Movies |
Wanted Dead or Alive
By
Published: Jan 01, 2005
Category:
Action and Adventure
The Essential Steve McQueen Collection
Wanted: Dead or Alive (Season One)
How cool was Steve McQueen?
There’s only one Right Answer.
Totally cool.
Consider his background. Abandoned by his father when he was six months old. Reform school. Marine. Drifter. Loner.
It doesn’t get better than that — in Hollywood, anyway.
Add his hobbies: Biker (who almost never used a stunt double). Martial-arts expert. Race-car driver. Pilot. Collector — he owned 210 motorcycles, 55 cars and 5 planes.
And the eccentricities: Although he was making millions as an actor, in a low budget motorcycle movie he worked as an uncredited stuntman. He would occasionally insist that producers give him quantities of electric razors and blue jeans. He never said what he did with the loot; in fact, he gave it to his “alma mater,” the Chino Reform School for boys.
And women. Hey, he was married to Ali MacGraw. That spells Real Man. No wonder he was the first male on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar.
And his philosophy: Tough guy. Loner. Principled to a fault. “I’d rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on Earth.”
And, finally, bad luck: In his late 40s, he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare lung cancer generally afflicting those who work with asbestos. As it happened, his car-racing suit had asbestos insulation. He died when he was just 50.
Had he lived, McQueen would now be 75. And so, in the usual commercial “celebration” of his life, his best work has been collected and boxed.
You have your choice — unless you’re a diehard fan, in which case, you need both — of two flavors: movies and television.
The Essential Collection of films is just that: “Bullitt,” “The Getaway,” “The Cincinnati Kid,” “Papillon” and “Tom Horn,” buttressed by five hours of fresh documentary material. This is not a McQueen bath, it’s an ocean.
I’m just starting to work my way through the films. For once, I’m looking at a career chronologically — I began with his TV series, which ran from 1958 to 1960.
“Wanted: Dead or Alive” is a wonderfully satisfying black-and-white 30-minute-per-episode Western, blissfully short on dialogue and long on what, in those days, passed for action. That is, McQueen is always getting captured, then turning the tables on some heartless gunman — but these reversals are blocked so clumsily and the bad guys are so stupid that you almost have to giggle.
No matter. All you care about his McQueen. His youth. His sincerity (when he collected his bounty, he gave half of it to charity). And that gun strapped to his leg — a Model 92 Winchester lever-action rifle with a modified stock and a sawed-off barrel. Talk about a phallic symbol!
I loved the nostalgia of an old-fashioned TV drama, with one plot, a handful of clearly defined characters and, if you’re lucky, one good woman as a bonus. I was a sucker for a hero who rode in alone and rode out the same way. And I particularly liked seeing the start of a career and knowing how it worked out.
At the peak, which was “The Towering Inferno,”McQueen was paid $14 million. That made him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood. That was justice — for most of his life, he was the biggest star in the world.
And totally cool.
To buy “The Essential Steve McQueen” (the movies) from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Wanted: Dead or Alive” from Amazon.com, click here.
