Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [35]
Off the set, Steve and Vaughn became close friends, and on Good Friday 1960, when all work had to be shut down because of the strictness of the Catholic-dominated Mexican government, the two of them, at Brad Dexter’s invitation, decided to visit what Dexter told them was “one of the finest brothels in North America.” Steve was all for it; he had loved hookers before he was married and saw no reason why he shouldn’t love them now. When they arrived they were greeted by a blond madam who treated the three movie actors like foreign dignitaries. They all quickly got drunk on margaritas; Brad disappeared with two girls, and Steve and Vaughn shared seven others, together in one silken-pillowed room.
At around midnight, Vaughn reminded Steve they had to film the next day. “I said to Steve, let’s pay our bill and get out of here,” Vaughn later recalled. “I hadn’t yet heard about Steve’s famous habit of not carrying any money. He replied, ‘Hey, man, could you loan me some dinero?’ ” The bill came to something like seven hundred dollars. They split up and Vaughn managed to get back to the hotel, and didn’t see Steve again until he showed up the next morning forty-five minutes late for his first scene, badly hungover. He told Vaughn not to worry, he had talked his way out of the situation. Vaughn did not pursue the matter.6
The Magnificent Seven, shot in Panavision, opened with great fanfare in America on October 23, 1960, but surprisingly little business. Put into general release rather than road-show distribution—reserved seats for two-a-day screenings—the film was a box office dud until it opened in Europe, where it became a pop sensation. It then made its way back to the States and became one of the highest-grossing films of the year. However, because of its unusually high budget, $3 million, it didn’t earn its money back in its initial theatrical release.7
But its cultural impact was huge, beginning with Elmer Bernstein’s thrilling, hoof-pounding, string-dominated score (it was nominated for an Oscar but lost to Ernest Gold’s score for Otto Preminger’s Exodus; it was the only Oscar nomination The Magnificent Seven received). Its rousing melody line later became the Marlboro theme in television commercials that ran for years, and also anticipated Ennio Morricone’s sweeping musical scores for Sergio Leone’s groundbreaking spaghetti westerns of the second half of the decade. Thirty-three years later, when asked what he thought the most recognizable piece of music he had written was, Bernstein said, “I was in Spain last year doing some concerts near Barcelona. We were in this tiny town. I sat down at a little sidewalk café. There was a mechanical horse that kids like to ride, you put a quarter in. All of the sudden it starts to play The Magnificent Seven!”
The film spawned three mediocre sequels inspired as much by Leone’s 1964 A Fistful of Dollars, a remake of yet another Kurosawa film (Yojimbo), as the original The Magnificent Seven: Burt Kennedy’s 1966 Return of the Seven, with Yul Brynner the only returning cast member from the original; Paul Wendkos’s 1969 Guns of the Magnificent Seven, and 1972’s Magnificent Seven Ride. There was also a moderately successful TV series that ran for two seasons (twenty-three episodes) on CBS. It also was responsible for countless “ensemble” action movies, most notable among them Robert Aldrich’s 1967 The Dirty Dozen, J. Lee Thompson’s 1961 The Guns of Navarone, and, two years