providing me with the will required to finish when I didn’t think I could.
Thank you to Bob and Susan Bishop for allowing me to use their ex-Steve McQueen and Von Dutch Brough Superior SS80 motorcycle for my author portrait and the support with my automotive endeavors over the years.
Thank you to my friend Kevin Mackay. He’s been called the “Mr. October of Corvettes” by Reggie Jackson himself. With the help he’s provided me on this project I have to say that when it comes to Corvettes and 1960s era endurance racing, Kevin truly is the King of Cool.
Thank you to Franz Estreicher, owner of the 1966 Corvette used in Steve McQueen’s Sports Illustrated sports car shootout, which he also owned for some time after. Hearing Franz discuss the research and documentation on the car and his inside knowledge of behind-closed-doors activities in Detroit in that era motivated me even further to do justice to this topic.
Last but not least, thank you to the team at CarTech Books for making this project happen and especially to my editor, Wes Eisenschenk. This was a tough project; thank you for seeing it through to the end with me and for the opportunity to swim around in the world of American icon Steve McQueen.
Introduction
Few people, if any, really knew the man known to the world as Steve McQueen. He lived one of the fullest lives of any man to walk the earth, and yet, he was an enigma to even his closest friends and family. He compartmentalized his worlds and friend groups in such a way that no one person truly saw all sides of him.
Steve McQueen competed for roles and screen time with the best actors of his time including Yul Brynner, Paul Newman, and Frank Sinatra. Meanwhile, he held his own against the legendary Mario Andretti in one of the world’s toughest races, losing by only seconds in a significantly slower car. He rose to the top of Hollywood, and came crashing down with the financial failure of his magnum opus, Le Mans. Over the years, he built up one of the largest and most valuable collections of cars and motorcycles of the time, the contents of which today fetch several times the sale price of an identical vehicle without the Steve McQueen provenance. Toward the end of his life, when wheeled transportation couldn’t get him to where he wanted to go, McQueen earned a pilot’s license and took to the sky.
It seems as if every new biography written about Steve McQueen paints a different picture and brings in previously unknown perspectives, not all of them flattering. This collection of 1,001 Steve McQueen facts is less about breaking new ground or revealing scandalous information as it is a culmination of the life of a man who meant so much to so many people around the globe and still means so much today. Broken down into five categories: personal life, movie facts, movie automobile facts, automobile collection, and racing, this book contains everything that a Steve McQueen fan could ever want to know about his or her hero.
He died at the young age of 50 leaving behind two children, a widow, and grieving fans all over the world. He also left behind a legacy so great that even today, nearly 40 years after his death, his name is still used in daily conversation. His likeness appears in ads selling cars faster and more technologically advanced than anything of which he ever could have dreamt. His films, namely Bullitt and Le Mans, are still regularly watched and enjoyed by viewers who may not have even been born when the films were released.
1001 Steve McQueen Facts: The Roles, Rides, & Realities of the King of Cool is a tribute to the man Steve McQueen was and the legend he remains today.
PERSONAL LIFE
1. Steve McQueen was named by his father, supposedly after a one-armed bookie friend named Steve Hall. McQueen commented later in life on his father’s weird sense of humor, saying that his namesake was one of the few things he actually did know about himself.
2. Both sides of McQueen’s family can trace their American heritage to before the Revolutionary War. His first relative in the New World was Dugal McQueen, who arrived in Baltimore on August 20, 1716, as a prisoner of war held by England and became an indentured servant for seven years. On his mother’s side, Samuel Thomson arrived in Virginia in 1717. Both sides of Steve’s family originated in Scotland.
3. Just about every war in American history saw a Steve McQueen ancestor fight, including the Revolutionary War.
4. Steve McQueen became known in the film industry as a fighter when it came to getting what was best for him and his career. He likely received this trait from his uncle Claude Thomson, who virtually raised him as a young boy. Claude was a shrewd and disciplined hog farmer with a tough business acumen. He even pushed his siblings out of their family farm inheritance. Although this sounds terrible, it was because he was the primary person doing all the farming.
5. Uncle Claude was rumored to feed coal to his hogs before taking them to market. Since hogs were sold by the pound, the added weight fetched him more money. Steve definitely learned how to stretch a buck.
6. Steve McQueen’s first address was 1311 North Drexel Avenue in Beech Grove, Indiana, following his birth on March 24, 1930. His mother, Julia Ann “Julian” Crawford, was living there at the time with her parents, Lillian and Victor, after moving from Indianapolis. Terrence Steven McQueen is recorded as living there at the time of the 1930 U.S. Census.
7. Although McQueen’s mother is listed as Julian McQueen on his birth certificate and several other documents, there’s no evidence that she and his father, William McQueen, were ever legally married. It has been suggested that because of Julian’s Catholic upbringing, a wedding likely occurred as a religious ceremony that was never registered with any government office. When Steve was born, Julian was 19 and William was 23, and the Great Depression had set in just a few months prior.
8. With the Great Depression in full swing, and a young boy to care for, the Crawford family moved to Slater to live with Lillian’s brother, Claude, on the family ranch. The town of Slater, Missouri, which now has a population of 2,000 residents, celebrates Steve McQueen as its most famous resident in a variety of ways. For example, on Saturday, April 24, 2010, the town dedicated the Steve McQueen Memorial Highway in his honor.
9. When Steve became old enough to help out on the family farm, his uncle Claude took on the role of his first real father figure. Although he dished out harsh discipline to the young boy, it was always fair. Steve had to earn everything through hard work, a principle that stuck with him throughout his life. It was through his farm work that he learned to ride a horse, which he did in several films, most notably in Tom Horn.
10. Steve McQueen was known as a cultivated collector of firearms and often carried one with him. He first learned to shoot when he was 8 years old and Uncle Claude let him use a rifle to go hunting in the woods. The catch: he was only given one bullet. He’d have to set up his shot perfectly to hit his target; otherwise, he’d walk home empty-handed. One day, he came back to the farmhouse carrying two dead pigeons. Steve told Uncle Claude that he waited to line up the perfect shot to get both at the same time. Claude was so impressed that he bragged to everyone in the town. In reality, Steve had snuck into a neighbor’s silo, shot one pigeon, and the round bounced off the wall and hit another. He never told his uncle what actually happened.
11. Julian McQueen was away for most of Steve’s time in Slater, Missouri, but she returned sometime in 1936 or 1937 to take her boy to Los Angeles, where she had met someone. As they were leaving, Claude handed Steve a gold pocket watch and told him that he wanted him to have it to remember him by. The inscription inside the pocket watch read, “To Steve—who has been like a son to me.”
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