Steve McQueen - Marc Eliot [74]
Wise’s second choice was Steve, although he too was hesitant about going to the Far East, but because it was Wise, Steve said yes. Fox, however, rejected Steve because they (wrongly) felt he was not enough of a mainstream star to carry such a big film—they saw him as, in a sense, a glorified cowboy. Wise then angrily withdrew, partly because of their treatment of Steve and partly because he now believed that Fox would not let him make the movie the way he thought it should be made. The project went instead to veteran director William Wyler.
In the interim, Wise made The Sound of Music for Fox. He had been given that project because of the success of his 1960 film version of the Broadway musical West Side Story. Budgeted at $8.5 million, The Sound of Music was presented as a road show, screened two times a day in only the biggest theaters, with an intermission and reserved seats (and higher prices) to duplicate the experience for audiences of watching a live Broadway musical. The Sound of Music grossed $100 million in its first two years, and literally saved the studio from bankruptcy following its 1963 production of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra.
According to Tom Rothman, “At the time Fox was drowning in cost overruns from [Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s] Cleopatra, and couldn’t afford to make The Sand Pebbles until The Sound of Music went on to become one of the most successful movies of all time, and won Wise a 1965 Academy Award for Best Director.”
But then Wyler, for his own reasons, left The Sand Pebbles, and Fox quickly rehired the now highly coveted Wise, approving the same $8.5 million budget for The Sand Pebbles they had given him for The Sound of Music. This time he had no trouble from the studio casting Steve in the lead. Also, as a favor to Steve he asked that Solar be allowed to co-produce the film. Fox agreed. Fox also agreed to pay for Steve’s family to accompany him for the entire shoot, relocation of the equipment from his home gym to Taiwan, and his entourage of six personal ex-marine stuntmen.
PRODUCTION ON The Sand Pebbles began in Taiwan on November 22, 1965, with a crew of 111 (and 32 interpreters), and the most expensive location prop ever constructed for a Hollywood film to date: it cost $250,000 to re-create the San Pueblo in Taiwan from the original blueprints for the USS Villalobos, a Spanish ship that was seized by the United States during the Spanish-American War and then sent for duty to the Far East. The reconstructed ship was fully operational, although unable to actually move in the water due to drill holes for lights, cameras, and other shooting necessities, and the need to permanently stabilize it so as to avoid unnecessary swaying during scenes. (It would have cost ten times that much to build it in Hollywood and have it towed to Taiwan.)
However, early on there were problems. As soon as he was no longer needed on the set of Nevada Smith and upon Steve’s arrival at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport in late 1965, when he attempted to transfer to a Taiwan-bound plane, he was detained by Taiwanese customs for carrying a loaded .38 caliber revolver in his luggage. After several hours of interrogation, during which Steve jokingly referred to the gun as something he intended to use in his spare time for bear hunting, the airline officials conferred among themselves, and diplomatic officials from both the United States and Taiwan were brought in, the local customs officers were told to let Steve go. The order reportedly came directly from Chiang Kai-shek’s office.
The Taiwanese ruler wanted nothing to interfere with the filming, which he knew would bring millions of much-needed American dollars with it. Before production even began, however, Chiang had insisted that Fox build a $100,000 building near the Keelung River, a structure that would, after filming was