1930
March 24th
Terence Steve McQueen is born in Beech Grove, Indiana. His father abandons his mother when Steve is 6 months old. His mother, a teenage alcoholic prostitute, feels unable to raise him by herself and sends him to live on his great uncles farm.
1939
9 years old, Steve McQueen lives with his mother and her new husband. His stepfather beats him and a rebellious behavior pattern emerges.
1945
Aged 15, Steve is sent to a reform school called Boys Republic in Chino, California.
He stays there for 18 months, however, credits this with adjusting his attitudes on life enough to be successful more than anything else.
1946
Steve drops out of school in 9th grade, becomes a drifter, works on an oil rig in Texas and also works as a seaman.
1947
April
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Steve McQueen enlists in the United States Marine Corps for a period of 3 years.
"It was all very pleasant just lying in the sun and watching the girls go by, but one day I suddenly felt bored with hanging around and went and joined the Marines."
He was a tank driver with the Second Marine Division of the Fleet Marine Force.
Steve goes AWOL for 2 weeks and spends 41 days in the brig as punishment.
He spends the time assigned to a work detail in the hold of a ship, cleaning the engine room. The pipes are covered with asbestos linings, which the men rip out and replace. The air is so thick with asbestos particles that the men can hardly breathe...
He now has a reputation as a troublemaker, and is demoted from Private First Class to Private "about seven times".
However, things change.
During a training excercise in the Arctic, a transport ship strikes a sandbank and flings several tanks and their crews into the freezing water. Many Marines drown immediately, unable to get out of their tanks. Steve McQueen jumps into the Actic water and personally saves the lives of five Marines. For this act of heroism Steve McQueen was chosen to be part of the Honor Guard protecting Harry S. Truman's yacht.
1950-1955
Steve receives an Honorable Discharge from the USMC. He moves into an apartment in Greenwich Villiage. New York City and works as a salesman, a bartender, and a television repairman, among other jobs.
"For the first time in my life, I was really exposed to music, culture, a little kindness, a little sensitivity. It was a way of life where people talked out their problems instead of punching you."
Steve attends the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), but is expelled for riding his motorcycle through the College of Fine Arts building.
He is also introduced to Sanford Meisner, a notable drama coach by one of his girlfriends. Intrigued by a conversation with Meisner, he auditions and wins a bit part in a play. He enrolls in Meisner's Neighborhood Playhouse (tuition paid for by the GI Bill) and studies acting as much as he can.
He wants to hone his skills and applies for the prestigious Actors' Studio. 2,000 people apply but only 2 are accepted.
Steve McQueen and Martin Landau.
1956:
Steve is cast in his first movie. Originally hired as an extra in Somebody Up There Likes Me, the story of Rocky Graziano starring Paul Newman, McQueen is noticed by director Robert Wise, and given a small speaking role.
He is paid 19 dollars per day of work.
After Steve's work is finished on that movie, he moves to Hollywood, California to be with his girlfriend, an actress named Neile Adams is shooting a movie there.
1957
Steve marries Neile Adams. They soon have 2 children Chad and Terry Leslie McQueen
1958
Steve lands his first supporting role in a film playing a lawyer in the movie, Never Love a Stranger.
He stars in The Blob and is paid 3,000 dollars for his work in it.
He also lands a role in the TV show, Wanted Dead or Alive and, just as Rawhide had done for Clint Eastwood, the show makes him a star.
1959
Sammy Davis Jr. is offered a role in Never So Few, but he is kicked off before filming begins. A feud breaks out between Davis Jr and Frank Sinatra after he had claimed in a radio interview that he was a greater singer than Sinatra. Sinatra demanded he be dropped from the cast, and Steve McQueen is cast instead.
He is paid 75,000 dollars for his fee, more than 20 times the amount for his previous film.
1960
Steve is cast in the role of Vin in The Magnificent Seven. The movie is a Western remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. It's a breakthrough role for him and a solid movie.
He earns 100,000 for the movie.
Steve also is offered the lead in "Breakfast at Tiffany's", opposite Audrey Hepburn, but is unable to take the role as Wanted: Dead or Alive will not let him out of his contract early.
1962
He establishes The Steve McQueen Fund, which gives the best student of the Boys Republic School in Chino a four year scholarship.
His fame begins to grow and he gets a reputation for being demanding and tight-fisted. On the set he often raises eyebrows by demanding such perks as ten electric razors and dozens of pairs of extra jeans.
McQueen, it was later discovered, had made a habit of giving all of these items to the School.
He stars in "Hell Is For Heroes" and is paid $150,000. Steve plays a US Solider busted down the ranks and put on the front line in World War 2. It's pretty damn good and I recommend it.
1963
Steve plays Virgil "The Cooler King" Hilts in the movie The Great Escape. He is Pimp, as ever, and it's one of his more enjoyable movies.
He earns $400,000 dollars for the role and performs many of the motorcycle stunts in the movie himself (even donning a German Uniform to ride as one of them), though, it must be said that he was not allowed to do the most famous stunt in the movie, when Hiltz jumps over a barbed wire portion of the German line in Austria.
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Steve is the first major Hollywood actor to do all his own stunts or stunt driving, barring a few exceptions due to insurance reasons.
Steve announces that he is going to attend Dr. Martin Luther King's civil rights march and is added to Nixon's Emenies List as a result. In the end, McQueen had to forgo the march, but was constantly investigated and profiled by the FBI.
1964
He becomes a member of the US International 6-Day Trials Motorcycle Team. He is also ranked in the Top 10 for amateurs in desert racing.
1966
November
Steve McQueen reviews 6 dirt bikes for the Popular Science.
He stars in "The Sand Pebbles" and is paid $300,000.
Steve plays Jake Holman aboard the gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China
It is his most critically acclaimed role, garnering him an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
"I have to be careful because I'm a limited actor. I mean, my range isn't very great. There's a whole lot of stuff I can't do, so I have to find characters and situations that feel right. Even then, when I've got something that fits, it's a hell of a lot of work. I'm not a serious actor. There's something about my shaggy-dog eyes that makes people think I'm good. I'm not all that good."
1967
March 21st
Steve McQueen puts his hand prints in cement outside Mann?s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, California.
1968
Bullit is released. In it, Steve plays a hard boiled San Francisco Homocide Detective. The movie is shot entirely in San Francisco and uses actual locations versus movie sets. The highlight of the movie is a chase scene, which is still considered one of the best ever put to film.
Steve does all of the driving scenes in the movie, save for a jump that was shot with the industry?s best stunt driver (again, insurance reasons).
Steve drives a green 1968 Mustang Fastback, powered by a 390/4V V8. It was modified to keep up with the leading car, and also has a different front grill/stearing wheel.
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His foes drive a Black Dodge Charger 440 R/T
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The film grossed 45,000,000 in the first two years, almost ten times the production cost even with Steve's 1,000,000 dollar payday.
"We took a crappy script and made one helluva film."
Around this time Steve starts up a friendship with Bruce Lee, and is recognized as the highest paid actor of his time.
Steve Trains in Tae Kwan Do with 9th degree blackbelt Pat Johnson, but has no belts, since he doesn't want his expertise used against him should he ever be sued. According to Chuck Norris, Steve "possesses the skills and discipline of a third dan black belt."
Steve is offered the role of Sundance in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" opposite Paul Newman. By this time, Steve has been labeled 'The New Paul Newman" and he doesn't like it.
Both stars were quite famous at the time and neither wanted to have 2nd billing. The solution was that both names would be featured above the title, with the left name slightly lower than the right one.
Newman accepted this, as his name would be first, but Steve, not wanting to be second after Paul Newman, withdraws from the movie.
"I live for myself and I answer to nobody."
1969
June
Following the success of Bullit, every studio wanted to be in on the next Steve McQueen movie. Steve wanted to take a risk and make, what he called "a kind of definitive treatment of automotive competition. To put it bluntly, I wanted to make the best damn racing movie ever!"
Steve is invited to London for a tribute by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and manages to work in a side trip for himself and a Solar camera crew to the Le Mans 24 Hours. He returns to the US with 30,000 feet of film shot.
Despite the fact that there was no final script approved, Steve secures an agreement for CBS/Cinema Center Films to back the project to the tune of $6 million, the biggest budget for a McQueen picture to date.
August 8th
Steve is invited to a dinner at 10050 Cielo Drive in the Hollywood Hills by a friend, Jay Sebring. However, he unexpectedly meets a mysterious woman and he cancels the dinner appointment to stay with her.
The dinner is held at Roman Polanski's house for Sharon Tate (one of Steve's Ex-girlfriends) and it is on that particular night that the infamous Manson Family Tate-LaBianca murders take place.
Steve later learns that he was the top name on Charles Manson's celebrity death list, to be killed that night. Thereafter, he obtains a permit to carry a concealed weapon and carries a gun on him at all times.
1970
February
Steve buys a Porsche 908 and races it in the SCCA event at Holtville, Cal. He wins by a margin of almost one minute.
At Riverside, however, McQueen blows his gearbox in Turn One at about 150mph. "It was real nip-and-tuck there for a while and I didn?t know if I?d come out in one piece or not."
McQueen's wife, Neile, was in the grandstands at the time and witnessed the event. She was never a fan of Steve's racing and began to get ever more concearned as the cars got more powerful and even faster.
"What's Neile gonna say," friends ask McQueen, "when you take off for France to do a racing film?"
"I'll face that little problem when I come to it," answers McQueen.
Their marriage is not what one would call happy or stable.
He breaks his left foot during the Lake Elsinore Grand Prix, riding a Motocross Husky. He still manages to finish the race in the top 10.
March
With his foot in a cast, he races in the Sebring International Twelve Hour Endurance Race in Florida.
He, and his co-driver Peter Revson race a Porsche 908 Spyder. The car finishes 1st in it's class and 2nd overall, narrowly losing to a more powerful Ferrari driven by Mario Andretti.
Mario Andretti says "This is the closest race I've run and I'm lucky to have taken it." Steve McQueen now has a deep mutal respect with his competitors and says, "We never expected to do anything against all those bigger machines. We were just trying for a class win, not the overall. This is fantastic...just fantastic!"
Steve decides to enter the next Le Mans circuit as an official contestant. Executives at CBS, think of losing $6,000,000 invested in the Racing Movie if anything should happen to McQueen and he has to retract his application.
"I laid the whole package on the line for that one?my career, my money, my marriage, even my life. I went balls out on Le Mans."
Unfortunately, it fails.
Steve and his wife separate.
The movie goes over budget and Steve agrees to forfeit his 750,000 salary, any points on profits and creative control so that the movie can actually be made.
The IRS impose a 2,000,000 penalty for back taxes unpaid.
1971
August 23rd.
Steve McQueen is featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated, riding a motorcycle.
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1972
Steve is arrested for Drunk Driving in Ankorage, Alaska. He posts bail, leaves town and is later convicted of Reckless Driving in absentia.
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By this time, Steve is known as a womanizer, despite still being married. Allegedly, he sleeps with Ann-Margret, Judy Carne, Jacqueline Bisset, Mamie Van Doren, Sharon Tate and Faye Dunaway, among many others.
His most well known affair is with Ali McGraw, his costar in The Getaway. Ali is married to the film's producer, Robert Evans and Steve McQueen has an affair with her during the filming of the movie.
The Getaway is financial success and much better than that shitty ass baldwin remake.
April 26th
Steve divorces Neile Adams.
"I don't think Neile ever got the image of me hot-footing that 917 down Mulsanne at 200-plus out of her mind."
1973
July 30th
Steve McQueen is one of the pallbearer's at Bruce Lee?s Funeral. Their friendship had soured a little in the previous year, when Steve learned that Lee was paid $3 million to star in Enter The Dragon, compared to Steve's $2 Million for Papillon. Both men are remembered as fiercely competitive with one-another, but also had a mutal respect.
August 31st.
He marries Ali McGraw.
Papillon is released. He gives a strong and haunting performance as a French prisioner on Devil's Island.
He takes a paycut to get the movie made, and recieves $300,000.
1974
Steve appears in "The Towering Inferno". Paul Newman is also in the movie, and is billed only after Steve McQueen. Steve's name is first on the left and Newman's is on the right.
Steve is paid $1,500,000 plus 7.5% of the box office, a fee that totaled some $14,000,000.
He enters what can only be described as a dark period in his life. He grows his hair long, wears an unkept beard and adds 30 pounds to his 5 foot 6, 150 pound body. He is also thought to have been abusing cocaine, among other things and womanizing like a man possessed.
He is offered few roles that he wants to accept and will not shave his beard or cut his hair for those that he is interested in.
1977
Long Haired/Fully bearded Steve McQueen hair appears in a rendition of Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People."
Most of his fans don't recognize him and it is not a good film in any sense of the word.
1978
He divorces Ali McGraw
1979
Steve obtains a Private Pilots liscense from the FAA after learning to fly a STEARMAN BI-Plane.
1980
January, 16th.
He marries Barbara Minty.
Hunter is released. It is Steve McQueen's final film. He plays a bounty hunter, Ralph "Poppa" Thornson.
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Hunter is one of the best Steve McQueen movies and has some good action
July
Steve McQueen is diagnosed with mesothelioma lung cancer. The cancer is related to inhalation of Asbestos and thought to have been casued during exposure to the substance during his time in Marines. He is told that the cancer will not respond to any known treatment and that he has 2 months to live.
He tells his wife and children about this, and no one else.
August
Steve checks in to a Mexican clinic. He undergoes a torturous three month regimen involving animal cell injections, laetrile, and over 100 vitamin pills a day. Having lived longer than any doctor thought he would, his health is now seriously grave.
On November 7, 1980, Steve McQueen dies of a heart attack after undergoing an operation to remove a tumor from his abdomen.
An open Bible lay across his chest and Steve McQueen lay in death with a smile on his face.
In his will he leaves $200,000 to the Chino Boys School.
Among his possessions are 210 motorcyles, 55 cars, five airplanes, and over ten thousand miscellaneous items.
Most of these are auctioned off by his estate in a 1984 auction.
Steve McQueen makes 27 films in 22 years, though most of them really aren't that good. Still, he was the epitomy of cool and set the standard for masculinity that still is idolized today.
1983
The Steve McQueen Recreation Center is dedicated at the Chino Boy's School.
The plaque reads:
"Steve McQueen came here as a troubled boy but left here a man. He went on to achieve stardom in motion pictures but returned to this campus often to share of himself and his fortune. His legacy is hope and inspiration to those students here now, and those yet to come."
1986
June 12th
Steve McQueen is given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
2000
Ford releases a "Bullitt" version of the Mustang.
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