Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [25]
As 1958 drew to a close, Steve’s rise to stardom had perfectly positioned him to return to the big screen and finally become Hollywood’s number one hotshot, not just another handsome leading man but the inheritor of the throne left vacant by the untimely death of James Dean.
In other words, the next Paul Newman.
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1 Film earnings are notoriously difficult to confirm. For this book, the author has relied on Variety and other reliable industry publications throughout.
2 Four Star Television, also known as Four Star Films, Four Star Productions, and Four Star International, was created by Hollywood actors Dick Powell, David Niven, Ida Lupino, and Charles Boyer. It lasted from 1952 to 1989 and produced dozens of hit series.
3 In the Nielsen ratings for February 1959, of the top ten most-watched network programs, eight were westerns. That month, Gunsmoke was the number one show in the country, followed by Wagon Train, Have Gun—Will Travel, Lucy Goes to Alaska (special), The Danny Thomas Show, The Rifleman, Maverick, Wyatt Earp, Zane Grey Theatre, and, at number ten, Wanted: Dead or Alive.
4 He kept them his entire life. They were auctioned off after his death to satisfy a $1.5 million tax bill.
The Magnificent Seven.
LEFT TO RIGHT: Robert Vaughn, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson,
Yul Brynner, Brad Dexter, Horst Buchholz, and James Coburn.
One of the main reasons that I’m happier these days is my wonderful wife, Neile Adams.
—STEVE MCQUEEN
LIKE EVERY OTHER ACTOR OF HIS GENERATION, STEVE placed James Dean in the same temple of worship he did Marlon Brando, but felt closer to the blond immortal because of the love he had for auto racing. Steve was so into it that he told Hal Humphrey of the Mirror News, “I may blow the whole thing and take a job racing cars in Europe. I’ll bet you no actor has ever done that before.… It’s a legitimate offer from a factory in Europe.… One of their representatives scouted me in that Santa Barbara race I won.”
In truth, although he loved racing, he really was less interested in giving up his acting career than he was in putting the squeeze on Dick Powell with interviews like the one he gave Humphrey. With Wanted: Dead or Alive a hit and fatherhood looming, Steve wanted not just more money but, in a move that at the time must have sent palms slapping against foreheads all over Hollywood, script approval.
The reason, he told one reporter, was that the stories he was being forced to act out were not “compatible” with the character of Josh Randall. “I remember one script which had three big guys in a saloon telling me to get out of town. Believe me, if you had seen these guys, you’d know there was only one thing for me to do—go! But in this script I knocked all three of ’em down. Is that silly?”
The answer was yes, certainly, as were most scripts for TV series that had to grind out a new show every week, but rarely did any small-screen star demand script approval over this junk. But there were other reasons Steve wanted to push Powell’s buttons. Steve had been offered a major role in a feature film that co-starred one of the biggest names in show business, Frank Sinatra, and despite a full TV shooting schedule of thirty-nine new episodes, the norm at the time, Steve dearly wanted to take it. Elkins had already managed to get Powell not only to agree to a salary increase but to let Steve do a feature if the right one came along. Now that one had, Powell was still reluctant to let Steve make it, fearing it would take away his aura as the mysterious bounty hunter. Elkins had anticipated that and made sure Steve’s being allowed to make this movie was written specifically into the