I never heard that about McQueen throwing tantrums on the set of The Great Escape, but I wouldn’t be surprised. As cool as this dude was, he really seemed to have an ego and clashed with a lot of people if he wasn’t “the man” in his movies. He didn’t seem to do well with other big names in the movies.
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The more I think about it, the more it seems that The Great Escape is where McQueen was the most combative; in addition to his concerns about the Garner character, McQueen felt that his character didn't get enough to do. His famous motorcycle jump(performed by another guy) was added to deal with that.
McQueen is pretty much my favorite star of the sixties/early seventies, and I know he has some fans around here who might protest, but word is that due to very troubled childhood and youth, with pretty much no parenting, he was very moody and paranoid as a star. One insider on the Great Escape said, "McQueen was the male Marilyn Monroe" with regard to emotional instability mixed with great stardom. After he hit big bucks with The Towering Inferno in 1974, he pretty much took the rest of the 70's off and became a "recluse in Malibu," but word is that one thing he did there was to raise his two kids(with stepmother Ali MacGraw) to give them the parenting he never had.(And oh, he did ONE movie...the very serious prestige drama Enemy of the People, which nobody hardly saw.)
So sad: McQueen takes most of the 70's off, but comes back in 1980 with two back to back "smallish movies": Tom Horn(a Western) and The Hunter(modern day bounty hunter). They weren't big hits, but "McQueen was back" and-- he died at the end of the same year. He'd been gone so long, and ...we lost him. But his kids had him in his last decade.
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
I did know he clashed with Paul Newman over top billing in The Towering Inferno, and if you see the opening credits for that film, they put both actors’ names on the screen at the same time, and they Put McQueen’s name first on the screen, but they put Newman’s name higher on the screen. So McQueen’s name was low and to the left, and Paul Newman’s name was high and to the right. Haha.
People apparently really took top billing seriously back in the day.
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Some of them did. In fact, Steve McQueen was almost the Sundance Kid to Paul Newman's Butch in THAT famous movie....but....Newman was attached to the movie first and had top billing. McQueen said he would do the movie if Newman gave McQueen first billing. Newman(to his agent) said "I was here first...NO." And Robert Redford became a star.
So they solved the billing problem with The Towering Inferno -- McQueen left and lower, Newman right and higher(I still think that gives McQueen FIRST billing.) But I also think this: maybe Newman and/or McQueen were nervous about sharing the screen all the time in Butch Cassidy, being "paired." In The Towering Inferno, the men only share about three scenes; the rest of the time they are kept apart and talking to each other on the phone. This rather allowed them to star in two movies at the same time, one for each star.
This, too about The Towering Inferno billing: there are actually FOUR stars over the title, organized carefully -- McQueen and Newman(like we said); then William Holden(a major star of the 50s) a bit lower than McQueen AND Newman, then Faye Dunaway(THE female star of the 70's other than Streisand; she was in everything) lower than Holden. You look at the billing and its like a slow moving collapse-avalanche!
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ecarle (14979)
5 years ago
By the way, trouble with billing goes back earlier than Butch Cassidy: Humphrey Bogart and Spencer Tracy were to star together in "The Desperate Hours"(1955) with Bogart as the escaped convict who takes over Tracy's suburban home in a home invasion.
Bogart and Tracy could never agree on who got top billing and the Newman/McQueen version wasn't thought about. Tracy dropped out; Fredric March took the role and second billing.
Which reminds me: Spencer Tracy was asked why he never did "ladies first" and gave Kate Hepburn top billing their movies: "This is a movie, chowderhead," Tracy replied, "not a lifeboat."
And in 1967, top star Sidney Poitier was willing to take second billing to Tracy in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," but NOT third after Kate Hepburn. She got the third billing.
Ya see...billing IS important.
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