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Steve McQueen’s bike jump is an iconic movie moment, but is it as authentic as it looks? To find out, we recreated it. Nick Rufford reports Nick Rufford Two feet, four, six . . . 7ft off the ground. After repeated nervous, muddy attempts, Bud Ekins, a motorcycle stunt rider, coaxed the old Triumph into the air, flew over the strands of fake barbed wire and into the history books. The sequence helped make The Great Escape a cinema classic and turn Steve McQueen into an international star. It also made Ekins, who doubled as McQueen, a legend among fellow...

YouTubes of McQueen, Music, LeMans, darkness then triumph-redemption http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ORa-y0TkFA&feature=related

The votes are in from a new TiVo poll to find the country's "Favorite TV Dad." It's no surprise to me that the winner was Bill Cosby's Heathcliff Huxtable. What a paradox: Even though America's long-lasting warmth for Cosby and his classic 1980s series "The Cosby Show" lingers, inside the black community, Cosby is a lightning rod for criticism and abuse.When "The Cosby Show" hit the airwaves, the star opened himself up to vicious attacks from some cultural pundits who seemed to have a political investment in racism and division and no patience for Cosby's positive portrayal of the successful...

Back when, a few friends and I had a serious dispute: they thought Paul Newman infinitely more handsome and interesting than Steve McQueen. I suppose it came down to class and politics. Newman was a smug self-important lefty. McQueen was a rather nondescript, close-mouthed loner. In any event, the only time Newman ever came close to being cool was in a movie named Cool Hand Luke, in which he failed to communicate. McQueen, by most accounts, epitomized cool. As with jazz, if you had to ask what the quality amounted to, you'd never know. McQueen simply had it: looks, distance,...

THE SAMURAI AND THE AINU Findings by American anthropologist C. Loring Brace, University of Michigan, will surely be controversial in race conscious Japan. The eye of the predicted storm will be the Ainu, a "racially different" group of some 18,000 people now living on the northern island of Hokkaido. Pure-blooded Ainu are easy to spot: they have lighter skin, more body hair, and higher-bridged noses than most Japanese. Most Japanese tend to look down on the Ainu. Brace has studied the skeletons of about 1,100 Japanese, Ainu, and other Asian ethnic groups and has concluded that the revered samurai of...

<p>November 7, 2003 -- GREAT movies never die - they get remade. Rumor has it that Warner Bros. will remake the 1968 Steve McQueen classic "Bullitt," with Wolfgang Peterson at the helm as producer and/or director. Since Peterson's currently wrapping up "Troy," sources speculate that "Troy" star Brad Pitt may fill McQueen's shoes and play the San Francisco detective in the new version. Expected to sign on as producers: Peter Douglas, half-brother of Michael, and Chad McQueen, son of the late, great Steve.</p>

From 1963 to 1978, Steve McQueen was considered by movie fans and "big screen" insiders as one of the main leading actors in Hollywood. The rugged-faced actor's roles defined "cool," and his persona was idolized by men and women alike. But he wasn't so blinded by Hollywood's glitter that he didn't realize his need for God just before his death. Terrance Steven McQueen was born in Beech Grove, Indiana, in March 1930. At a very young age, the future actor was abandoned by both parents -- and until the age of 12, was raised by an uncle. His natural mother...

<p>LOS ANGELES — Warren Zevon, who wrote and sang the rock hit "Werewolves of London" and was among the wittiest and most original of a broad circle of singer-songwriters to emerge from Los Angeles in the 1970s, died at his home after a 12-month battle with cancer. He was 56.</p>