Two Things I Know for Sure about Steve McQueen

I’m off the streets. I’m people. I’m honest and I’m of the times. I don’t give the idea I got ahead because of a letter of introduction from my father-in-law…It’s a good racket. And let’s face it, you can’t beat the bread.
- Steve McQueen



A kid from the streets, abandoned by his father before his birth, the first to admit to his educational shortcomings, Steve McQueen intuitively mastered the subtle artistry of film acting above and beyond contemporaries schooled in the Method and in stage-anchored theatrics. With that being said, here are two things I know for sure about Steve McQueen…


Number One: For one movie, McQueen was a member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack

It all started when Sinatra was set to star in "Never So Few" (1959), a World War II saga of a small, ragtag band of GI’s pitted against an outnumbering force of Japanese on the Burma-China border. The film offered supporting roles for Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Jr., the latter to be paid $75,000 for his portrayal of Corporal Ringa.

Before filming began, Sammy took time out from an engagement at a Chicago nightclub to entertain a local radio reporter with an interview, during which he said, "I love Frank…But there are many things he does that there are no excuses for. Talent is not an excuse for bad manners. I don’t care if you are the most talented person in the world. It does not give you the right to step on people and treat them rotten." When the reporter asked Davis if he thought he was a bigger star than Sinatra, Sammy replied, "I think I’m number one now." Pressed by the interviewer, Davis averred, "I love Frank, but I think I’m bigger than he is."

As soon as the Chairman of the Board caught wind of the remarks, "Frank called him a ‘dirty n----- bastard,’" according to Peter Lawford, "and wrote him out of ‘Never So Few.’" "Sammy adored Frank," said Davis’ agent, "but Frank was Frank, and you don’t f--- with him." Lawford’s manager remembered, "You wanna talk destroyed? Sammy Davis cried from morning to night," but Frank wouldn’t budge.

Steve McQueen, after a bit part in a Paul Newman film and featured roles in three motion pictures, was hired to replace Davis (at a meager third of Sammy’s promised salary) as the wise-cracking, scrounging supply sergeant. Sinatra took an immediate liking to McQueen, while the latter, who obviously respected Sinatra’s status, warily observed the star from the sidelines.

On one memorable off-camera occasion, Frank decided to "test" the younger actor. As McQueen quietly studied the script, Sinatra sneaked up behind him and lit a firecracker in his ammo belt. Steve later recollected, "I jumped about three feet in the air, which naturally delighted Frank.." As recounted by McQueen biographer Marshall Terrill, "Not one to back down, McQueen quickly grabbed one of the prop tommy guns, jammed in a clip of blanks." In Steve’s own words, "Sinatra was walking away, laughing it up with his buddies, when I yelled at him, ‘Hey, Frank!’ He turned around and I let him have it, zap-zap-zap-zap, the whole clip." According to Terrill, "The crew thought McQueen must have been crazy for giving it back to Sinatra like that. The two men stared at each other, neither blinking. It was an Old West standoff." McQueen recalled, "The whole set just went dead. Everybody was watching Frank to see what he’d do. He had a real bad temper, and I guess they all figured we were gonna end in a punch-out. I wasn’t sure myself, as we stared at each other. Then he just started laughing, and it was all over. After that, we got along just fine. In fact, we tossed firecrackers at each other all through the picture."

McQueen noted, "Once you back down to a guy like Sinatra, he never respects you. We sort of found each other on the same wavelength. We dug one another. We’re like minds. We’re both children emotionally." Sinatra apparently acknowledged McQueen as a kindred soul, recognizing the similar spirit of the rebel he himself once was. Robert Relyea, the first assistant director on "Never So Few," sensed that Sinatra accepted his co-star as a kid brother, going so far as to encourage those behind the camera to "focus on McQueen, and I’ll go home."

In her memoir My Husband, My Friend, Steve’s first wife, Neile McQueen Toffel, recalled, "Frank Sinatra could not have been more generous with Steve and (director) John Sturges took advantage of this and worked with Steve to make his appearance a memorable one." At the end of the production, Sinatra accurately predicted highly favorable critical responses for McQueen’s performance. "It’s a good movie, kid," Frank said, "and it’s all yours."

As for Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford said, "Frank let him grovel for awhile and then allowed him to apologize in public a couple of months later." Sinatra let Davis back into the fold with a role in "Ocean’s Eleven," but one with a bitter aftertaste, since Sammy was cast as a song-and-dance garbage man.

McQueen was rumored to be considered for a role in "Ocean’s Eleven," the quintessential Rat Pack caper, when Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper asked Steve, "Do you want to be a movie star or a Frank Sinatra flunky?"


Number Two: In another movie, the "King of Cool" royally pissed off the "King of Siam"

"The Magnificent Seven" (1960) provided Steve McQueen, who was enjoying small-screen success in the TV series "Wanted: Dead or Alive," with his breakout role as a bona fide movie star. A straightforward remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Japanese epic, "The Seven Samurai" as an American western, the movie’s financing rested solely on Yul Brynner’s starring role as the "Cajun" gunfighter (a once-only attempt to explain the Russian-born actor’s non-western accent) who leads a band of hired gunmen to defend a small Mexican village of farmers from bandits. Director John Sturges (who had made "Never So Few") was to hand-pick Yul’s co-stars to ensure that they would complement and not upstage him. McQueen, whose salary was now $65,000, would do his best to stand out from the rest.

James Coburn, who played the knife-throwing expert, said of Brynner (who won an Academy Award for his starring role in 1956’s "The King and I"), "He was the king. He had the whole entourage, but he didn’t like anyone walking within ten feet of him. He liked to have his cigarette lit for him at the snap of a finger. Movie star treatment." On the other hand, Coburn would recall, "Steve’s main aim was to promote Steve McQueen (who would soon earn the nickname 'The King of Cool')."

During the film, Brynner was always supposed to lead the way while the others occupied the background. The rest of the cast, including Coburn, Charles Bronson and Robert Vaughn, soon adopted their own agenda, each determined to make their own mark. (Steve’s wife Neile memorably noted, "The set was fraught with testosterone.") "There was a question of all of us wanting to best Brynner," Vaughn recalled. "We all wanted to somehow take the picture away from Brynner." None, however, had the street smarts to compete with McQueen.

In their scenes together, McQueen did his best to upstage Brynner, particularly when the latter had his back turned toward him. In the opening minutes alone, Steve is constantly throwing in little bits of business - "catching flies" is what they call it - to distract the audience’s attention away from the star. He shakes shotgun shells next to his ear before loading a borrowed "scatter-gun," doffs his hat and examines it in the sunlight, blows on the spent cartridges, and fiddles with his hat again. Co-star Brad Dexter said, "Steve was a very, very clever actor, and he used to do a lot of shticks…by indulging in a lot of histrionics that have nothing to do with the character, but the camera and the audience riveted on him. Steve was very good at that."

Neile McQueen Toffel noted, "Actually the reason behind all that fly-catching was Steve’s frustration at the lack of dialogue. He also felt his character was not as well defined as Charlie Bronson’s or James Coburn’s." According to Neile, "Steve was a real hustler type, and he was going to get what he wanted, so if he didn’t have enough lines, he was going to move every second to distract from Yul Brynner." She said, "It is a tribute to Steve’s tremendous screen presence that he managed, given the company, to come off as the star to watch."

Neile recounted, "A feud had erupted between (McQueen and Brynner), and Steve was leaking details about it to the press, although he wouldn’t own up to it." Director John Sturges admitted to "some clashes. They’re dissimilar characters. Yul is like a rock, Steve’s volatile."

John Alonzo, then an actor (portraying a villager) and later a director of photography (who lensed McQueen’s penultimate film, "Tom Horn"), said of Steve’s obvious envy of Yul, "It was kind of fun to watch the two of them, because Steve was the hottest thing on television, so he expected to be treated like a star. But in Mexico, they didn’t know who he was. Yul Brynner was an international star and was treated much better by the Mexican people."

"There wouldn’t have been a rivalry," Coburn recollected, "if Steve hadn’t pushed it. Steve wasn’t what you would call a giving guy. He had a lot of power and presence. He loved to play. It was in his nature. An abandoned child always tests everything. And he tested Yul." Years afterward, Coburn admitted to McQueen that he, Bronson, and Vaughn disliked him for all the scene-stealing bits. "We were so busy hating you that you stole the movie. You were the smart guy. We were dumb."

According to McQueen’s manager, Hilly Elkins, "Yul was precise and demanding. Steve was an American phenomenon. Steve wasn’t going to take any s--- from the bald fellow. And the bald fellow wasn’t going to take any s---- from Steve."

"Steve figures Yul is being a big star, and he’s not willing for anyone else to catch flies, and Yul thinks Steve is being an undisciplined smart aleck, always trying to catch a fly," the director recalled. Brynner "gets sore because Steve is always fiddling with his hat or something. I have to tell Steve not to busy it up all the time…to just stand there." In Neile’s words, "John (Sturges) was a strong director and was able to guide Steve," who "deferred to John’s direction without question. He was impressed with John’s credits and his reputation of being a man’s man."

When newspaper reports of the Brynner-McQueen "feud" reached Yul, he physically confronted Steve and declared, "I’m an established star, and I don’t feud with supporting actors. I want you to call the paper and tell them the story is completely false!" McQueen shot back, "Take your hands off me! You know what you can do with your orders? Shove ‘em!" McQueen later recalled, "I don’t like people pawin’ me. What had I got to lose? I’ve got a busted nose and teeth missing and stitches in my lip and I’m deaf in the right ear."

According to Steve, "Yul Brynner was one uptight dude. I think I represented a threat to him. He doesn’t ride very well, and he doesn’t know anything about quick-draws." (Yul tried to no avail to talk McQueen into using a rifle so he wouldn’t draw attention with his mastery of the quick-draw.) "I know horses," McQueen said, "I know guns. I was in my element, and he wasn’t."

Surprisingly, a few years later, Yul Brynner asked McQueen, now an established major movie star, if he would reprise his role in the 1966 sequel, "Return of the Seven." Steve, who in fact felt the plot was too absurd, said, "I’d sure like to, but I’m too busy," promising that he would co-star in Yul’s next film - a promise never fulfilled.


Postscript

Steve’s only Academy Award-nominated role was in "The Sand Pebbles" (1966), as the lone-wolf machinist’s mate aboard a U.S. gunboat patrolling the troubled waters of China’s Yangtze River in 1926 during Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist rebellion. Japanese-born actor Mako, whose role as an engine crew leader under the wing of McQueen earned him a supporting actor Oscar bid, was notably impressed by the star when he saw the completed film for the first time. "Not so much when you’re working with him in person," he recalled, "but when you see his work on screen. There is little wasted emotion. He came to know the camera so well. His work was so subtle and right on the money. I think that he was unique in the fact that he chose to do less on the screen. By doing less, he brought simplicity on the screen, and at the same time he was very much the image of the American man."


There’s something about my shaggy-dog eyes that makes people think I’m good, but I’m not really all that good. I’m pretty much myself most of the time in my movies, and I’ve accepted that.
- Steve McQueen