From "The Great Escape"
Posted on 04/17/2010 11:25:18 PM PDT by Nachum
Steve McQueen was the essence of Hollywood cool but he had a dark side. In a new biography an author reveals how the star befriended him and unloaded the secret of his prostitute mother, ‘psycho stepdads’ and years as a gangster and pimp
Steve McQueen was the last person in the world I expected to find in Cornwall. He’d arrived some time in the night at a house that the director Sam Peckinpah was renting in Penzance while scouting locations for the film Straw Dogs.
They weren’t friends. The rugged movie star had simply turned up out of the blue — dirty, unshaven and looking more depressed than anyone I’d ever seen. As I found out later, his first marriage was breaking up and his dream project, a film based on the Le Mans car race, had run into problems.
(Excerpt) Read more at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk ...
Before McQueen died he became a Christian. I saw an interview with a pastor that says McQueen just walked into his church one day and started asking him about the gospel, and he became a strong Christian.
There was also a story that when his body was found, he had his bible open and had been reading it.
He was also a conservative.
“Steve McQueen was a pilot, not a celebrity, at Santa Paula Airport
Steve McQueen was an ex-Marine, a political conservative, pro Vietnam, carried a pistol (he learned he was on Charlie Manson’s list), became (at this airfield) a born again Christian, and he mysteriously used to demand big lots of things like electric razors and bluejeans from movie studios when he was filming. It was revealed that he sent the lots of stuff to a boys home that he had lived in, he made visits to the home all of his life and answered every letter that the boys ever sent him. WM”
http://backdoorview.blogspot.com/search?q=steve+mcqueen
I heard McQueen embraced Evangelical Christianity at the end. If so, good for him.
Look at the 70’s action stars like Heston, Bronson and McQueen, they were conservatives in nature and didn’t put up with this pc, liberal nonsense. Nowadays, we are stuck with condescending, liberal pussies in Damon, cLooney and Pitt.
I have seen that also, the past guys had lived lives outside of Hollywood. They had been men before becoming actors.
He lost most of his hearing was he was 20. You can see it in his body movements. Better almost to be born with a loss than lose it at that age.
From "The Great Escape"
Now that's an interesting comment, because I believe in "The Great Escape" there's a scene where he's pretending to be deaf, and a Nazi fires a pistol unexpectedly behind his head to test him, and he doesn't flinch (this could be a completely different movie and actor - Stalag 17? - but I think this is right). Anyway, if so, McQueen would have been using his lack of body movement to indicate his deafness, maybe as an inside joke.
With wife of 50 years, Joanne Woodward. My favorites are The Great Escape, Hud, Cool Hand Luke, Until They Sail, and who can refuse a young looking Liz Taylor in Cat on A Hot Tin Roof?
And of course The Sand Pebbles. 
Sand Pebbles.
Sand pebbles was a great movie. When I was much younger and living and working in Chicago, Steve McQueen was filming one of his movies, I forget which one, at a place called the Marina Towers, two condo buildings in the heart of the Loop right near the Chicago River. They were circular in design, with parking on the first levels, then condos above. Like two garbage cans sticking up into the sky, considered very modern back then. I used to pay to park there as I worked across the street from the Marina Towers.
I watched some of the filming of the movie, and saw McQueen doing his own stunts, in this case driving a car down the circular ramp of the parking area in the Towers. He would zoom around the ramp at high speed (probably part of a car chase seen). At a later point, and this was cool, they dropped a car off a helicopter, which then went down into Lake Michigan below. They did this scene a couple of times, so I got to watch a car go off the helicopter again.
Steve McQueen was ruggedly handsome, not a large man, and physically well put together. He eventually died from cancer caused by asbestos, they said from the suits he would wear when car racing, which contained asbestos before anyone really knew the dangers of it. He died too young.
Thats not Steve McQueen and he wasnt married to Woodward.
Probably a fun thing to do for the crew too which had to work around his handicap. He could hear but his loss was profound. Very tiring to be in a social situation with such a problem. Explains why he (and others) hang back a little and look around a lot.
Sorry, you’re absolutely right, that was Paul Newman. I always mistake those two.
Love McQueen - Hilts in The Great Escape is one of the great screen roles of al-time.
Thanks. I love that movie.
He was an absolute stud on a dirt bike.
My late father was a real estate broker in Santa Barbara.
My Dad contacted McQueen and showed him properties in the Santa Barbara area over a period of time. The two of them became friends. Steve would often be in disguise with a beard, and used the name “Shelley” when making a reservation in a restaurant.
One time, my Dad and Steve were catching a bite to eat at a coffee shop in Montecito. No one recognized Steve, with his beard and hat and all. Steve insisted on paying for the food and coffee, pulling out a long row of $20 bills that were all stapled together at each end. Steve said to the waitress (in a friendly way) “Do you know who I am?” She said, “No....” He said, “I’m Steve McQueen.” “Whaaat-—no you’re not.” She then looked at my Dad. My Dad said, “Yes, he is!” The waitress the said, “Oh my God!” and asked Steve for a hug....he obliged.
Another time, my Dad and I were driving in a car on the freeway near Thousand Oaks, up the coast aways from Malibu. An old De Soto or some sort of other 1950’s era car passed us. My Dad yelled, “That’s Steve McQueen!” I looked at the car and the guy driving it. The guy had shoulder-length blonde hair and a bushy beard. “I told my Dad, are you nuts? That old car, that guy with that hair and beard, no way that’s Steve McQueen!” My Dad tooted the horn, and when the driver looked directly at us and I saw his eyes, I said,”Oh my God! It IS Steve Mcqueen!” McQueen recognized my father and made a gesture as though he was holding up a telephone to his ear and mouthed the words, “We’ll talk.”
(The long hair and beard were for a movie).
Steve never did buy any property through my father.....shortly thereafter, Steve learned he had a cancerous tumor and he died at age 50....WAY too young.
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