radio broadcast on Televisa, 10.9.80.
2. “He was the hit of the ward” Unidentified staffer, quoted by the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 10.3.80.
3. “It was barely” Barbara Minty, quoted by Ian Woodward, Hello! (London), 6.12.07.
4. Some of the details of the wedding Ragsdale, p. 67.
5. McQueen appearance and comments at the preview for Tom Horn Yani Begakis, “Steve McQueen: Today’s Superstar,” Hollywood GreekReporter.com, 6.80.
6. Details about the demise of First Artists Pamela G. Hollie, New York Times, 12.23.79.
7. “McQueen spent several days” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 8.6.80.
8. Denial cancer is terminal Warren Cowan, in a statement he gave to the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, 10.02.80.
9. the American Cancer Society’s list of unproven methods of cancer management Ibid.
10. “If doctors in Mexico tell” Dr. David Plotkin, Los Angeles Times, 10.14.80.
11. “The reason I denied” McQueen, quoted in Richard West and Paul Jacobs, “Steve McQueen Has Rare Form of Lung Cancer,” Los Angeles Times, 10.3.80.
12. “Mr. McQueen” Dr. Rodrigo Rodriguez, quoted in People, 10.20.80.
13. “looked more pregnant” Dr. Cesar Santos Vargas, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 11.08.80.
14. “Steve took my hand” Ibid.
15. a hundred cars, two hundred motorcycles, and five planes Sean Macaulay, “The Lost Action Hero,” Times (London), 3.24.2005.
16. “Steve liked to” Several sources, including MacGraw, p. 92.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
THE YEAR Steve McQueen died, 1980, was also the year Alfred Hitchcock slipped the surly bonds. Although they never made a movie together, their deaths are nonetheless linked by the high placement of these two iconic figures of Hollywood in my revisionist auteurist pantheon. Classically, auteurism reevaluates the films and directors of the golden era of film, the studio-dominated years from the earliest days of filmmaking through the mid-1960s, to identify talented directors and in some cases restore their devalued reputations for making films that “transcend their technical problems with a personal vision of the world.”1
In the post–World War II era, when the centralized studio factory system began to come apart, independent producers, screenwriters, cinematographers, and even actors were also legitimate auteurists, rather than mere hired hands. Marlon Brando remains the greatest of the actor auteurists on the basis of his collective body of work because his personality, or personal vision, not just dominated but defined the style of most of the films he appeared in. Elia Kazan’s 1954 On the Waterfront is now widely recognized as a seminal film in