Like Steve McQueen
All I need's a fast machine...
Posted on 12/18/2022 8:22:50 AM PST by Rummyfan
Steve McQueen was in the middle of his career's big hot streak when he made Nevada Smith in 1966, between The Cincinnati Kid and The Sand Pebbles. He had the momentum of The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape behind him, and The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt in the near future. In retrospect, things would probably never be better for the actor, and though it wouldn't be until 1974 that he officially became the highest paid actor in the world, that pyrrhic honour would ultimately (and inevitably) be the beginning of the end.
Like so many of his roles, he was reluctant about the picture (he'd recently passed on King Rat), but his then-wife Neile took him aside after the story was pitched by his agents Stan Kamen and Abe Lastfogel and said, "Take it." The film he really wanted to make was a racing picture called Day of the Champion, which he would ultimately make as Le Mans, perhaps to his regret. But more about that another time.
The film was a prequel, its whole story carved out of an anecdote about a character played by Alan Ladd in Edward Dmytryk's 1964 movie version of The Carpetbaggers, the best-selling Harold Robbins novel, which was itself sloppily based on the life of Howard Hughes. The Dmytryk film was suitably overwrought and salacious and was a massive hit. Today both book and movie are remembered as milestones of the budding sexual revolution, though Robbins is a period footnote, and the film nearly impossible to see.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Like Steve McQueen
All I need's a fast machine...
Steve McQueen may have been in some memorable movies, but as a person, he was a monster. He abused his wives, leaving them at home while he roamed the streets of LA at night looking for prostitutes. An all around creepy guy.
There are some big names on that movie poster.
He was almost present at 10050 Cielo Drive on the evening of August 9th, 1969. He had been invited to the gathering there that night, but was a no-show due to his sudden interest in a young woman he met randomly that afternoon.
Say what you want
He turned it Around at the last
Which is good enough for me.
I guess it would be a toss up between he and Clint Eastwood. I’ve read books about both of them and don’t recall many details - I do recall that Steve McQueen would sit in his home and pay people to bring girls to him.
Clint Eastwood had 8 children with 6 different women - two with his first wife. He was dastardly to the gal who starred in so many of his movies - Sondra Locke...She never had any of his children.
https://www.distractify.com/p/clint-eastwood-childrens-ages
No doubt that McQueen and Eastwood were two of the best actors turned out by Hollywood in 50 years. IMO
I remember that was written about at one time...true or not - who knows? Can you imagine what a L. A. DA would do with the Manson gang today?
HOW did he turn it around?
Yuppers
His bike ride is The Best in;
The Great Escape !!!
He found Jesus...
Or the other way around.
Some former acquaintance of Eastwood's once said 'if they ever had an event gathering all the people Clint has screwed over in his life, they would have to hold it at the LA Colisseum.
Actor, director, producer - isn’t that the actual definition of someone who screws people over?
It’s to be expected.
I lived in LA for 29 years.,
WORKED in Hollywood...
NEVER heard such rumors.
Mark Steyn has kind of disappeared from the Conservative universe.
I rarely see Steyn on TV, and I cannot remember the last time I read one of his essays.
Same story for Michelle Malkin, now that I think about it.
I saw a story earlier today that Steyn has had a couple of heart attacks.
Marking is semi retired….taking a break.
.
Clint has become my mentor.
He made a movie at age 86 or 87 and may still be.
He taught the lesson that all Freepers, especially those of us who are aged and wise. That lesson is........ don’t let the old man in.
Excerpt from: Greater Grace: A Story of God, Redemption, and Steve McQueen
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/youngfogey/2012/12/greater-grace-a-story-of-god-redemption-and-steve-mcqueen/
“in the spring of 1979, he left Malibu for the small, quiet town of Santa Paula, where he ultimately married his third wife Barbara Minty. For a period of time, they lived in an airport hangar which he had filled with his entire motorcycle collection. He bought a yellow Stearman bi-plane and learned to fly it, quickly mastering the craft as he had mastered motor racing before.
The pilot who taught him was a man in his early 60s by the name of Sammy Mason. Self-described as cranky and difficult to get along with, he became fast friends with McQueen. As they shared long hours in the air, talking together about the meaning of life, Steve sensed that there was something different about him. The more time they spent together, the more he wanted to know what Mason’s secret was. One day he asked him outright. Mason sat down with the aging actor and explained what, or rather who, had made the difference in his life. The answer, he said, was Jesus Christ.
McQueen was intrigued. He had so much respect for Mason and his family that he began regularly attending Ventura Missionary Church with them. The pastor was Leonard Dewitt. DeWitt later recalled that the famous icon had sat quietly in the balcony without even introducing himself for several months. When he finally requested a meeting with the pastor, he began firing off questions about life and faith, one after another. After a couple of hours, he leaned back and said, “Well, that about covers it for me.” Dewitt said, “Steve, I just have one question for you.” McQueen flashed his signature grin. “You want to know if I’ve become a born-again Christian,” he preempted. Then “still smiling, but very serious,” he told DeWitt that one morning when the pastor had given the invitation, he felt convicted by the Spirit and came forward. “When you invited people to pray with you to receive Christ, I prayed. So yes, I’m a born-again Christian.”
Everybody around him could tell that he was changed. In Sammy Mason’s words, it was “dramatic.” He said, “I doubt that I have ever seen a man flourish with more spiritual reality in such a short time.” Another close Christian friend, John Daly, said that the star’s conversion had stunned him. But when Steve talked about his new-found faith, there was no denying the seriousness of his commitment. In Daly’s words, “I think I had more faith that my saw and hammer would have gotten converted before Steve, but I was hearing it from the horse’s mouth. I was blown away.” Under the discipleship of Mason and DeWitt, McQueen could often be found praying or poring over his Bible. Around that time, he heard Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me, Lord” and embraced the lyrics as his own testimony. He also shared his testimony with friend and former personal assistant Mario Iscovich, who a decade earlier had been forced to stand by and watch as the actor “lost himself” down the “dark, ugly road” of his sin. As Iscovich puts it, McQueen “felt he had hurt a lot of people” but had finally “made peace with God.”
Shortly afterwards, McQueen traveled to Chicago to shoot his last film, The Hunter. Although his health was continuing to deteriorate, he was actively reaching out to various people in need. (He had always been generous, especially to kids, but now it sprang from a desire to serve God instead of trying to “cancel out” wrongdoings only Christ crucified could pay for.) One of the film’s extras was a feisty 15-year-old girl...........”
Clint and Steve are pretty good actors; but, they don’t hold a candle to the elder Sean Conroy or even Robert Devall.
Well.
Bless You and thanks!
Steve’s Stearman BiPlane was reportedly at Gillespie field where I frequently hung out, Awesome WWII Era aircraft. Steve’s conversion was discussed in the Hangers’
There, Good Times.
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