September 21, 2022 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, you are about to hear the untold story of Hollywood legend Steve McQueen, told by McQueen expert, Marshall Terrill.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habibe and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and always we're looking for your stories. Send them to
our American Stories dot Com, our listeners stories, or some
of our favorite We are about to hear next, the
story of Hollywood legend Steve McQueen, told by a real
(00:32):
life Steve McQueen expert. Let's take a listen. My name
is Marshall Cheryl and I'm the author of approximately thirty
books and I've written seven on actor Steve McQueen. Steve
McQueen has held a fascination for me because I remember
watching him on television and on film because he was
(00:55):
my dad's favorite actor, and so whenever there was a
movie on television, my dad would say, hey, McQueen's on,
let's go watch it. Or if a McQueen movie was out,
he'd say, hey, there's a McQueen movie out. He'd take
me out of school and then we go watch that.
So that was kind of our bonding experience. And as
i've traveled around the world now talking about Steve McQueen,
(01:18):
I've discovered that I'm not the only one. And that's
how Steve McQueen, I think has been passed down down
to the generations. It's not unlike the Beatles or Elvis Presley,
where these parents and grandparents now have such a love
for this person that they want to pass that on
to their children and their grandchildren, and somehow miraculously they
(01:42):
get filtered down to the next generation. So Steve McQueen,
there's a lot of that with him, and I think
one of the reasons for that is because his look
is so timeless, you know, and that he looks like
if he stepped out of the screen today, and that
he could fit in with society today because he had
that great looking haircut, that great physique. He didn't look
(02:07):
like he belonged in any sort of time period. And then,
of course there are his films, which he was I've
always said he's kind of the template for the modern
day movie star. You know, he didn't He sort of
had his own code, and people picked that up and
they want to apply that to themselves. And so as
the result of following his own instincts as an actor,
(02:30):
Steve McQueen became the biggest movie star of the nineteen
sixties and seventies. From nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy five,
he was the number one box office movie star of
the world. Steve McQueen was born on March twenty fourth,
nineteen thirty, a couple of months right after the Great
Depression hit. There was the Wall Street crash in nineteen
(02:53):
twenty nine, and so he grew up right in the
middle of that, and both of his parents were alcoholics.
He didn't really know his father because he walked out
on his wife and his child after six months. His mother, Julian,
was what they called a flapper. She was kind of
a good time girl. She was seventeen years old when
(03:16):
she gave birth to Steve, and you know, it was
just a kid herself. And so Steve was raised by
his maternal grandparents at first, Victor and Lilian Crawford. When
he was about four or five years old, you know,
they had lost pretty much everything as a result of
(03:36):
the Great Depression, and so they moved to Slater, Missouri,
where Steve's granduncle Claude had a hog farm, and so
sometimes Julian would come. Sometimes she'd be off in California.
Sometimes she'd come and take him because she felt guilty
and bring him out to California and then expose him
(03:58):
to stepfathers who didn't necessarily have his best interest at heart.
Sometimes they were abusive, most almost always they were alcoholics.
And so he was just raised in this environment where
he was didn't really have a home. Turned out he
was dyslexic and couldn't read well, and so, you know,
he was just one of his kids who fell through
(04:19):
the crack. When Steve McQueen lived in Los Angeles, he
got into a lot of trouble we're talking to, like
between the ages of nine and thirteen fourteen, he got
involved in a street gang. He talked about committing some
robberies and dealing hubcaps, playing pool at pool halls and
hustling people for money. And then there was a circus,
(04:40):
a traveling circus that came to town, and he had
decided that he was going to join it, and he
even tried to locks for a little bit, and once
he said he got knocked flat on his duck. He
gave that up. So when Steve got older, his mother
had married a gentleman by the name of Halberry, and
this was in Los Angeles, and so Howe was an alcoholic,
(05:03):
and you know, he beat Steve I don't know how frequently,
but Steve did talk about that in interviews, and one
time he talked about him getting beat up and getting
thrown in a closet, and then one time getting beat
up and being thrown down on a set of stairs,
and so Steve basically he said, if you touch me again,
I'm going to kill you. And so it turns out
(05:25):
that his mother had him declared incorrigible and took him
to the Boys Republican Chino, which was basically a reformatory school,
and so that's where Steve started getting his act together,
started learning some discipline, started understanding the fact that he
could have a life, a life of his choosing if
(05:48):
he decided to clean up his act. And so they
gave him a pretty good education. But the furthest he
got was in ninth grade. It wasn't until he decided
to join the Marine that he was going to quote
unquote become a real man. Well, Steve McQueen joined the
Marines in nineteen forty seven, and he needed the permission
(06:10):
of his mother to do it because he was seventeen.
And the kind of thing about that was he actually
sent a portion of his paycheck to his mother, even
though she wasn't really good to him, but she did,
she did sign that paperwork for him, and in the
beginning it did not make him a man. But what
he found out was when he was the Marines, he
(06:31):
couldn't get away with some of the shenanigans that he pulled.
And you've been listening to Marshall Terrell tell the story
of actor Steve McQueen and what a difficult start to
a life you can't get dealt A much worse hand
than McQueen got dealt as a young man at the
Marine Corps and reform school were the steps towards at
(06:52):
least an attempt to straighten his life. When we come back,
more of a life story of actor Steve McQueen here
on Our American Stories. Lee Habibi here the host of
(07:33):
our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
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(07:56):
Go to our American Stories dot com and give and
we continue with our American Stories and the story of
actor Steve McQueen. Let's pick up where we last left
(08:17):
off with author Marshall Terrell. He went a wall a
couple of times. That was to be with some girlfriends
who lived in another state. Part of his punishment was
that he had to clean out the whole of the ship,
which was in the naval yard in Washington, d c.
They had to clean out the pipes which was filled
with asbesis. Everything in that ship was filled with asbesis.
(08:38):
They didn't have any mask on, so he breathed that in.
That was in December of nineteen forty nine, and he
was diagnosed with cancer in December of nineteen seventy nine,
so it was almost exactly thirty years, which is what
they say that missalty Lee only takes to fully form.
(09:01):
The other thing that he did that that a sergeant
told me who served with him, was that he offered
to clean the latrines in the morning. And the sergeant said,
no one ever ever offered to clean the latrines. So
what he said was McQueen could sleep an extra hour
(09:21):
in if he would wake up, and then he would
go sleep inside the bathroom area, you know, put his
coat down and then sleep for an extra hour or two,
which was considered gold in the Marines. And so but
he would also do his duty as well. But he
said those were the kinds of things that McQueen would pull.
You know, he couldn't be conformed fully, but you know,
(09:42):
he conformed enough to where he felt like the Marines
had given him a life of discipline. Well, Steve McQueen
was a bit aimless after joining the Marines. He drove
a taxi cab and was a mechanic for a company
in Washington, d C. As soon as he got out,
because that's where he was discharged, was in DC. And
(10:04):
then he worked his way up to New York City,
where he felt quote unquote where the action was. He
was selling Encyclopedia's door to door, and he did stuff
like he'd steal like a shower nozzle in a large
department store, and then he'd bring it back for a
return and cash that in. And another buddy of mine
(10:25):
told me that he would walk around the street offering
single ladies a tour of the city and then they
would buy him a meal or give him a tip.
So he was a real hustler. You know, he did
anything that he could to survive those Those were really
tough days. That's what I call the salad days. And
then what happened was he was dating a dancer who said,
(10:45):
you know, Steve, you're really kind of kookie and strange.
You would be perfect for acting. And he discovered under
the GI Bill he qualified for acting or any sort
of college if he wanted to do that. So he
gave acting a shot. So Steve McQueen started taking acting
lessons at Sanford Meisner's neighborhood Playhouse, and Meisner was the
(11:06):
perfect acting coach for him because he was soft with
people and Steve was very, very insecure, and so you know,
for him, being an actor meant being vulnerable. He truly
got into it because he knew that that's where women were.
But once it was discovered he had this great raw
(11:27):
talents and was given great positive feedback, he really fed
on that and so then that's when he really started trying.
And then you know, once those skills were honed, and
trust me, it took several years for him to perfect
the McQueen persona. Right around the time that he enters
(11:48):
the actor's studio is when he starts to get, you know,
a little mojo with his career. He gets a Broadway play.
He's not very good in it, but he's starting in
Broadway play, which gives him the curry to ask out
his first wife, Neil Adams, who was a very successful
Broadway dancer, and they started dating and they really hit
it off. But his success does not match hers, and
(12:11):
so that that kind of drives me crazy. At the time,
she was making fifty thousand dollars a year, he was
making four thousand, and the fact that his wife was
more successful than him, given that he was a male
shove and its bedrogram crazy. But some of the productions
that he was getting were kind of just independent films,
Like he got a job as a seventeen dollar a
day extra in the movie Somebody Up There Likes Me,
(12:34):
starring Paul Newman. He did a movie, a B movie
called Never Love a Stranger, Great Saint Louis Bank Robbery,
and of course The Blob, which was like the B
movie picture of all B movie pictures. So The Blob
was made. I think it started production in August of
nineteen fifty seven and It was a very, very a
(12:56):
low grade B movie about this blob that comes from
outer space and starts becoming bigger and swallowing people up.
And at the time it was considered you very high tech.
But the interesting thing was it was developed by a
(13:17):
production company called Good News Productions, which was a Christian
based film company, and so with the Blob, they partnered
with Jack Harris to make a mainstream movie to tap
into some of that money to make more Christian films.
And near the end of filming Russell Daughton, who later
(13:41):
went on to produce a movie called Thief in the Night.
He went on to produce a lot of Christian films,
but Thief in the Night was this big one. He said.
There was a week of overruns in which McQueen would
have to, you know, either dubbing apart or react a scene,
and McQueen basically basically said nothing doing. And so Dalton
(14:04):
kind of sat him down and talked to him about
his attitude in life and gave him a Bible because
he knew that McQueen, after this production was headed to Hollywood,
and you know, he said, you know, Steve was heading
out into the wilderness and he wanted to make sure
that he gave him a Bible. And Dowton actually went
out to Hollywood a couple months later and he said
(14:25):
he bumped into McQueen and McQueen said to him, hey,
I still got your Bible. When Steve McQueen first got
to Hollywood, you know, he made a strike almost right away.
And the reason for that was because again Neil had
translated her star power from Broadway to Hollywood, and so
(14:46):
she was starting to really get a lot of attention,
and so McQueen was following her to the studios and
you know, one of the famous quotes that he gives was,
you know, I was starting to get elbowed by the
makeup people and the assistant to actors, and they were
calling me mister Adams. And he said, I came to
realize at that moment time I better become famous real fast.
(15:08):
Because he did not want to follow in her footsteps,
so he was driving her crazy, and so she called
her manager, Hilly Elkins, and said, Hilly, you got to
get him a job. He's driving me absolutely bonkers. So
the first job that Hilly gets Steve McQueen is in
a series called Trackdown and somebody on that show saw
(15:32):
Steve McQueen and said who is that guy, and so
they said, yeah, just some young unknown actor named Steve McQueen.
And they said, well, we want we want him for
something else, and so that was for a TV series
called One a Dinner Alive and One A Dennor Alive.
Believe it or not, was a big hit when a
(15:54):
debut in September of nineteen fifty eight, and it had
the Luckily for him, the Blob had just previewed just
at that time had finally come out in theaters, so
he had the double whammy of the Blob and wanted
did or live a period at the same time. And
(16:15):
you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the story
of Steve McQueen. And by the way, you can learn
so much more by going to a local bookstore and
buying this book, or heck, go to Amazon or the
usual suspects wherever you get your books. Steve McQueen The
Salvation of an American Icon by Greg Glory and Marshall Terrell.
(16:38):
And Terrell has written so many books about this subject
that we chose to interview him and to have him
and tell the story of McQueen, and what a story
it is. I mean, imagine that his entire career almost
is predicated on a girl he's dating saying you're kookie
and strange, you'd be a good actor. And of course
he took that as a compliment or a call to action,
(17:00):
and he gave it a shot. And he is very
lucky that he was in New York City and ended
up with the great Stanford Meisner, one of the great
acting teachers coaches of all time, who did, indeed have
a gentle touch. And of course actors are the most
insecure people in the world, as you can imagine, and
having a man like that tutor and mentor him, and
then to end up at the actors studio around some
(17:22):
of the great actors of his generation, studying his craft
to be come indeed what he was, which was one
of the great American actors, not just an icon, but
a real talent. When we come back more of the
untold story of Steve McQueen here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and the story
of Steve McQueen, and my goodness, go back and watch
his movies and they're so good and the range in
depth and breadth of his talent is remarkable. A magnificent seven,
The Greatest Skite Bullet, which by the way features the
greatest card chase in American history, one of the first
great ones too. And I think his best performance alongside
(18:31):
Faye Dunaway The Thomas Crown Affair, a slow, cool, burning, brilliant,
brilliant movie. Now let's return to Marshall Terrell to continue
the story of actor Steve McQueen. In the summers when
he was on hiatus from One A Debt or Live,
(18:51):
he did a couple of different movies. He did never
so few for John Sturgis. That part was originally written
for Sammy Davis Junior, who had said something disparaging about
Frank Sinatra on radio. And then he was out and
Steve McQueen was in. John stir just liked him very
much promised him for his next movie he'd have him
(19:12):
in the role. That next movie was The MC seven,
which again was was filmed on hiatus the following year,
and he was He started opposite Youual Brenner, and of
course he co starred with a couple of his friends,
Charles Bronson, James Colburn and a few other young upstarts.
(19:33):
But McQueen wanted to upset the apple cart. And you know,
he was second build and but you'll, you'll Brenner was
the star. But you know, Steve McQueen emerged as a
star because he had planned and plotted to upstage Ull
Brenner whenever he could. So one of the acting choices
(19:56):
McQueen made to upstage Brenner there was a where they're
they're talking to each other and McQueen is walking back
and forth and Brenner, because he was a little bit smaller,
had built a little sandpile to stand on. So as
McQueen's walking by and going past him in each scene,
he's kicking away a little bit of the sand to
(20:17):
the point where real brenner is sinking every every time
that McQueen kicks the sand. So that was the kind
of shenanigans that he pulled. So from that performance, a
lot of the movie producers started to take note of
this young guy, and so a few years later, John
Sturgis asked him to star in The Great Escape. That's
(20:38):
when Steve McQueen turned into a householding And you know,
when he read the script, he said, everybody's got a
little bit, I don't have a bit. You know, mc
garner had a turtleneck and you know, James Colburn had
his suitcase and stur you know, was saying, don't worry
about it, Steve, just like Magnus at seven. You know,
(21:00):
he promised them all at a camera time as oppostal lines,
that he'd take care of him. So when they get
over to Germany, McQueen's attitude really starts to sour and
he's not getting the attention that he wants, especially regarding
his part. So he walked off the set for six weeks.
And so what McQueen asked for was another writer to
(21:21):
come in and start working on his part again, and
from that rewrite, they started developing the bit about throwing
the ball up against the cell in solitary confinement, the
motorcycle chase, and these other parts that would make that
character Steve McQueen. And as it turned out, it worked
perfectly because McQueen was the breakout star of that movie
(21:42):
and that was the one movie that catapulted him from
TV stardom to film startom, and he was the first
actual actor to do that in that era. So he
was the very first that catapulted from television to film.
After the Great Escape, McQueen becomes the new big star
in Hollywood, and he has this attitude of, you know,
(22:05):
I'm going to taste all the goodies that Hollywood has
to offer. He bought a beautiful home in Brentwood, bought
a house in Palm Springs, had tons of sports cars,
dated a lot of pretty ladies. Behind his wife's back.
He hung out on the Sunset Strip. He had a
booth at the Whiskey a Go Go because he knew
(22:27):
the owner. And so again he was going to sample
all all the goodies that Hollywood had to offer to him.
After the Great Escape, McQueen made a couple of He
made like a trio of movies that didn't really go anywhere.
So his next big film, which started a Street that
made him the biggest movie star of the sixties. And
(22:50):
he did five back to back hits in a row,
and that was The Cincinnati Kid, Nevada Smith, the Sam Pebbles,
Thomas Crown Affair, and then it all ends with Bullet,
which was his biggest hit in the sixties and made
him a cultural icon and superstar. So he was no
(23:11):
longer just a movie star. He was, you know, in
that rarefied air of Superstars. With McQueen now on this
big role, almost every movie offer came his way, with
the exception of a movie called The Thomas Crown Affair,
and that was because Steve McQueen was always kind of
played these blue collar types and Thomas Crown was a swab, devonair,
(23:34):
a white collar bank robber. And it was originally offered
to Sean Connery, offered to him right after he made
his last James Bond movie, You Only Lived Twice, and
for whatever reasons, Sean Connery decided not to take it.
Then they they talked to Rock Huts, and then they
talked to a few of the people. And so Neil McQueen,
(23:56):
his wife was very very good for him in terms
of his career and picking out movies that she thought
would benefit him. And so Thomas Crown, no one had
taken up that offer yet, and it was directed by
Norman Jewison, who directed McQueen and The Cincinnati Kid. And
so one day she's talking to McQueen and she said,
you know, it's really a darn shame that Norman doesn't
(24:18):
want you, And he goes, what are you talking about?
She said to Thomas Crown affair, he doesn't want you
for it, So she was using some sort of reverse
psychology on him. She said, yeah, you know, they've talked
to Sean Connery, Rock Hudson, everybody in town but you.
And so McQueen puffed out his chest and decided, Okay,
(24:39):
I'm gonna call Norman, and Norman told him you're not
right for it, Steve. You know, you look down at
your feet, you shuffle your shoes. Thomas Crown's the kind
of person that will look you in the eye and
tell you a lie. He goes, are you capable of
doing that? So McQueen told him that basically, you know,
he was ready for the part. He was ready to
do it. And it made sense for Jewison because McQueen
(25:00):
was a major, major box office star, so if he
wanted to get his movie greenlit, it would only make
sense to have Steve McQueen in the starring role. So
after Bullet becomes this major, major Hollywood hit, it was
definitely the biggest hit of nineteen sixty eight. It was
during that period of time where he really started getting
(25:22):
into cocaine. He started getting into orgies and a lot
of that downfall had to do with the fact that
the Manson family had killed two of his friends, Sharon
Tate and Jay Sebring. Sharon Tate was somebody that Steve
McQueen said on his deathbed was a girlfriend, and that
(25:44):
Jay Sebring, who cut his hair, was his best friend.
In Neil McQueen's book, she says the night before the
murders that Jay Sebring had come over to their house
and given Steve a trim and asked him if he
would come to the house the next night and helped
babysit Sharon because she was getting ready to have a
(26:06):
child and her husband, Roman Plansky, was out of town,
and so you know, she wanted people around just to
keep her company. And so the next night, according to Neil,
Steve McQueen was on his motorcycle ready to go over
to the house and saw either some young girl hitchhiking
or saw Rex saw somebody he recognized and spent the
(26:29):
evening with her and avoided that whole massacre because he
was with somebody else. And then later on it turned
out there was a report in the paper that Susan
Atkins had claimed to someone that the Mansons had a
death list of celebrities that they were going to kill,
and Steve McQueen was one of them on that list.
(26:53):
And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the
riveting story if Steve McQueen and how he barely escaped
being at the Roman Polanski home where the Mansons did
their devilish work and escape death via a narrow chance.
When we come back more of the life of Steve
McQueen here on our American stories, and we continue with
(27:38):
our American stories and with author Marshall Terrell, let's continue
with the story of actor Steve McQueen. Here's Marshall. So
at the end of the nineteen sixties, Steve McQueen's life
is really becoming a mess. He gets a divorce from
his wife, his company goes bankrupt, and he also severs
(27:59):
his relationship ship with his longtime agent who you know,
who helped him become very, very successful. Despite the fact
that you know, he carried on endless affairs. He was
actually believing or not a family man. He carred very deeply.
He loved his wife and he loved his two children,
Chad and Terry, and he came from a broken home
(28:24):
and it horrified him that these two children would now
quote unquote come from a broken home. That's what makes
him so interesting in complex is because you know, he
on the one hand, he couldn't help himself with women,
but on the other hand, he was a family man,
and so that that family was now broken up because
(28:46):
of him. By nineteen seventy two, Steve McQueen's careers on
the up swing again and he had the one two
three punch of The Getaway. Papione was extremely successful in
The Towering Inferno was the most successful film of all time,
with a box office grosser were three hundred million dollars
in nineteen seventy five dollars, up to Jaws, which eclipsed
(29:09):
it six months later. He found love again in a
young model by the name of Barbara Minty. So she
created that new spark in him. So he decided that
he was going to move to Santa Paula, California, which
is about sixty miles north of Los Angeles. And one
(29:30):
of the reasons why he did that i was because
he wanted to fly antique airplanes and at the time
that was the antique airplane capital of the world. And
he bought a ranch and he was living in a
town that really reminded him of the home that he
grew up in as a kid, Slater, Missouri, and he
was happy again. And one of the most interesting things
(29:51):
that happened in Santa Paul was the gentleman that taught
him how to fly. His name was Sammy Mason, was
a former World War Two pilot, and after a couple
of lessons, Steve picked up on his spirit or his vibe,
whatever you would want to call it, and he said, Sammy,
there's something different about you. I can't quite put my
(30:11):
finger on it. And Sammy said, well, Steve, I'm a
born again Christian. And so rather than that turning off Steve,
Steve was intrigued. And here's Astor Leonard you went talking
about his relationship with Steve McQueen. Sam wasn't the preacher type.
(30:32):
He was rock solid in his faith and he lived
the life. He saw in Sam someone that he could trust,
someone who genuinely cared about him. Both families just embraced him,
and so he saw in them a quality of life.
You know, they prayed over their meals, they were respectful,
(30:57):
they were supportive, they were encouraging, they were just rock
solid he realizes there's something a whole lot better than
I've ever experienced. So why when they invited him to church,
that was no big deal. He was ready. I don't
know what he thought he was going to experience, but
he trusted them, and when he started coming, he just
(31:20):
felt at home. The people didn't bother him, you know,
they weren't asking for autographs or anything. The Mason family
always sat up in the balcony. They had six children,
and he just sat with the whole family. I think
he'd been coming about three or four months. But one
Sunday I was out in the foyer greeting the people,
(31:40):
and I felt someone tapped me on the shoulder and
I turned around and he said, Pastor, I'm Steve McQueen
And I said, oh, hi, Steve, I heard that you
were worshiping with us. And he said, I wonder if
you'd have some time one of these days where we
could get together and talk. And we met at the old,
(32:03):
the old Santa Paul Airport restaurant. We met well, probably
about two o'clock in the afternoon, so there wouldn't be
anybody there. Had a lot of questions about Christ, but
he also wanted to know, can you trust the Bible?
Is it accurate? Is it reliable? You know? Is it
going to make me a kuk? He wanted to know
(32:27):
what difference would Christ make in a person's life. Is
it going to be more of what I'm used to
or is Christ really going to bring about a change
that I will be happy with it? So those are
the kind of questions. It's not only about Christ personally,
but you know, the Bible says that if anyone is
(32:48):
in Christ, he's a new creation. All things passed away
and all things become new. And so Steve really wanted
to know is this real? So, um, during that two
hours at the airport, when he's firing one question after another,
finally he just sort of sat back and he says, well,
(33:10):
that's all my questions. And I just started smiled and said, well, Steve,
I have just one and he grinned. He says, you
want to know if I'm a born again Christian, don't you?
And I said, well, that's really what's important to me.
So he said, you remember the Sunday And it was
(33:31):
probably maybe three or four weeks before. Anyway, he said,
on that particular Sunday, at the end of the service.
You gave an opportunity for us to receive Christ. And
he said, that's when I invited Christ into my life
and was born again. And he told me, at that
(33:52):
particular point, I'd be Sister Leonard, I don't know hardly
anything about the Bible, so I'm going to be coming
upon us. We meet on a regular basis, and so
we set up a program where we met once a
week and we would spend a full hour in Bible
study and prayer, and we would do it out at
his anchor, each or his ranch. After he told me
(34:17):
about the tomb and about the cancer, we just sat
there for just a few minutes and finally I just said, Steve,
how do you feel about this? Let's going through your
mind now? And he says, well, now that I'm a Christian,
I really do want to live because I'd like to
(34:38):
share what I have found with others. But if I
don't make it, I know where I'm going. I would
say in his conversion that Steve discovered that being a
Christian is far more than being religious. It's a relationship.
(35:00):
And he he loved that relationship and he was growing.
He was growing in that relationship. That meant it's just
it's that became his life. And here's Steve McQueen in
a private audio tape about two weeks before his death,
(35:21):
talking about his personal faith. When you mentioned earlier about
a clearth than my lot, well, that clearly playing the
Lord in my life. I'd like to think that I'm
a good Clifton. I'm trying to be if not easy
change from people living and we've them out, but I
know the Lord, what I had to offer, what hapend
the man? I know now I've changed a lot. I
(35:44):
used to be Marvin matched up and now my body's
gone and broken, but my spirited In Brothon, people always
ask me did Steve McQueen really become a Christian or
did he do it to save himself? While other people say, well,
(36:04):
you know, Steve wasn't that religious, and I always just
point them to Steve McQueen's own words. He made this
tape while he was in Plaza Santa Maria in Mexico,
about two weeks before his death, and all I say
to them is, let's just go to the tape. And
a great job on the production by Greg Hangler and
(36:26):
a special thanks to Marshall Terrell for sharing the story
of Steve McQueen. To pick up his book, Steve McQueen
The Salvation of an American Icon and it's by Greg
Glory and Marshall Terrell. Go to your local bookstore or
go to Amazon or the usual suspects wherever you get books.
And also a special thanks to Pastor Leonard de Witt
(36:46):
for sharing the story of Steve McQueen's conversion. By the way,
he converted to Christianity before the diagnosis of cancer. He
met this pilot instructor and he said, this is how
to live a life, and he wanted to know more,
and he got curious, and that curiosity led to his conversion.
The other remarkable part of this story is McQueen walking
(37:08):
out on the set of The Great Escape for six weeks.
This got him the reputation for being difficult shortly, but
that was soon to be not true because what happened
in the end is he fought for a better version
of the role he was about to play and a
writer who made it happen, and in the end it
made the film and made his career too. And what's
(37:30):
most interesting about McQueen's story is that he did love
his family and he did love his wife, but he
was a broken man and all he knew was what
he knew, and that was what he learned from his
father and his mother. His father was never there, his
mother was an alcoholic. And that's why we love doing
these stories. We don't deify these people when we do
(37:51):
talk about stars. We cover their life stories, the good,
the bad, and the ugly. See McQueen's story here on
our American Story
This is Lee Habibe and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American people,
and always we're looking for your stories. Send them to
our American Stories dot Com, our listeners stories, or some
of our favorite We are about to hear next, the
story of Hollywood legend Steve McQueen, told by a real
(00:32):
life Steve McQueen expert. Let's take a listen. My name
is Marshall Cheryl and I'm the author of approximately thirty
books and I've written seven on actor Steve McQueen. Steve
McQueen has held a fascination for me because I remember
watching him on television and on film because he was
(00:55):
my dad's favorite actor, and so whenever there was a
movie on television, my dad would say, hey, McQueen's on,
let's go watch it. Or if a McQueen movie was out,
he'd say, hey, there's a McQueen movie out. He'd take
me out of school and then we go watch that.
So that was kind of our bonding experience. And as
i've traveled around the world now talking about Steve McQueen,
(01:18):
I've discovered that I'm not the only one. And that's
how Steve McQueen, I think has been passed down down
to the generations. It's not unlike the Beatles or Elvis Presley,
where these parents and grandparents now have such a love
for this person that they want to pass that on
to their children and their grandchildren, and somehow miraculously they
(01:42):
get filtered down to the next generation. So Steve McQueen,
there's a lot of that with him, and I think
one of the reasons for that is because his look
is so timeless, you know, and that he looks like
if he stepped out of the screen today, and that
he could fit in with society today because he had
that great looking haircut, that great physique. He didn't look
(02:07):
like he belonged in any sort of time period. And then,
of course there are his films, which he was I've
always said he's kind of the template for the modern
day movie star. You know, he didn't He sort of
had his own code, and people picked that up and
they want to apply that to themselves. And so as
the result of following his own instincts as an actor,
(02:30):
Steve McQueen became the biggest movie star of the nineteen
sixties and seventies. From nineteen sixty three to nineteen seventy five,
he was the number one box office movie star of
the world. Steve McQueen was born on March twenty fourth,
nineteen thirty, a couple of months right after the Great
Depression hit. There was the Wall Street crash in nineteen
(02:53):
twenty nine, and so he grew up right in the
middle of that, and both of his parents were alcoholics.
He didn't really know his father because he walked out
on his wife and his child after six months. His mother, Julian,
was what they called a flapper. She was kind of
a good time girl. She was seventeen years old when
(03:16):
she gave birth to Steve, and you know, it was
just a kid herself. And so Steve was raised by
his maternal grandparents at first, Victor and Lilian Crawford. When
he was about four or five years old, you know,
they had lost pretty much everything as a result of
(03:36):
the Great Depression, and so they moved to Slater, Missouri,
where Steve's granduncle Claude had a hog farm, and so
sometimes Julian would come. Sometimes she'd be off in California.
Sometimes she'd come and take him because she felt guilty
and bring him out to California and then expose him
(03:58):
to stepfathers who didn't necessarily have his best interest at heart.
Sometimes they were abusive, most almost always they were alcoholics.
And so he was just raised in this environment where
he was didn't really have a home. Turned out he
was dyslexic and couldn't read well, and so, you know,
he was just one of his kids who fell through
(04:19):
the crack. When Steve McQueen lived in Los Angeles, he
got into a lot of trouble we're talking to, like
between the ages of nine and thirteen fourteen, he got
involved in a street gang. He talked about committing some
robberies and dealing hubcaps, playing pool at pool halls and
hustling people for money. And then there was a circus,
(04:40):
a traveling circus that came to town, and he had
decided that he was going to join it, and he
even tried to locks for a little bit, and once
he said he got knocked flat on his duck. He
gave that up. So when Steve got older, his mother
had married a gentleman by the name of Halberry, and
this was in Los Angeles, and so Howe was an alcoholic,
(05:03):
and you know, he beat Steve I don't know how frequently,
but Steve did talk about that in interviews, and one
time he talked about him getting beat up and getting
thrown in a closet, and then one time getting beat
up and being thrown down on a set of stairs,
and so Steve basically he said, if you touch me again,
I'm going to kill you. And so it turns out
(05:25):
that his mother had him declared incorrigible and took him
to the Boys Republican Chino, which was basically a reformatory school,
and so that's where Steve started getting his act together,
started learning some discipline, started understanding the fact that he
could have a life, a life of his choosing if
(05:48):
he decided to clean up his act. And so they
gave him a pretty good education. But the furthest he
got was in ninth grade. It wasn't until he decided
to join the Marine that he was going to quote
unquote become a real man. Well, Steve McQueen joined the
Marines in nineteen forty seven, and he needed the permission
(06:10):
of his mother to do it because he was seventeen.
And the kind of thing about that was he actually
sent a portion of his paycheck to his mother, even
though she wasn't really good to him, but she did,
she did sign that paperwork for him, and in the
beginning it did not make him a man. But what
he found out was when he was the Marines, he
(06:31):
couldn't get away with some of the shenanigans that he pulled.
And you've been listening to Marshall Terrell tell the story
of actor Steve McQueen and what a difficult start to
a life you can't get dealt A much worse hand
than McQueen got dealt as a young man at the
Marine Corps and reform school were the steps towards at
(06:52):
least an attempt to straighten his life. When we come back,
more of a life story of actor Steve McQueen here
on Our American Stories. Lee Habibi here the host of
(07:33):
our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing
inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our
big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do
the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to,
but they're not free to make. If you love what
you hear, go to our American Stories dot com and
click the donate button. Give a little give a lot.
(07:56):
Go to our American Stories dot com and give and
we continue with our American Stories and the story of
actor Steve McQueen. Let's pick up where we last left
(08:17):
off with author Marshall Terrell. He went a wall a
couple of times. That was to be with some girlfriends
who lived in another state. Part of his punishment was
that he had to clean out the whole of the ship,
which was in the naval yard in Washington, d c.
They had to clean out the pipes which was filled
with asbesis. Everything in that ship was filled with asbesis.
(08:38):
They didn't have any mask on, so he breathed that in.
That was in December of nineteen forty nine, and he
was diagnosed with cancer in December of nineteen seventy nine,
so it was almost exactly thirty years, which is what
they say that missalty Lee only takes to fully form.
(09:01):
The other thing that he did that that a sergeant
told me who served with him, was that he offered
to clean the latrines in the morning. And the sergeant said,
no one ever ever offered to clean the latrines. So
what he said was McQueen could sleep an extra hour
(09:21):
in if he would wake up, and then he would
go sleep inside the bathroom area, you know, put his
coat down and then sleep for an extra hour or two,
which was considered gold in the Marines. And so but
he would also do his duty as well. But he
said those were the kinds of things that McQueen would pull.
You know, he couldn't be conformed fully, but you know,
(09:42):
he conformed enough to where he felt like the Marines
had given him a life of discipline. Well, Steve McQueen
was a bit aimless after joining the Marines. He drove
a taxi cab and was a mechanic for a company
in Washington, d C. As soon as he got out,
because that's where he was discharged, was in DC. And
(10:04):
then he worked his way up to New York City,
where he felt quote unquote where the action was. He
was selling Encyclopedia's door to door, and he did stuff
like he'd steal like a shower nozzle in a large
department store, and then he'd bring it back for a
return and cash that in. And another buddy of mine
(10:25):
told me that he would walk around the street offering
single ladies a tour of the city and then they
would buy him a meal or give him a tip.
So he was a real hustler. You know, he did
anything that he could to survive those Those were really
tough days. That's what I call the salad days. And
then what happened was he was dating a dancer who said,
(10:45):
you know, Steve, you're really kind of kookie and strange.
You would be perfect for acting. And he discovered under
the GI Bill he qualified for acting or any sort
of college if he wanted to do that. So he
gave acting a shot. So Steve McQueen started taking acting
lessons at Sanford Meisner's neighborhood Playhouse, and Meisner was the
(11:06):
perfect acting coach for him because he was soft with
people and Steve was very, very insecure, and so you know,
for him, being an actor meant being vulnerable. He truly
got into it because he knew that that's where women were.
But once it was discovered he had this great raw
(11:27):
talents and was given great positive feedback, he really fed
on that and so then that's when he really started trying.
And then you know, once those skills were honed, and
trust me, it took several years for him to perfect
the McQueen persona. Right around the time that he enters
(11:48):
the actor's studio is when he starts to get, you know,
a little mojo with his career. He gets a Broadway play.
He's not very good in it, but he's starting in
Broadway play, which gives him the curry to ask out
his first wife, Neil Adams, who was a very successful
Broadway dancer, and they started dating and they really hit
it off. But his success does not match hers, and
(12:11):
so that that kind of drives me crazy. At the time,
she was making fifty thousand dollars a year, he was
making four thousand, and the fact that his wife was
more successful than him, given that he was a male
shove and its bedrogram crazy. But some of the productions
that he was getting were kind of just independent films,
Like he got a job as a seventeen dollar a
day extra in the movie Somebody Up There Likes Me,
(12:34):
starring Paul Newman. He did a movie, a B movie
called Never Love a Stranger, Great Saint Louis Bank Robbery,
and of course The Blob, which was like the B
movie picture of all B movie pictures. So The Blob
was made. I think it started production in August of
nineteen fifty seven and It was a very, very a
(12:56):
low grade B movie about this blob that comes from
outer space and starts becoming bigger and swallowing people up.
And at the time it was considered you very high tech.
But the interesting thing was it was developed by a
(13:17):
production company called Good News Productions, which was a Christian
based film company, and so with the Blob, they partnered
with Jack Harris to make a mainstream movie to tap
into some of that money to make more Christian films.
And near the end of filming Russell Daughton, who later
(13:41):
went on to produce a movie called Thief in the Night.
He went on to produce a lot of Christian films,
but Thief in the Night was this big one. He said.
There was a week of overruns in which McQueen would
have to, you know, either dubbing apart or react a scene,
and McQueen basically basically said nothing doing. And so Dalton
(14:04):
kind of sat him down and talked to him about
his attitude in life and gave him a Bible because
he knew that McQueen, after this production was headed to Hollywood,
and you know, he said, you know, Steve was heading
out into the wilderness and he wanted to make sure
that he gave him a Bible. And Dowton actually went
out to Hollywood a couple months later and he said
(14:25):
he bumped into McQueen and McQueen said to him, hey,
I still got your Bible. When Steve McQueen first got
to Hollywood, you know, he made a strike almost right away.
And the reason for that was because again Neil had
translated her star power from Broadway to Hollywood, and so
(14:46):
she was starting to really get a lot of attention,
and so McQueen was following her to the studios and
you know, one of the famous quotes that he gives was,
you know, I was starting to get elbowed by the
makeup people and the assistant to actors, and they were
calling me mister Adams. And he said, I came to
realize at that moment time I better become famous real fast.
(15:08):
Because he did not want to follow in her footsteps,
so he was driving her crazy, and so she called
her manager, Hilly Elkins, and said, Hilly, you got to
get him a job. He's driving me absolutely bonkers. So
the first job that Hilly gets Steve McQueen is in
a series called Trackdown and somebody on that show saw
(15:32):
Steve McQueen and said who is that guy, and so
they said, yeah, just some young unknown actor named Steve McQueen.
And they said, well, we want we want him for
something else, and so that was for a TV series
called One a Dinner Alive and One A Dennor Alive.
Believe it or not, was a big hit when a
(15:54):
debut in September of nineteen fifty eight, and it had
the Luckily for him, the Blob had just previewed just
at that time had finally come out in theaters, so
he had the double whammy of the Blob and wanted
did or live a period at the same time. And
(16:15):
you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the story
of Steve McQueen. And by the way, you can learn
so much more by going to a local bookstore and
buying this book, or heck, go to Amazon or the
usual suspects wherever you get your books. Steve McQueen The
Salvation of an American Icon by Greg Glory and Marshall Terrell.
(16:38):
And Terrell has written so many books about this subject
that we chose to interview him and to have him
and tell the story of McQueen, and what a story
it is. I mean, imagine that his entire career almost
is predicated on a girl he's dating saying you're kookie
and strange, you'd be a good actor. And of course
he took that as a compliment or a call to action,
(17:00):
and he gave it a shot. And he is very
lucky that he was in New York City and ended
up with the great Stanford Meisner, one of the great
acting teachers coaches of all time, who did, indeed have
a gentle touch. And of course actors are the most
insecure people in the world, as you can imagine, and
having a man like that tutor and mentor him, and
then to end up at the actors studio around some
(17:22):
of the great actors of his generation, studying his craft
to be come indeed what he was, which was one
of the great American actors, not just an icon, but
a real talent. When we come back more of the
untold story of Steve McQueen here on our American stories,
(18:08):
and we continue with our American stories and the story
of Steve McQueen, and my goodness, go back and watch
his movies and they're so good and the range in
depth and breadth of his talent is remarkable. A magnificent seven,
The Greatest Skite Bullet, which by the way features the
greatest card chase in American history, one of the first
great ones too. And I think his best performance alongside
(18:31):
Faye Dunaway The Thomas Crown Affair, a slow, cool, burning, brilliant,
brilliant movie. Now let's return to Marshall Terrell to continue
the story of actor Steve McQueen. In the summers when
he was on hiatus from One A Debt or Live,
(18:51):
he did a couple of different movies. He did never
so few for John Sturgis. That part was originally written
for Sammy Davis Junior, who had said something disparaging about
Frank Sinatra on radio. And then he was out and
Steve McQueen was in. John stir just liked him very
much promised him for his next movie he'd have him
(19:12):
in the role. That next movie was The MC seven,
which again was was filmed on hiatus the following year,
and he was He started opposite Youual Brenner, and of
course he co starred with a couple of his friends,
Charles Bronson, James Colburn and a few other young upstarts.
(19:33):
But McQueen wanted to upset the apple cart. And you know,
he was second build and but you'll, you'll Brenner was
the star. But you know, Steve McQueen emerged as a
star because he had planned and plotted to upstage Ull
Brenner whenever he could. So one of the acting choices
(19:56):
McQueen made to upstage Brenner there was a where they're
they're talking to each other and McQueen is walking back
and forth and Brenner, because he was a little bit smaller,
had built a little sandpile to stand on. So as
McQueen's walking by and going past him in each scene,
he's kicking away a little bit of the sand to
(20:17):
the point where real brenner is sinking every every time
that McQueen kicks the sand. So that was the kind
of shenanigans that he pulled. So from that performance, a
lot of the movie producers started to take note of
this young guy, and so a few years later, John
Sturgis asked him to star in The Great Escape. That's
(20:38):
when Steve McQueen turned into a householding And you know,
when he read the script, he said, everybody's got a
little bit, I don't have a bit. You know, mc
garner had a turtleneck and you know, James Colburn had
his suitcase and stur you know, was saying, don't worry
about it, Steve, just like Magnus at seven. You know,
(21:00):
he promised them all at a camera time as oppostal lines,
that he'd take care of him. So when they get
over to Germany, McQueen's attitude really starts to sour and
he's not getting the attention that he wants, especially regarding
his part. So he walked off the set for six weeks.
And so what McQueen asked for was another writer to
(21:21):
come in and start working on his part again, and
from that rewrite, they started developing the bit about throwing
the ball up against the cell in solitary confinement, the
motorcycle chase, and these other parts that would make that
character Steve McQueen. And as it turned out, it worked
perfectly because McQueen was the breakout star of that movie
(21:42):
and that was the one movie that catapulted him from
TV stardom to film startom, and he was the first
actual actor to do that in that era. So he
was the very first that catapulted from television to film.
After the Great Escape, McQueen becomes the new big star
in Hollywood, and he has this attitude of, you know,
(22:05):
I'm going to taste all the goodies that Hollywood has
to offer. He bought a beautiful home in Brentwood, bought
a house in Palm Springs, had tons of sports cars,
dated a lot of pretty ladies. Behind his wife's back.
He hung out on the Sunset Strip. He had a
booth at the Whiskey a Go Go because he knew
(22:27):
the owner. And so again he was going to sample
all all the goodies that Hollywood had to offer to him.
After the Great Escape, McQueen made a couple of He
made like a trio of movies that didn't really go anywhere.
So his next big film, which started a Street that
made him the biggest movie star of the sixties. And
(22:50):
he did five back to back hits in a row,
and that was The Cincinnati Kid, Nevada Smith, the Sam Pebbles,
Thomas Crown Affair, and then it all ends with Bullet,
which was his biggest hit in the sixties and made
him a cultural icon and superstar. So he was no
(23:11):
longer just a movie star. He was, you know, in
that rarefied air of Superstars. With McQueen now on this
big role, almost every movie offer came his way, with
the exception of a movie called The Thomas Crown Affair,
and that was because Steve McQueen was always kind of
played these blue collar types and Thomas Crown was a swab, devonair,
(23:34):
a white collar bank robber. And it was originally offered
to Sean Connery, offered to him right after he made
his last James Bond movie, You Only Lived Twice, and
for whatever reasons, Sean Connery decided not to take it.
Then they they talked to Rock Huts, and then they
talked to a few of the people. And so Neil McQueen,
(23:56):
his wife was very very good for him in terms
of his career and picking out movies that she thought
would benefit him. And so Thomas Crown, no one had
taken up that offer yet, and it was directed by
Norman Jewison, who directed McQueen and The Cincinnati Kid. And
so one day she's talking to McQueen and she said,
you know, it's really a darn shame that Norman doesn't
(24:18):
want you, And he goes, what are you talking about?
She said to Thomas Crown affair, he doesn't want you
for it, So she was using some sort of reverse
psychology on him. She said, yeah, you know, they've talked
to Sean Connery, Rock Hudson, everybody in town but you.
And so McQueen puffed out his chest and decided, Okay,
(24:39):
I'm gonna call Norman, and Norman told him you're not
right for it, Steve. You know, you look down at
your feet, you shuffle your shoes. Thomas Crown's the kind
of person that will look you in the eye and
tell you a lie. He goes, are you capable of
doing that? So McQueen told him that basically, you know,
he was ready for the part. He was ready to
do it. And it made sense for Jewison because McQueen
(25:00):
was a major, major box office star, so if he
wanted to get his movie greenlit, it would only make
sense to have Steve McQueen in the starring role. So
after Bullet becomes this major, major Hollywood hit, it was
definitely the biggest hit of nineteen sixty eight. It was
during that period of time where he really started getting
(25:22):
into cocaine. He started getting into orgies and a lot
of that downfall had to do with the fact that
the Manson family had killed two of his friends, Sharon
Tate and Jay Sebring. Sharon Tate was somebody that Steve
McQueen said on his deathbed was a girlfriend, and that
(25:44):
Jay Sebring, who cut his hair, was his best friend.
In Neil McQueen's book, she says the night before the
murders that Jay Sebring had come over to their house
and given Steve a trim and asked him if he
would come to the house the next night and helped
babysit Sharon because she was getting ready to have a
(26:06):
child and her husband, Roman Plansky, was out of town,
and so you know, she wanted people around just to
keep her company. And so the next night, according to Neil,
Steve McQueen was on his motorcycle ready to go over
to the house and saw either some young girl hitchhiking
or saw Rex saw somebody he recognized and spent the
(26:29):
evening with her and avoided that whole massacre because he
was with somebody else. And then later on it turned
out there was a report in the paper that Susan
Atkins had claimed to someone that the Mansons had a
death list of celebrities that they were going to kill,
and Steve McQueen was one of them on that list.
(26:53):
And you've been listening to author Marshall Terrell tell the
riveting story if Steve McQueen and how he barely escaped
being at the Roman Polanski home where the Mansons did
their devilish work and escape death via a narrow chance.
When we come back more of the life of Steve
McQueen here on our American stories, and we continue with
(27:38):
our American stories and with author Marshall Terrell, let's continue
with the story of actor Steve McQueen. Here's Marshall. So
at the end of the nineteen sixties, Steve McQueen's life
is really becoming a mess. He gets a divorce from
his wife, his company goes bankrupt, and he also severs
(27:59):
his relationship ship with his longtime agent who you know,
who helped him become very, very successful. Despite the fact
that you know, he carried on endless affairs. He was
actually believing or not a family man. He carred very deeply.
He loved his wife and he loved his two children,
Chad and Terry, and he came from a broken home
(28:24):
and it horrified him that these two children would now
quote unquote come from a broken home. That's what makes
him so interesting in complex is because you know, he
on the one hand, he couldn't help himself with women,
but on the other hand, he was a family man,
and so that that family was now broken up because
(28:46):
of him. By nineteen seventy two, Steve McQueen's careers on
the up swing again and he had the one two
three punch of The Getaway. Papione was extremely successful in
The Towering Inferno was the most successful film of all time,
with a box office grosser were three hundred million dollars
in nineteen seventy five dollars, up to Jaws, which eclipsed
(29:09):
it six months later. He found love again in a
young model by the name of Barbara Minty. So she
created that new spark in him. So he decided that
he was going to move to Santa Paula, California, which
is about sixty miles north of Los Angeles. And one
(29:30):
of the reasons why he did that i was because
he wanted to fly antique airplanes and at the time
that was the antique airplane capital of the world. And
he bought a ranch and he was living in a
town that really reminded him of the home that he
grew up in as a kid, Slater, Missouri, and he
was happy again. And one of the most interesting things
(29:51):
that happened in Santa Paul was the gentleman that taught
him how to fly. His name was Sammy Mason, was
a former World War Two pilot, and after a couple
of lessons, Steve picked up on his spirit or his vibe,
whatever you would want to call it, and he said, Sammy,
there's something different about you. I can't quite put my
(30:11):
finger on it. And Sammy said, well, Steve, I'm a
born again Christian. And so rather than that turning off Steve,
Steve was intrigued. And here's Astor Leonard you went talking
about his relationship with Steve McQueen. Sam wasn't the preacher type.
(30:32):
He was rock solid in his faith and he lived
the life. He saw in Sam someone that he could trust,
someone who genuinely cared about him. Both families just embraced him,
and so he saw in them a quality of life.
You know, they prayed over their meals, they were respectful,
(30:57):
they were supportive, they were encouraging, they were just rock
solid he realizes there's something a whole lot better than
I've ever experienced. So why when they invited him to church,
that was no big deal. He was ready. I don't
know what he thought he was going to experience, but
he trusted them, and when he started coming, he just
(31:20):
felt at home. The people didn't bother him, you know,
they weren't asking for autographs or anything. The Mason family
always sat up in the balcony. They had six children,
and he just sat with the whole family. I think
he'd been coming about three or four months. But one
Sunday I was out in the foyer greeting the people,
(31:40):
and I felt someone tapped me on the shoulder and
I turned around and he said, Pastor, I'm Steve McQueen
And I said, oh, hi, Steve, I heard that you
were worshiping with us. And he said, I wonder if
you'd have some time one of these days where we
could get together and talk. And we met at the old,
(32:03):
the old Santa Paul Airport restaurant. We met well, probably
about two o'clock in the afternoon, so there wouldn't be
anybody there. Had a lot of questions about Christ, but
he also wanted to know, can you trust the Bible?
Is it accurate? Is it reliable? You know? Is it
going to make me a kuk? He wanted to know
(32:27):
what difference would Christ make in a person's life. Is
it going to be more of what I'm used to
or is Christ really going to bring about a change
that I will be happy with it? So those are
the kind of questions. It's not only about Christ personally,
but you know, the Bible says that if anyone is
(32:48):
in Christ, he's a new creation. All things passed away
and all things become new. And so Steve really wanted
to know is this real? So, um, during that two
hours at the airport, when he's firing one question after another,
finally he just sort of sat back and he says, well,
(33:10):
that's all my questions. And I just started smiled and said, well, Steve,
I have just one and he grinned. He says, you
want to know if I'm a born again Christian, don't you?
And I said, well, that's really what's important to me.
So he said, you remember the Sunday And it was
(33:31):
probably maybe three or four weeks before. Anyway, he said,
on that particular Sunday, at the end of the service.
You gave an opportunity for us to receive Christ. And
he said, that's when I invited Christ into my life
and was born again. And he told me, at that
(33:52):
particular point, I'd be Sister Leonard, I don't know hardly
anything about the Bible, so I'm going to be coming
upon us. We meet on a regular basis, and so
we set up a program where we met once a
week and we would spend a full hour in Bible
study and prayer, and we would do it out at
his anchor, each or his ranch. After he told me
(34:17):
about the tomb and about the cancer, we just sat
there for just a few minutes and finally I just said, Steve,
how do you feel about this? Let's going through your
mind now? And he says, well, now that I'm a Christian,
I really do want to live because I'd like to
(34:38):
share what I have found with others. But if I
don't make it, I know where I'm going. I would
say in his conversion that Steve discovered that being a
Christian is far more than being religious. It's a relationship.
(35:00):
And he he loved that relationship and he was growing.
He was growing in that relationship. That meant it's just
it's that became his life. And here's Steve McQueen in
a private audio tape about two weeks before his death,
(35:21):
talking about his personal faith. When you mentioned earlier about
a clearth than my lot, well, that clearly playing the
Lord in my life. I'd like to think that I'm
a good Clifton. I'm trying to be if not easy
change from people living and we've them out, but I
know the Lord, what I had to offer, what hapend
the man? I know now I've changed a lot. I
(35:44):
used to be Marvin matched up and now my body's
gone and broken, but my spirited In Brothon, people always
ask me did Steve McQueen really become a Christian or
did he do it to save himself? While other people say, well,
(36:04):
you know, Steve wasn't that religious, and I always just
point them to Steve McQueen's own words. He made this
tape while he was in Plaza Santa Maria in Mexico,
about two weeks before his death, and all I say
to them is, let's just go to the tape. And
a great job on the production by Greg Hangler and
(36:26):
a special thanks to Marshall Terrell for sharing the story
of Steve McQueen. To pick up his book, Steve McQueen
The Salvation of an American Icon and it's by Greg
Glory and Marshall Terrell. Go to your local bookstore or
go to Amazon or the usual suspects wherever you get books.
And also a special thanks to Pastor Leonard de Witt
(36:46):
for sharing the story of Steve McQueen's conversion. By the way,
he converted to Christianity before the diagnosis of cancer. He
met this pilot instructor and he said, this is how
to live a life, and he wanted to know more,
and he got curious, and that curiosity led to his conversion.
The other remarkable part of this story is McQueen walking
(37:08):
out on the set of The Great Escape for six weeks.
This got him the reputation for being difficult shortly, but
that was soon to be not true because what happened
in the end is he fought for a better version
of the role he was about to play and a
writer who made it happen, and in the end it
made the film and made his career too. And what's
(37:30):
most interesting about McQueen's story is that he did love
his family and he did love his wife, but he
was a broken man and all he knew was what
he knew, and that was what he learned from his
father and his mother. His father was never there, his
mother was an alcoholic. And that's why we love doing
these stories. We don't deify these people when we do
(37:51):
talk about stars. We cover their life stories, the good,
the bad, and the ugly. See McQueen's story here on
our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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