Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [21]
Earlier that year, while in L.A. with Neile, Steve had received a call from Hilly Elkins, who invited him to have lunch at the famed Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel to discuss a new project. Elkins had been approached by producer Vincent Fennelly, of Four Star Productions, about the possibility of creating a new western TV series on CBS and to test the pilot as an episode of the hit series Trackdown, which starred Robert Culp as a Texas Ranger who hunted bad guys. CBS wanted the new series to be as similar to Trackdown as possible, based on another bounty hunter, this one named Josh Randall. Trackdown was itself a spin-off of the western weekly series Zane Grey Theatre, another Four Star show. It was Culp who first suggested Steve to Elkins for the role of Josh Randall. Culp had known Steve from when they were both struggling actors living in Greenwich Village riding their motorcycles all around town. Elkins, who repped Culp and who was still eager to please Neile, jumped at the idea of using Steve in the pilot.
Four Star was headed by movie veteran Dick Powell, who had had a successful career as a youthful song-and-dance man at Warner’s before gradually shifting into more dramatic parts. When Powell’s film career began to wind down, he turned to television and, with three other actors having trouble finding big-screen roles, created Four Star Productions to develop scripts they could all star in and produce. Four Star quickly became one of television’s powerhouse independents.2
“The Bounty Hunter” aired March 7, 1958, and audience reaction to Steve in the title role was so strong, he appeared as Josh Randall again in a hastily produced second episode of Trackdown called “The Brothers” that also did well. CBS then gave Four Star the green light to do the bounty hunter series Wanted: Dead or Alive.
Powell was happy to have a new show going into production at CBS but was hesitant about keeping Steve in the lead. Powell was concerned that Steve wasn’t big or tall enough to be believable in the role of a tough-guy bounty hunter. Besides, Steve didn’t know how to ride horses. However, when Powell saw some early rushes of the first episode of the series, his attitude changed. Once he experienced firsthand Steve’s star power, he knew the show would be a hit. On July 24, Powell sent Steve a telegram that said “Dear Steve, Welcome to the fold. Glad you are with us. I know your show will be a big success.” He arranged for Steve to be assigned a special horse, Ringo, to train on every day until he became a proficient rider, or at least looked like one on TV.
The only problem was, Steve hated horses. “I’d done one or two Western shows before and had just refused to get on one of those animals,” Steve said. “But with this series I had no choice. They sent me over to a stable and I got up on a horse and he threw me two seconds later. I can ride pretty good now, but I don’t have to like it. When a horse learns to buy martinis, I’ll learn to like horses.”
Powell also wanted Steve to have a trademark characteristic, something that would distinguish him from the dozen other TV cowboys currently on the airwaves, many of whom had fancy costumes and paraphernalia, like Paladin’s calling cards in Have Gun—Will Travel, Bat Masterson’s cane in Bat Masterson, and Lucas McCain’s sawed-off Winchester in The Rifleman. It was decided that, besides a crushed cowboy hat that Steve had found in the prop department, Josh Randall, like Lucas McCain, would use a specially modified weapon, a model 92 Winchester .44-40 with lever action customized to a .45-70.
He wore it like a pistol, and to learn how to draw it off his hip, Steve looked up another old friend from his New York days now living big in Hollywood,