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Warner Bros. today will launch a service giving the public the opportunity to custom-order DVDs of films never before released via the medium. The move is seen as a response to dwindling DVD sales and also to customer demand for titles that while not totally obscure, didn't necessarily generate enough heat to merit a full-on DVD release. The Warner Archive Collection, available at WarnerArchive.com, includes films dating back to the silent age and for $19.95 per disc Warners will burn, package and ship for receipt within an estimated five days. Currently there are 150 titles available with for a total...

Something you won’t hear or read about as McQueen enters a chic status among the Beautiful Poseurs that would’ve revolted him, is that he was a true iconoclast: a born-again Christian and conservative Republican who backed the Vietnam War. Keep in mind this was during the 60s and 70s when his generation of Hollywood was as liberal and hyper-politicized as today’s generation, only talented.

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: 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 riders. In...

'The Great Escape' superstar spent his last year there. Neighbors remember him as a generous man who enjoyed quiet respect and cheap beer.One day in 1979 the King of Cool decided to fly. Before anyone knew it, Steve McQueen was living with his girlfriend in a hangar at the Santa Paula Airport. During the day, he learned to pilot a World War II-era biplane. In the evening, the tough-guy superstar would crack open cold beers with grease monkeys, fledgling pilots and aging flyboys who still had a few loop-de-loops left in them. He and his girlfriend, a stunning model who...

BACK IN THE HEYDAY OF THE TELEVISION WESTERN, the 1950s and 1960s, there were more horse operas than any other type of show on the air, and many, like Wanted Dead or Alive, managed to tell a credible story in only 30 minutes, and do it in black and white with just a few commercial interruptions. The first episode was actually a spin-off from the hit western "Trackdown" starring Robert Culp as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman. That episode, titled "The Bounty Hunter," ( this episode has also been listed as "The Bounty Man" ) introduced Steve McQueen as Josh...

SPIRITED BIDDING | Classic car was gift from actor's first wife MONTEREY, Calif. -- A classic Ferrari once owned by Steve McQueen sold for $2.31 million Thursday night at auction. An anonymous car collector who placed a bid by phone bought the 1963 Ferrari Berlinetta Lusso during an auction that drew 800 people to the Monterey Jet Center and attracted spirited bidding, said Christie's spokesman Rik Pike. The sale price was greater than the estimated pre-sale price of $800,000 to $1.2 million, Pike said. ''I couldn't be happier for the car and the legacy of Steve McQueen,'' seller Mike Regalia,...

This is a poll at the Michael Silence blog. Poll For Motor Maniacs

Steve McQueen's Ferrari up for auction By Caroline Valetkevitch Apr 27, 2007 NEW YORK (Reuters) - A 1963 Ferrari once owned and driven by the late film star Steve McQueen is expected to fetch between $800,000 and $1.2 million at an auction in August, Christie's said. Christie's unveiled the car on Friday: a Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso with a medium-brown metallic paint and beige leather interior. McQueen, nicknamed "The King of Cool" for his portrayals of nonchalant, in-control heroes in such films as "The Great Escape," about a mass escape from a World War Two POW camp, was a...

The cartoon depicting the Great Escape was drawn ten days after the breakout from Stalag Luft III Prison camp art that escaped guardsBy Jack Malvern PoW's scrapbook of the Great Ecape is to be auctioned A CARTOON of the prison break depicted in the film The Great Escape has emerged in a prisoner’s war diary. The cartoon — drawn ten days after the event and accompanied by a poem lamenting the shooting of 50 of the escapees — appears in a scrapbook that belonged to Clive Nutting, a prisoner who was involved in the two most celebrated escapes of...

McQueen's Motorcycle Jonathan Fairbanks for Artfact An already rare object combined with a celebrity provenance is usually a recipe for a successful auction. San Francisco-based Bonhams & Butterfields recent offering of one of 1960s film star Steve McQueen's former bikes was no exception as it raced past its pre-sale estimate selling for $47,000, or 47% above the high-end of the estimate. The Matchstick Silver Hawk first came off the assembly lines in 1931 as a replacement of the Silver Arrow line, and it would ultimately last for only four years. This particular motorcycle was part of the 1933 line and...

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,...

Archivists are about to unseal a mother lode of military history along Page Avenue in Overland. A ceremony Saturday at the National Personnel Records Center will mark the opening of military files that until now have been off-limits to most Americans. Among the gems: * Gen. Dwight Eisenhower's rating in mid-1944 of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. The report closes with these words on Patton: "A brilliant fighter and leader. Impulsive and quick-tempered. Likely to speak in public in an ill-considered fashion." * Gen. Omar Bradley's radiogram in 1951 to Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Tokyo, in which Bradley quotes...

Psychedelic-guitar man Jimi Hendrix, soul singer Marvin Gaye, Desi "Ricky Ricardo" Arnaz and actor Steve McQueen, newsman Edward R. Murrow, "Dragnet" detective Jack Webb -- military veterans all. Who knew? The nation now will be afforded some unique insight into these former servicemen and 144 other "persons of exceptional prominence" who served in the military. For the first time, their official service records will be opened to the public, the National Archives & Records Administration announced yesterday. The records of 1.2 million enlisted men and women who served in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps from 1885 to 1935 also...