by Greg Laurie
The great comeback started with the 1972 movie The Getaway. Based on the gritty crime novel by Jim Thompson, the film was about a husband-wife bank robbing team looking for one last score. The role of Doc McCoy was perfect for McQueen, and today it is still considered one of his best performances. It helped that he probably strongly identified with the character who starts the movie in prison brooding about the injustice of life.
The title of the film refers not only to the McCoys’ last caper but also to the transition McQueen’s character makes over the course of the film—from hard-bitten criminal to a more sympathetic, multidimensional human being who’s coming to terms with himself. In a very real way, The Getaway was almost biographical for McQueen. It gave him an opportunity to act out all his frustrations and contradictions.
Over the next few years, McQueen not only recovered his box-office crown but achieved new heights, becoming the highest-paid movie star once again and standing head and shoulders above the rest of Hollywood.
It was also a seminal event in his personal life. McQueen’s costar was Ali MacGraw, who fell in love with him the first time she laid eyes on him at the Beverly Hills mansion where MacGraw lived with her husband, movie producer Robert Evans, and their young son, Joshua. She would later say she fell in love not so much with him but with her “invention of Steve McQueen,” comparing it to “a drug high.”
McQueen was intoxicated by her as well. And a month after filming on The Getaway started in Texas, he and Neile were officially divorced. It’s quite possible he might have felt he was cleared to embark on another relationship.
When McQueen was smitten, his macho exhibitionism would go into overdrive. And when MacGraw arrived in San Antonio, he fetched her at the airport and tried to impress her with his driving skill by doing doughnuts on the busy freeway. Another time the pair almost drowned when McQueen drove a rented station wagon into a natural spring on purpose. Actor Ben Johnson, shaking his head at McQueen’s juvenile behavior, ran to the submerged vehicle and rescued them.
But all his bluster and antics, instead of pushing her away from him, somehow drew her even closer. And in the summer of ’72 she divorced Robert Evans and married McQueen almost a year later.
All the tabloid attention paid to the McQueen-MacGraw romance boosted The Getaway at the box office when it opened in late 1972. It ended up the seventh-largest grossing movie of that year, taking in $36 million. With a percentage of receipts on the back end of the picture and other financial incentives built into his contract, Steve made almost $6 million. And just like that, he was back in the Hollywood catbird seat as one of the most bankable star in pictures.
His next film, Papillon, made in 1973, resulted in another major breakthrough for McQueen, though not professionally or romantically.
When McQueen was smitten, his macho exhibitionism would go into overdrive. And when MacGraw arrived in San Antonio, he fetched her at the airport and tried to impress her with his driving skill by doing doughnuts on the busy freeway.
It was, at long last, a spiritual break-through of sorts.
The man who played a key role in that was legendary stuntman Stan Barrett, Hal Needham’s protégé, who doubled for Paul Newman and Burt Reynolds and was one of the highest paid Hollywood stuntmen at the time. Stan was a former Golden Gloves champion, motorcross racer, held black belts in two styles of karate, an Air Force veteran, and more importantly to Steve, a solid Christian man. Stan was one of the most sought after stuntmen in Hollywood and his salary reflected that fact. He was called to double McQueen on Papillon but in order to meet his established fee, he was put on two contracts—one as an actor and the other as the stunt double for Steve, which didn’t seem to be a problem until later in the production.
His next film, Papillon, made in 1973, resulted in another major breakthrough for McQueen, though not professionally or romantically.
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Stan myself for many years, having first met him in Franklin Graham’s office in North Carolina. He’s a fascinating guy to talk to and a real man’s man. Stan is rugged and cool and has lots of great stories about his amazing Hollywood career.
Now we’re meeting at his favorite hamburger joint in Marina Del Rey, a forty-five-minute drive from Orange County, to talk about his memories of Steve McQueen.
How somebody who’s broken his back a couple of times, had a dozen operations on his body and enough stitches to quilt a blanket can still look so hale and healthy at seventy-three is beyond me.
His accomplishments are legendary beyond filmdom. Stan would go on to race NASCAR with several top-ten finishes after becoming the first human to break the on-land sound barrier when he drove a missile-shaped Budweiser rocket 739 miles per hour on December 17, 1979, (the same day, as it happens, that McQueen was diagnosed with mesothelioma).
Stan says his momentous conversation with McQueen about his spiritual condition happened when the production company tried to change the terms of his contract a month after he reported to the set of Papillon in Jamaica. By then the film company was experiencing budgetary problems and tried to cut corners. When it became apparent the company wouldn’t live up to its obligations, this was unacceptable to Stan. Then he told them to get his ticket ready to fly back to the States because he was going home.
“We made a deal and they broke it. I think the fact that I was a principled guy, acting on what I said I was going to do, and had credentials, made an impression on Steve. A guy like Steve McQueen, you had to earn his respect.”
“We made a deal and they broke it. I think the fact that I was a principled guy, acting on what I said I was going to do, and had credentials, made an impression on Steve. A guy like Steve McQueen, you had to earn his respect.”
When McQueen found out about Barrett’s decision to leave Jamaica, he went to Stan and said, “Hey, Stan, what’s up here, buddy? I hear you’re going home?” Stan told him about the company’s maneuver to cut his salary, and Steve offered to make up the difference if he stayed. Stan refused.
As they continued to talk, Steve touched on the breaking news that a mutual friend of theirs, off-road motorcycle racing legend and stuntman J.N. Roberts, had openly declared his faith in Jesus Christ. McQueen was discomfited by the public revelation, Stan says, and expressed his opinion that Roberts was “way out there.”
“I tried to explain the transformation in Roberts’s life,” says Stan. “I said to Steve, ‘This is a new, remarkable and dramatic experience in J.N.’s life, and he’s pretty excited about it.’”
McQueen became a bit defensive at that point, telling Stan that he, too, was religious and had gone to church but saw no need to make a big show of it. This left Stan a big opening for his follow-up question:
“But are you a Christian? There’s a difference between believing and having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The demons believe and they tremble . . . two different things, Steve.” Pressing his advantage, he added, “Just because you go into a barn doesn’t mean you’re a cow or a horse, any more than going to church makes you a Christian.”
For a half hour McQueen and Barrett went at it. “It was a very intense conversation,” Stan recalls, “and I hit him pretty hard. I didn’t let him off the hook either.”
With that the floodgates opened, and for a half hour McQueen and Barrett went at it. “It was a very intense conversation,” Stan recalls, “and I hit him pretty hard. I didn’t let him off the hook either. Usually people don’t like to be questioned like that, but Steve was open to it or tolerated it because of who I was. I could talk to Steve that way because he respected my credentials. Paul Newman had helped cement those, since he and Steve were friends, as was Bruce Lee.”
This is just Stan’s way, then as now. “I was quiet but bold. I didn’t push my theology on anyone, but, boy, I was ready when the opportunity presented itself. I wouldn’t have asked Steve, ‘What’s your relationship with God?’ unless God hadn’t arranged that first.”
Stan wound up the
discussion by offering to give McQueen a couple of books that would open his eyes to what it means to truly follow the teachings of Christ—Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis and Basic Christianity by John Stott. He left the books with McQueen before departing Jamaica.
A year later, the two men saw each other again on the set of The Towering Inferno when Stan was visiting Paul Newman. He was originally going to double both Newman and McQueen on the epic disaster film but was unable to as he had a shattered knee cap removed.
Stan asked Steve if he read the two books, and McQueen confirmed he had indeed.
“I asked him, ‘Are you sure, Steve, if you were killed or died tomorrow where you would go? You’re always pushing the envelope, doing more than your share of a lot of dangerous stuff with race cars and motorcycles. No one gets out of here alive. Have you ever thought about it? This is not a rehearsal. Are you confident where you’ll spend eternity?”
McQueen was a hard nut to crack, for sure. Because of his bizarre upbringing, he’d developed a hard shell around himself for both protection and preservation.
McQueen hemmed and hawed, and Stan told him it was simply a matter of making a knowing decision for Christ.
“Looking back,” says Stan, “I am sure it was very unusual for anyone to have that deep of a conversation with Steve. I believe in my heart the only reason I went to Jamaica was that God put me in that position on that film far from home to challenge him. God’s timing is perfect. I know he was struggling at the time and obviously this had been a long and pressing theme in Steve’s life.”
McQueen was a hard nut to crack, for sure. Because of his bizarre upbringing, he’d developed a hard shell around himself for both protection and preservation. He was certainly a very proud man. And that pride was keeping him from admitting he needed help of any kind, including that he needed God in his life.
As a kid, I had a chip on my shoulder and a permanent smirk on my face. I remember a teacher once saying to me in class, “Laurie, wipe that smirk off your face!” Problem was, that was my normal expression.
In the book Steve read, C. S. Lewis writes, “As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
I know because having come from a similar background I, too, had that shell, as well as that pride—a cynical view of people based on disappointment repeated over and over again.
As a kid, I had a chip on my shoulder and a permanent smirk on my face. I remember a teacher once saying to me in class, “Laurie, wipe that smirk off your face!” Problem was, that was my normal expression.
Late in my teen years, I decided to transfer from Corona Del Mar High to Harbor High, a wealthy suburb of Newport Beach, California. I was looking for a new identity in an attempt to fit in. I had been hanging around with the coolest kids on campus but had tired quickly of smoking, drinking, and weekend parties. They reminded me too much of my mother’s crowd. That wasn’t for me.
But at this time the whole drug scene was exploding. The maxim of the day was, “Never trust anyone over thirty.” And the older I got, the more this concept resonated with me from personal experience because I had been continually disappointed by the adult world I’d been exposed to. Harbor, I was told, was a much more relaxed atmosphere with not much hassle from the powers-that-be, and so I transferred there. I started growing my hair out and went from preppie to hippie practically overnight.
I was smoking weed every single day and using LSd on the weekends. I actually believed I would find some kind of answers in drugs.
I was known to many of my fellow students because, among other things, I was the cartoonist for the school paper and reveled in mocking the authorities. A lot of the kids liked the way I thumbed my nose at “The Man.” (Ironically, one of the projects assigned to our art class that year was to go down to a local restaurant and paint a giant mural on an inside wall—a mural of the King of Cool himself, Steve McQueen.) I was smoking weed every single day and using LSD on the weekends. I actually believed I would find some kind of answers in drugs.
After I transferred over to Harbor, my other druggie friends warned me to watch out for the “Jesus freaks,” as there were quite a lot of them on campus. I laughed off such a concern, retorting, “Trust me, the last thing Greg Laurie will ever do is become a Jesus freak!”
Famous last words.
I thought these Christians were collectively nuts. I could not, for the life of me, understand why they would openly carry a Bible and talk about God like He was their next-door neighbor. But I must say, I was definitely intrigued.
Unlike Steve, I didn’t have a courageous man like Stan Barrett to speak directly to me. But being a people watcher, I observed the Christians carefully, thinking this was some cleverly devised act they were putting on. Or was it? At certain times of day or the middle of the night—times when I was thinking more clearly—I knew there was a good chance my course of life was likely leading me down a dead-end street. Was it possible these Christians were on to something? I always quickly dismissed the thought, but a seed was planted, just as it was planted by Stan Barrett in the heart of Steve McQueen.
Things were about to change for me. And in time, things would also change for Terrence Steven McQueen.
Recently, I was honored to be included in a ceremony at Harbor for their Hall of Fame. In my little acceptance speech, I told them I was more qualified for the “Hall of Shame”—that is, until I started listening more carefully to the message the Jesus freaks actually believed.
Things were about to change for me. And in time, things would also change for Terrence Steven McQueen.
THE TOWERING BABEL
_____
I’ve always maintained that only when you get to the end of yourself do you get to the beginning of God. In other words, it’s hard to have your heart filled with the Holy Spirit when you’re already so full of yourself.
Steve McQueen wasn’t there quite yet. He was still going through the sorting process we all undertake at some time in our lives. Only he had much more to sort through than most.
He was married to one of the most glamourous women in the universe—Ali MacGraw—and his status as a global superstar had been firmly reestablished with the success of Papillon. The prison-drama grossed more than $100 million worldwide in 1973 dollars, roughly the equivalent of a half billion dollars today.
The career slide that started with The Reivers (an adaptation of a William Faulkner novel) and accelerated to the cellar with Le Mans and Junior Bonner had now been reversed, and McQueen was on top of the cinematic world again. His next movie would elevate him to the stratosphere.
McQueen was advanced $1 million for 1974’s The Towering Inferno, a star-loaded film about a runaway blaze in the world’s tallest skyscraper. Steve also got 7.5 percent of the picture’s gross profits. In the USA alone it brought in $116 million and almost triple that amount in total worldwide receipts. Do the math. All that for a film in which he didn’t have his first scene till forty-three minutes into the picture!
The Towering Inferno was called a “disaster film,” a genre that was much in vogue in the ’70s, but its groundbreaking special effects and McQueen’s bravura performance as the heroic fire chief who swoops in and saves the day made it a huge critical and financial success.
The Towering Inferno was called a “disaster film,” a genre that was much in vogue in the ’70s, but its groundbreaking special effects and McQueen’s bravura performance as the heroic fire chief who swoops in and saves the day made it a huge critical and financial success. It was hugely satisfying to McQueen on a personal level, too, because his billing was before Paul Newman’s (star of Somebody Up There Likes Me, the 1956 movie in which McQueen was an uncredited extra). McQueen’s one-sided rivalry toward Newman had simmered over the decades and had resulted in a missed opportunity for McQueen in the 1969 revisionist western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. M
cQueen was offered the role of Sundance opposite Newman’s Cassidy, but he turned it down because of his demand for top billing over Newman, who had been a star for much longer. The role eventually went to Robert Redford instead, making him a huge star. The movie went on to become one of the top grossing films of the 1960s, and today is considered a classic.
In The Towering Inferno Steve had finally achieved his goal of first billing over Newman.
How could he top that?
He didn’t even try. In a move that confounded all of Hollywood, McQueen more or less disappeared for the next five years.
His decision is as mystifying to me today as it was to everyone back then. Like the tower of Babel, McQueen had built a career that reached into the heavens—I suppose in an effort to make himself so Godlike that he would have no need (he thought) of the real deal. “Babel,” by the way, means confusion, and the word fits because now Steve was more confused than ever.
In The Towering Inferno Steve had finally achieved his goal of first billing over Newman. How could he top that?
One of the few people close to McQueen during his sabbatical from the spotlight was Flo Esposito, a barmaid at the Old Place in Agoura Hills, California. Thanks to Flo’s kindness, I’m sitting with her in a booth at this establishment as she reminisces about the McQueen she and other regulars knew and loved.
“Steve was looking for a family, and here at the Old Place we definitely were a family,” Flo says. “When you take on a family, there’s baggage that comes attached. There’s a honeymoon period for a while. But when that door closes and it gets dark at night, the honeymoon might not be there anymore, but Steve was the kind of guy who wanted to take a chance on a family.”
McQueen started frequenting the Old Place in the early ’70s, becoming friendly with owner Tom Runyon and his wife, Barbara, who opened the rustic roadhouse on Mulholland Highway in 1969. The ambiance is a tip of the hat to the Old West, with a hardwood bar, rugged booths, and swinging doors. The kitchen is known for its steak and clams and a beef stew that’d make Dinty Moore find another line of work.