Steve McQueen

by Greg Laurie

  Mom was a quiet eater, but she had other ways of pushing Eddie’s buttons, especially when she was drinking. It wasn’t at all unusual for me to get up in the morning and find the living room looking like a battle zone, broken dishes and furniture strewn all over the place. Once the front plateglass window was shattered.

  What I discovered another time was much worse—my mom, unconscious, lying in a pool of blood. Eddie, in one of his rages, had beaten her mercilessly, within an inch of her life. When I ran to her, Eddie yelled at me to get back to my room. I did but instead slipped out the window, ran to a neighbor’s house, and called the police.

  In a rare flash of lucidity, Mom realized that staying with Eddie could be fatal for both of us, so we got out of there and hightailed it to California. Mom had found sanctuary in another man’s arms.

  And apparently in May 1943, Julian McQueen had one of those same flashes of rationality as my mom had and finally separated from Hal Berri. A divorce soon followed. Julian went to work as a draftsperson to support herself and her son, but Steve showed no sense of responsibility or obligation himself and continued to roam the streets, getting into trouble.

  When he ended up in court again, the judge said the place for him was a school for adolescents with behavioral and emotional problems called Boys Republic, in Chino. Julian signed the remand papers. At the time McQueen considered it the ultimate abandonment by both his mother and society. That mind-set would later change dramatically.

  TWO SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

  _____

  Steve McQueen and I were about the same age when our mothers sent us away. He went to Boys Republic; I went to a military school called Southern California Military Academy.

  My mother enrolled me in SCMA in 1962. It was quite a year. John F. Kennedy was president. Johnny Carson was taking over from Jack Paar as host of The Tonight Show. Lawrence of Arabia was filling the big screen, and Sean Connery made his debut as James Bond in the first 007 spy film, Dr. No. Elvis was singing about his little “Good Luck Charm,” and the Beach Boys went on a “Surfin’ Safari.” It was also the year that Marilyn Monroe died of a barbiturate overdose and was gone like a “Candle in the Wind.” Most frightening of all, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted, bringing America as close to a nuclear war as it has ever come.

  SCMA was located on Signal Hill in Long Beach. At its entrance sat military armaments dating back to World War I. Cadets were issued uniforms and taught a whole new way of life. Every man was “sir,” every woman “ma’am.” Cadets caught using inappropriate language had their mouths washed out with soap. I still remember the taste. Those guilty of more serious infractions were spanked with a wooden “cheese paddle” that had large holes in it to increase the pain. I quickly realized the futility of disrespecting authority figures. So, willingly or not, I fell in line.

  Founded in 1907 as a nonprofit institution, Boys Republic provided counseling, education, and training to teenagers referred by the California Youth Authority and, as in McQueen’s case, juvenile court judges.

  We stayed in barracks with a housemother keeping close watch over us. It was unnerving. So was the SCMA commandant, a longtime military man called “The General” who’d lost an arm in combat duty and kept the empty sleeve of his uniform coat pinned up at the shoulder so it wouldn’t flap in the breeze. We had to be very careful how we saluted him.

  The boot camp-style regimentation made me feel like I was doing a stretch in the big house. I missed my mom terribly. But I gradually came to realize I was safer there with the kind of vigilant adult supervision and clear boundaries I never got at home.

  The same thing happened to Steve McQueen at Boys Republic.

  Founded in 1907 as a nonprofit institution, Boys Republic provided counseling, education, and training to teenagers referred by the California Youth Authority and, as in McQueen’s case, juvenile court judges.

  The main campus is a 211-acre farm where, still today, students live in cottages housing about twenty-five boys each. It’s a vast community unto itself where kids work at a variety of jobs and even have their own government and justice system. It’s a reform school in the best sense of the word.

  McQueen arrived there on February 6, 1945, and was assigned to a cottage with other boys ages 14–18. Each cottage was presided over by a housemother who closely supervised the boys. Daily reveille was at 5:30 a.m., followed by chores and then school.

  But over time he adjusted to —and even thrived on—the structure and discipline, and for the rest of his life McQueen looked back on his eighteen-month stint at Boys Republic as the turning point in his life and never forgot what the school did for him.

  At first Steve kept to himself and opted not to participate in group activities at his cottage. Students whose cottages ran smoothly were rewarded with monthly outings, and more than once McQueen’s contrariness and bad attitude ruined things for the others. When the housemother wasn’t around, they paid him back with beatings.

  “I got my lumps,” recalled McQueen later on, “no doubt about it.”

  But over time he adjusted to—and even thrived on—the structure and discipline, and for the rest of his life McQueen looked back on his eighteen-month stint at Boys Republic as the turning point in his life and never forgot what the school did for him.

  Max Scott started out at Boys Republic in 1965 and became executive director in 1976. I met with him on the property one day, early in my process of fact-finding but before taking off on my two cross-country road trips. He told me that McQueen faithfully visited the facility in Chino twice a year throughout adulthood until the onset of his fatal illness. “He would call and ask if he could come on a specific day,” recalls Max, “but since he never stopped by my office, I rarely met him. Instead, he went straight to the cottage, to the very room he was assigned to at the school. On one occasion in late August, he and [wife] Ali MacGraw [we’ll meet her later] sat on the floor of the room which was jammed with students, while the temperature hovered close to a hundred degrees.”

  McQueen enjoyed shooting pool with students in the Activity Center and answering questions about his stay at Boys Republic.

  Invariably, says Max, “Steve would turn the attention back to the boys, asking what they were currently doing and if they were making the experience a positive one in terms of their futures.

  “One time,” Max remembers, “McQueen went to the shop where students made Native American-style turquoise bracelets and purchased over a thousand dollars’ worth.”

  Every Boys Republic student who wrote a letter to McQueen received a response from him, and Max recalls McQueen frequently asking him for information about a student who’d written so he could refer to it in his personal reply. “He showed uncommon interest in and sincere concern for each individual,” says Max.

  While Max and I are talking, he says he knows a couple of Boys Republic alums who were there with McQueen in the mid-’40s. Would I like their phone numbers?

  Would I like a full head of hair? Almost as much.

  Retired businessmen Arden Miller and Robert McNamara consented to meet me on an agreed-upon date that week at Boys Republic, a forty-five-minute drive from my house. At noon we converge at the Howard Replica II 1885 Street Clock outside the Margaret Fowler Memorial Auditorium.

  Each man shakes my hand heartily, and it’s apparent they’re happy to be back at the place that had such an impact on their lives, to share their stories and talk about the classmate who went on to movie and pop culture stardom (something none of them would have predicted back then).

  We walk to the site of John Brewer Dormitory, where they and McQueen were billeted, each at different times. Built in 1912, the cottage was demolished some time ago.

  Once a couple students who’d ticked McQueen off found their rooms ransacked, and Arden remembers Steve snickering afterward, “They’ll never mess with me again.”

  Each cottage, I’m told, had a living room or common area where the boys relaxed, played games, and listened to
records under the supervision of their housemother. She also planned games and activities, read aloud, mended clothes, darned socks, and served as an overall guide, philosopher, and friend, keeping a motherly eye on the young men.

  At least this is what the brochure boasts.

  “Yes, there were housemothers,” Robert says, “but they didn’t watch over us. They just made sure we were there, and often they weren’t very successful at it.”

  (My housemother at SCMA was an old harpy I’ll call “Mrs. Jones,” who had the warmth of a great white shark. If she ever cracked a smile, it was while meting out punishment, the only thing that seemed to give her pleasure. She also had very bad breath. Maybe if she’d washed her mouth out with soap as many times as she did ours . . . .)

  Robert says he came to Boys Republic in early 1946, after his stepfather, a research chemist for Shell Oil, went to Holland to help reconstruct a refinery the Nazis destroyed. Bob’s mother accompanied his stepdad overseas, while they sent their son to Boys Republic. “They decided I could use a little discipline because I was a handful.”

  “Steve had the aura of a loner, and no one liked him in school,” Robert says. “His body language spoke volumes: Don’t mess with me.”

  Arden Miller’s road to Boys Republic started behind the wheel of his father’s Buick, which Arden took out for a joyride one day. A cop pulled him over and asked to see his driver’s license.

  “What’s a driver’s license?” fourteen-year-old Arden asked.

  A judge sentenced him to Boys Republic until he graduated from high school. He arrived there in January 1946. By then Steve McQueen had been there almost a year.

  “He wasn’t big or athletic but was tough as nails,” Arden recalls. “If anyone messed with him or did something he didn’t like, he was going to find a way to get back at them.”

  Once a couple students who’d ticked McQueen off found their rooms ransacked, and Arden remembers Steve snickering afterward, “They’ll never mess with me again.” He also recalls when Steve took on the entire Boys Republic student court. Comprised of a judge, jury, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, the court met every Monday night to hear and adjudicate cases. When a case involving McQueen was decided against him, he yelled out, “I’ll get back at ya!”

  “He made good on his promise, too,” Arden says with a laugh. “He’d find a way to get back at the judge, jury, and the two attorneys involved. He’d ransack their rooms, turn over their beds, put shaving cream in their shoes. He was a real piece of work.”

  Robert remembers entering the Brewer dorm for the first time, dropping his belongings on the floor, then turning and looked into the piercing blue eyes of another resident regarding him with extreme wariness.

  “Steve had the aura of a loner, and no one liked him in school,” Robert says. “His body language spoke volumes: Don’t mess with me. He was hardened, cut off emotionally and guarded, just like me. We never had what I would call a friendship.”

  In retrospect, says Robert, he and McQueen were probably too much alike to be drawn to one another. “Steve was mentally and emotionally in pain, and you can tell that through his acting.” Robert should know. He did some film work of his own in the ’60s and once worked in a picture with Clint Eastwood. “His independence and anger were for real, I wanna tell you. He was exactly the same way he was in Boys Republic. Same exact way.”

  In a display case sits a photograph of the 1946 Boys Republic baseball team. McQueen is in the top row, McNamara down in front.

  “Steve wasn’t a team sport player,” says Robert. “He wasn’t a starter, and I don’t think he really cared. There’s that famous scene of him in The Great Escape throwing the ball against the wall in solitary confinement, but that was only a cinematic feature. Steve wasn’t a star player.”

  Robert says the baseball field and cow pasture are the only places unchanged at Boys Republic since the days he was there. “You were on somebody’s short list if you were milking cows,” he says, “and I was always on somebody’s short list until I became a very good baseball player. Then I got a nice, cushy job taking care of the ball field. I mowed the grass, limed the field, dusted off the bases, did everything.”

  After a moment’s silence, Robert adds, “Steve milked cows the whole time I knew him.”

  Though not exactly pals, McNamara and McQueen occasionally sneaked under a bridge to share smokes. One night they even tried a “Great Escape” from Boys Republic, though not together. Typically, McQueen ran away alone; McNamara went with three other boys. “I was apprehended in Long Beach, about forty miles away, while Steve was found underneath the bridge where we used to smoke,” Robert says.

  Students were also required to attend chapel services on Sundays. I wonder what McQueen thought as he sat there. Probably what most adolescents think about squirming in a place they don’t want to be. Only darker, given the circumstances.

  Their punishment was swift and painful, he recalls with a wince. “What happened to anyone who ran away was, they would get beat with a long, thick wooden paddle that had holes in the business end. I got about ten of those and my behind looked like a waffle for a couple of days.”

  Ah, the dreaded “cheese paddle.” I knew it well—and got a taste of the “board of education” more than a few times while in military school.

  Life at Boys Republic wasn’t bucolic, says Arden Miller. It was, after all, a reform school. “We’d get up early in the morning to milk cows, eat breakfast, go to class all day, then milk cows again,” he recalls. “No TV to watch or anything.”

  Students were also required to attend chapel services on Sundays. I wonder what McQueen thought as he sat there. Probably what most adolescents think about squirming in a place they don’t want to be. Only darker, given the circumstances.

  The chapel services I was forced to sit through at SCMA didn’t make much of an impression on me either, except when we sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the musical Carousel. That always bucked me up. Whenever I felt blue, I’d sing the song to myself and feel better—though I would’ve appreciated it better, I think, if the song had more hope than getting to the end of a storm and finding “the sweet silver song of the lark.” I felt pretty sure I’d always be walking alone, no matter what the song said. I’m sure Steve did too.

  As we get ready to say good-bye, Robert says he isn’t surprised McQueen came to view his stint at Boys Republic with great affection. “It was the first time he came into contact with people like himself. It was the first real home he ever had, and I can understand why he became so nostalgic about the place. It was his religion.”

  Then Robert tells me what happened to himself on October 18, 1978. He was out jogging when he suffered a massive heart attack. He fell flat on his face, knocking out all his teeth, and for eight minutes was clinically dead.

  During that time, as paramedics fought to bring him back, McNamara recalled, “My spirit went straight down into darkness. I literally went to hell.” When he was brought back, says Robert quietly, “It changed my whole life.”

  Robert is thrilled to hear that Steve McQueen also became a Christian. Now, he says with a big smile, “I know we’re going to see each other again when I die. And this time we’ll be closer friends.”

  A DEATH SENTENCE

  _____

  Steve McQueen once said he felt like an old man by the time he reached seventeen. Given all the twists, turns, and upheaval in his life up until then, that’s not hard to understand. Thanks to my own tumultuous upbringing, I felt way older than my years when I was that age myself. I felt like I was seventy at age seventeen.

  But the similarities in our lives ended there.

  McQueen enlisted in the US Marines.

  I joined God’s army as a born-again Christian.

  Well, not right away. I was clearly part of the counterculture revolution sweeping through America in the 1960s, which just so happened to coincide with my graduation from military school. No more housemothers, cheese paddle
s, and for all practical purposes, no more rules. I’d been “honorably discharged” back into civilian life with no intention of being told what to do or playing nice with authority. The strict conformity that had been drummed into me at SCMA went right out the window, just when I needed boundaries as never before.

  Instead, I took to drinking and smoking, though I didn’t enjoy either. I drank screwdrivers for the taste of the orange juice and for the effects of the vodka. But the booze made me sick to my stomach, so I switched to pot, and even briefly experimented with LSD. I’d come home late at night stoned, and my mother would be loaded. We made quite a pair.

  Fast-forward a few years. The Vietnam War was raging. Protesters were hitting the streets of America, screaming at the establishment for change. The music, films, literature, hair, and dress of the day were interwoven in a happy, trippy, sometimes menacing cloak of defiance.

  I took to drinking and smoking, though I didn’t enjoy either. I drank screwdrivers for the taste of the orange juice and for the effects of the vodka. But the booze made me sick to my stomach, so I switched to pot, and even briefly experimented with LSd.

  Southern California, where I lived, was the mecca for this hedonistic lifestyle. Kids all around me went to head shops, smoked dope, and spieled about peace, love, and joy. But there was a lot more to it than that. Most of these young people’s defiance was really about sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. Of course, there were bound to be casualties. Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Gram Parsons, and the Grateful Dead’s Ron “Pigpen” McKernan immediately come to mind, all of them gone before their thirtieth birthday.

  And I almost joined them on a rainy night in 1970.

  I was in a car with three friends, high on marijuana, careening along the Pacific Coast Highway, headed home from Laguna Beach, California. We’d scored a kilo of weed that we intended to smoke ourselves, which is a pretty sad commentary in itself. My friends and I were flying along in a 1964 faded beige Volvo on a narrow part of the highway with steep cliffs on one side and the ocean hundreds of yards below on the other. Suddenly the car hit a section of wet pavement. It fishtailed, then spun. We were out of control, with lights flying by and the tires screaming. This is it, I thought. This is how it ends for me.