Why was he so popular?
I don't think he's good looking. Just average looking. So was his acting incredible or something?
shareReal men were popular once.
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MovieChat Forums > Steve McQueen Discussion > Why was he so popular?
So you think it's all about looks?
Steve McQueen had a great deal of charisma and attitude. In most respects he's considered the "king of cool" but he was subtle about it. It was an innate part of him.
Women found him full of sexual magnetism and men wanted to be like him.
Have you ever seen The Great Escape or Bullitt or The Cincinnati Kid?
How about the original The Magnificent Seven or the original The Getaway?
They're just the tip of the iceberg but anything he was in was better by his being in it.
He had presence.
Yes I saw the great escape. But old movies generally play at 3am here, so I don't get to see his stuff.
shareI have a million different ways to watch films...I never go the "what's playing" route.
I even saw a few of his on some of the free streaming sites like Tubl or Pluto or Popcornflix.
Then why is your name intothenight? If you don't see why he was so popular, nothing we can say will help you.
shareHe was a good, interesting actor with a distinctive style. He was extremely charismatic. He was good looking. He was the incarnation of cool. He had great chemistry with both female and male costars. His characters were intelligent. Even in his twenties and thirties, he was a grownup, a man, not an aging teenager. He raced motorcycles and cars. I guess that's about it. Pretty average.
shareHe was good looking and a man's man.
shareHe sort of had beady eyes.
shareI was around in his "heyday" (the 60s and early 70s), and McQueen was one of a handful of movie actors who reached "superstar level." He did it with a handful of films, with these landmarks along the way:
1960: The Magnificent Seven
1963 The Great Escape (same director and some of the same cast as The Mag 7)
1965: The Cincinnati Kid(surrounded by an all star cast including Edward G. Robinson and two hot babes -- Ann Margret and Tuesday Weld.)
1966: Nevada Smith -- A very violent and sexual Western for its time, with the character "spun off" from the hit sex soap opera, The Carpetbaggers.)
And then McQueen "made his move up." These three in a row:
1966: The Sand Pebbles: a huge war epic, set in China, big, expensive "prestige" -- sad at the end -- and McQueen got his only Best Actor Oscar nomination for this. It was also a big hit -- director Robert Wise's "manly" follow up to his "chick musical," The Sound of Music.
And then a 'two-fer" in 1968:
Early in the year: "The Thomas Crown Affair," a stylish but rather dull caper movie that nonetheless hit big on a key gimmick: "working class and blue jeans Steve McQueen" wore three piece suits as a wealthy, Ivy League educated millionaire who sets up bank robberies for the thrill and fun of it. McQueen lobbied hard for the career change, and it paid off(with sexy Faye Dunaway, hot off of Bonnie and Clyde, as his co-star.)
Late in the year: "Bullitt." THAT one did it. Not only did it have a historic car chase (no process screens) but McQueen dominated the movie -- and its iconic poster -- with his iconic cool. This was an era when most major movies were dramas and action movies were "B" -- McQueen and that car chase turned action into something very BIG. The movie ran from late 1968 well into 1969, sometimes at the same theater for months. McQueen here "caught up" to his rival Paul Newman as a major star.
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But what to do with that stardom?
In late 1969, The Reivers was released. The poster showed McQueen's face -- it FILLED the poster. HE was the reason for the movie -- this was well before the time that special effects and Marvel comics ruled the screen. A movie star could still be THE reason to see the movie. This was a light-hearted period piece set in the South of the early 1900's; it had a dollop of sex and a dollop of violence but was really quite warm in the "To Kill a Mockingbird" tradition(the "nice" part of that movie.) Not much of a hit though -- McQueen's superstardom got a little wobbly as the 70's came in.
The "wobbly" period included a vanity project about racing ("LeMans") that nobody saw and a mighty fine non-violent Sam Peckinpah movie about a rodeo rider and his family ("Junior Bonner") that nobody saw -- except me, on its release, at drive-in in the summer of 1972(before "summer blockbusters" became the order of the day.)
Then commenced McQueen's "final run of 70's hits," one Christmas at a time:
Christmas 1972: The Getaway(a VIOLENT Peckinpah action movie with Ali MacGraw fresh off of Love Story.)
Christmas 1973: Papillon (a rather dull prison adventure , but from a bestseller, with Dustin Hoffman as a superstar co-star.)
Christmas 1974: The Towering Inferno -- the classiest, and maybe the best -- of disaster movies with McQueen and Newman finally sharing the screen as equals.
Perhaps McQueen knew that his three big 70's hits were "shared" with starry co-stars: MacGraw, Hoffman and especially Newman. Still, he dominated all these movies with his quiet macho charisma.
And he "cashed in and semi retired." After scoring off of Inferno, McQueen pretty much took the rest of the 70's off.He made no movies in 1975, 1976, 1978, or 1979. The one movie he DID make, in 1977 (Enemy of the People) was an obscure art film(from an Ibsen play) that got little release.
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THIS made McQueen even MORE legendary. "The reclusive star who would not come out of retirement." He was offered roles in Close Encounters, Apocalypse Now, and Sorcerer. He turned those down. He ALMOST got the big Robert Redford role in the all-star A Bridge Too Far, but stalled too long and Redford got it. (Distributors DEMANDED either Redford or McQueen in that part -- the biggest two stars of the day and McQueen wasn't even working.)
Then came the anti-climactic finale. Out of nowhere, McQueen returned with two 1980 releases -- the Western Tom Horn and the modern day action movie The Hunter. Neither film was as good as McQueen's former great ones, and folks wondered: had McQueen been away too long? Could he come back?
He never got the chance. He died in the same year that he released those two underperforming movies. Cancer. Pretty damn young at 50. Which made him still MORE of a legend. Men born the same year as him -- Eastwood, Connery, Hackman...kept going for decades.
To the question: "Why isn't he remembered anymore?" ...the answer is: new generations have no sense of movie history past and, frankly, most of McQueen's movies would be considered too small, slow and dramatic now.
But he WAS remembered then. McQueen was a top star and in that weird way of Hollywood, became BIGGER when he retired and withdrew. And then yet still BIGGER when he died young.
Actors of the time like James Coburn, Rod Taylor, George Peppard, and even James Garner couldn't reach McQueen's level. Only Newman and Connery really were up that high at the time. McQueen made a name for himself and set a price for himself and was bigger than anyone when he was on top.
So maybe not well remembered NOW, but VERY major and worshipped THEN.
He was good at what he did.
shareHaving an "everyday man" quality is something in Hollywood too. Look at Tom Hanks, the best thing about Tom Hanks is that he isn't Tom Hanks when he acts. I feel the same about Harrison Ford and Gary Sinise.
shareI've seen him a lot lately with Wanted Dead Or Alive. He's rather slightly built, as compared to a lot of other Western stars. Maybe he and Robert Fuller should have gone toe-to-toe. And his character Josh Randall can be a little comic. He's often put in a silly situation that he's perplexed how he got there, like the time he had to find a lost sheep, Baa-Baa. He's in a saloon and everyone knows his current job and they all laugh at him. He also has an unusual side arm, a sawed off rifle held in a holster. But he was a quick draw and got himself out of scrapes. Not a big star then, but the show is all his.
shareI think that looks are only part of the package. He died when I was a kid, so I didn't really see what he was like as a human being, but there is something magnetic about his characters. He was just cool.
That being said, it might be just that I'm getting older and looks aren't important to me, but there aren't really a lot of actors that I think are super attractive. I think that I see people every day that are just as attractive in the looks department. It's more about the charisma, or how these "stars" sell themselves.