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.”
12. A new father figure in Steve’s life was Hal Berri, who married Julian in Monterey, California, in 1937. Hal had only recently divorced his wife of 13 years and was 8 years older than Julian. The three of them moved to 1810 Ewing Street in Echo Park, and Steve took on the last name of Berri. A short while later, they moved to a nice home at 1966 Preston Avenue, also in Echo Park. Although the family seemed normal on paper, in reality Hal’s previous wife divorced him because he was an alcoholic who disappeared for days at a time with other women, and he physically abused her many times.
13. Sharing a roof with Hal Berri was one of the most difficult times of young Steve’s life. He was subjected to daily beatings “for the sheer sadistic pleasure it gave him, which included the joy he obviously derived from my pain,” Steve later said. Although he vowed to bear the beatings until he was old enough to run away, he couldn’t help himself from fighting back. Returning punches did little against the much-larger man, but it made Steve feel good, even though it often brought on even worse repercussions. “I would have borne any punishment, anything just for the pleasure of knowing that I had given back even a little of the pain he had inflicted on me,” Steve said. Among the punishments for fighting back was being tossed into a pitch-black room with no food or water, not unlike the punishment he received in the film Papillon.
14. When Steve McQueen was young, he went by the nickname “Buddy.” He even used the nickname on his social security card when he filled in his name as Buddy Steven McQueen.
15. In the early 1940s, young Steve was sent back to his uncle Claude’s farm in Slater, Missouri. His mother had written Claude about the boy’s behavior, and rather than send him to reform school, Claude offered to take him in. Claude enrolled the eighth grader at the Orearville School as Steve Berri, and he was the only blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy in his class, making him even more of an outsider from the get-go. He rarely attended school, opting instead to hang out in downtown Slater.
16. Among his familial and upbringing issues that handicapped his youth, Steve also had a few physical handicaps that added to his challenges. He had a mastoid infection behind his right ear that made it difficult for him to hear.
17. Steve was diagnosed in later years with dyslexia, which made reading extremely difficult as well. Between that and the mastoid infection, school would have likely been quite difficult for him.
18. When Steve was 13, he incurred the anger of Uncle Claude when he and some friends shot out the windows of a local restaurant with a BB gun. Rather than accept his punishment, he got a job with the traveling carnival that happened to be in Slater at the time. When the carnival