Steve McQueen Page 2

  Later that same year, unable to cope with single motherhood, Jullian took the infant back to her hometown of Slater, Indiana, in Saline County, where her parents, Victor and Lillian Crawford, lived. They agreed to help her as long as they were allowed to give the boy a strict Catholic upbringing.

  After only a few months of being back with her family, Jullian grew tired of church, prayer, and chastity and returned to Green Grove with young Steven. She still hoped to find a rich man to marry her and provide a comfortable life. But after three more years of struggling to keep herself and Steven warm and fed, she returned to the family farm—this time just long enough to drop off the boy before leaving again to resume chasing her own dreams.

  Abandoned now by both parents, Steven was again pushed aside when Victor’s business failed and he was forced to move with his wife and grandchild to live on Lillian’s brother’s farm in Missouri, about six hours away by train.

  Claude Thomson took them in but did not make them feel especially welcome or comfortable. He had no use for his sister or Victor, her miserable failure of a husband, and blamed his failure on Victor’s laziness rather than the Great Depression. He agreed to help them out only because he felt sorry for the cute little towhead. The boy was the only one, Claude believed, who was not responsible for his own misfortunes, and Claude wanted to redeem him by loving him as if he were his own. The boy’s mother was never spoken of on Claude’s farm.

  Claude, unmarried and childless, owned 320 acres of prime Missouri farmland dotted with thousands of head of free-roaming cattle and endless fields of corn. He also owned an intimidating reputation as a womanizer and possibly even a killer. Rumors ran rampant throughout the county that he had murdered a man over a woman, but no one was ever able to prove such a story about this wealthy and devout Catholic farmer. His presence was imposing, his bankbook fat, his political influence powerful. In a world where money talked nicely and influence talked tough, Claude had plentiful amounts of both.

  But he always had a soft spot for Steven. Not that he spoiled him in any way or gave him a free ride. From the time Steven could walk and talk, Uncle Claude expected him to pull his load, and every day woke him before dawn to begin his daily chores of milking cows and working in the cornfields.2 It was hard work for the boy, but for the first time in his life, he felt he really belonged somewhere and to someone.

  When Steven tried to shirk his duties, such as cutting wood, which for a boy of his small size was difficult, he was punished, but never complained. He believed he deserved whatever he got, if not for being not strong enough, then for his lack of determination. “When I’d get lazy and duck my chores, Claude would warm my backside with a hickory switch. I learned a simple fact—you work for what you get.”

  Claude wasn’t a total martinet. He gave young Steven his own room and a bright, shiny red tricycle, which Steven became so good at riding he challenged other boys to races and never failed to clean them out of their gumdrops. And Claude always gave the boy enough money for a weekly trip to the Saturday matinee at the local movie theater. Steven loved the movies, especially the cowboys-and-Indians westerns, with their six-guns that blazed firepower every two seconds and shot the bad guys, who fell off horses with all the fury and balance of Russian ballet stars. These films instilled in Steven a lifelong love of films and guns: “When I was eight, Uncle Claude would let me use the family rifle to shoot game in the woods … to his dyin’ day Uncle Claude remained convinced I was a miracle marksman with a rifle.”

  The school he attended was four miles away from the farmhouse and he had to walk it every day, regardless of the weather, but it wasn’t the walk he hated, it was the school. His teachers soon decided the sullen little boy who never paid attention to anyone or anything was what was called in those days a “slow learner.” Years later it was determined that as a child Steven was probably slightly dyslexic, not helped by an untreated hearing problem in his right ear that left him partly deaf for the rest of his life. The boy would remember most about his school days that “I was a dreamer, like on cloud Nine.”

  He was a dreamer back at the farmhouse as well. Young Steven would often drift away in thought, and when Uncle Claude inquired what he was thinking about, Steven always replied by asking where his mother was. Uncle Claude would say nothing, just pat the boy on his head and move along.

  Jullian was, in fact, busy marrying and unmarrying a series of men. The final count remains uncertain. One day, when Steven was nine, his mother suddenly showed up at the farm and politely informed Claude that she was taking her son back. Claude put up no resistance. He took the boy aside for a few minutes and gave him the gold watch that he kept in his vest pocket, told him to always remember his uncle Claude, and sent him away with his mother.

  Jullian took Steven, whose nine-year-old lean physique, curly blond hair, and blue eyes perfectly matched hers, to Los Angeles, where she and her latest husband were living. Soon enough, Steven’s new stepfather, Berri, hated having the kid around, wanted him gone, and out of frustration and anger beat him whenever he got the chance. Steven was more than happy to accommodate him, and often spent days and nights away from the house, sleeping in back alleys when there was no place else available. Film documentarian Rob Katz describes this period of time as the “black hole” of McQueen’s lonely and violent youth.

  Within months he had joined one of the tough L.A. teenage gangs that regularly prowled the neighborhood, breaking into shops after dark. And the streets had something else for Steven. When he was thirteen, a young neighborhood girl took him to heaven for the first time. He referred to this event years later in several interviews but never gave any details except that she was the first of many street girls who would dote over him and give him whatever he wanted because of his warm smile, blond hair, and blue eyes.

  Unable to deal with her son’s increasingly rebellious behavior and her husband’s resentment of the boy’s presence, a desperate Jullian called Uncle Claude and pleaded with him to take Steven back. She didn’t have to cajole; he was more than eager to have him. During their phone conversation Jullian was surprised to learn that Uncle Claude, now pushing seventy, had recently married his young housekeeper, Eva Mae, age thirty-three. Upon Steven’s return to Missouri, Eva Mae efficiently stripped the teenage boy naked and bathed him head to toe. There was no place like home!

  One day a traveling circus came through town and Steven went by himself to see it. There he met a fast-talking carny who convinced him he would see the world if he joined the traveling show. Steven never even returned home to pack his few belongings or to say goodbye to Uncle Claude and Eva Mae. Taking only his uncle’s gold watch that he was never without, the fifteen-year-old hitched a ride with the circus and rode with them out of Missouri and into his future.

  Uncle Claude, meanwhile, searched desperately for the boy, unaware that he had run away and fearing something terrible had happened to him. After several days, he gave up and went back to the farm. If Steven was found alive, Uncle Claude vowed, he would never forgive him. If Steven was found dead, Uncle Claude would never forgive himself.

  LIFE IN the circus proved more sawdust than stardust for Steven when he discovered the constant traveling was taking him nowhere fast. He wanted out of the life but could not go home again to face Uncle Claude. He took once more to living on the streets, hitchhiking from town to town and riding the freight trains with the hobos until eventually he found himself back in Los Angeles, where he reluctantly showed up at Jullian and Berri’s apartment. His mother was happy to see him but withheld her affection out of fear of setting off Berri, who greeted the boy with an indifference that bordered on anger.

  The street kids’ greeting was not much warmer than that. They were always suspicious of members who came and went unless that revolving door had bars on it. To make his bones and “win back the other kids’ respect he meant to become the baddest ass of them all … if the gang leader decreed that ten hubcaps were to be stolen today by each gang member, St
eve would bring back twenty.”

  Besides stealing, the gangs frequently rumbled, fighting other gangs for cock-of-the-walk rights. Occasionally a police roundup would bring them to court. The first time Steven came before the local judge, he threatened to put the boy away for a long stretch if he ever saw his face again.

  Jullian took him home, and Berri laid down a much tougher sentence. He beat Steven mercilessly and finished him off by throwing him down a flight of stairs. When the boy was finally able to stand up, bruised and bloody, with Berri hovering over him, he stared into his stepfather’s face and said, “You lay your stinkin’ hands on me again, and I swear I’ll kill ya.”

  Soon enough, Steven was caught with a bunch of other boys trying to steal hubcaps, and Jullian tearfully signed the court order committing him to reform school. It was that or prison.

  The California Junior Boys Republic at Chino was founded in 1907 by Margaret Fowler, a wealthy widow who devoted her life to social improvement and helping troubled youths straighten their lives out. Boys Republic was and still is located on 211 acres in the southwestern corner of San Bernardino County, a farm community that, besides the institution, also housed two state prisons, one for men and one for women. Boys Republic, one of the more progressive reform schools for juvenile delinquents that appeared during the last years of the Industrial Revolution, was filled to capacity in the Depression and again during World War II, times when many boys who got in trouble were either fatherless, gang members, or runaways. Steven was all three. On February 6, 1945, five weeks before his fifteenth birthday, Steven McQueen became number 3188.

  The institution ran on a trust system operated by the boys themselves, supervised by adults. Steven twice escaped from the unfenced grounds, but was quickly apprehended and returned. The other boys did not appreciate having their privileges taken away because of one bad apple, and although paddling was the preferred discipline by the authorities, the boys had their own way of treating tough kids like Steven. “The place had a board of governors made up of boys. They tried me and condemned me. They gave me the silent treatment and all that jazz.” And they kicked his ass. More than once, Steven was subjected to physical abuse. And on days when the “good” boys were rewarded with trips to the movies, Steven was held back by those who didn’t go and was forced to run the athletic track, over and over again. And when he still didn’t break, they made him dig ditches all day.

  He didn’t care what they did to him because he was already planning another breakout, a great escape that would leave the others in his dust. That is, until he first became aware of Mr. Pantier, one of the school’s superintendents, who disdained physical punishment in favor of talking things out. He believed that all boys were redeemable, including Steven. Mr. Pantier talked to him without talking down to him, and spent long evenings trying to convince the boy he was worth more than the kind of life he was headed for.

  Pantier’s kind words of encouragement touched something in Steven, and his transformation was swift. He became a model of good behavior and soon enough was elected to the same self-governing boys’ council he had been punished by. That victory meant a lot to him.

  WHILE STEVEN was inside, Jullian had undergone some changes of her own, beginning with the untimely but not entirely unwelcome death of Berri, from a heart attack, even as Jullian was preparing to divorce him and move by herself to New York City to find a new and better life. After she buried Berri, she visited Steven one last time and told him that when he got out he should look her up. However, despite her determination to do better this time, she quickly slipped back into the familiar world of drinking, smoking, and “entertaining” men.

  In April 1946, having finished his full fourteen-month term at Boys Republic, sixteen-year-old Steven left for New York to be with his mother. What he didn’t know was that one night while at a bar Jullian had met an old friend from Los Angeles by the name of Victor Lukens. They had quickly become lovers, and Lukens wasted no time moving into her tiny Greenwich Village two-room cold-water flat.

  * * *

  1 Although the county records claim March 21 as his actual birthday, his mother insisted it was really March 24. Steve always celebrated on the twenty-first.

  2 He was technically Grand-uncle Claude, but Steven always referred to him simply as Uncle Claude.

  I’m from the Actors Studio but as far as any set method is concerned, I don’t believe there is one.… And I certainly admire Mr. Brando, but I wouldn’t want to be like him.

  —STEVE MCQUEEN

  FROM THE MOMENT STEVEN ARRIVED IN NEW YORK CITY, nothing felt right. As soon as he got off the bus at Port Authority Bus Terminal, he spotted Jullian waiting for him. That was good. He went to kiss her on the cheek and smelled alcohol. That was bad. She took him down to the Village and showed him the separate place she’d rented for him, a small alcove in a three-room apartment. That was very bad.

  The problem, she explained to him as she helped him unpack his few things, was that she was involved with a new man who was an old friend, and didn’t want to screw it up by bringing her grown son into their small apartment. It wasn’t what Steven had bargained for. He didn’t want to share his mother with anybody else again and he wasn’t going to live with a guy he would have beaten up for fun back home, but he didn’t want to live alone either.

  So there it was, new city, old story. He roamed the streets dressed like a West Coast hick, right down to his high-top shoes, denim jacket, and jeans with high cuffs. With nowhere else to go, Steven parked himself at the nearest bar and was soon engaged in conversation with a couple of drunk tough guys. Their names were Tinker and Ford. They were a little older but reminded him of his friends back at the institution. They told him they were in the merchant marine and talked of the romantic adventure of sailing the world, which struck Steven as not all that bad a way of life. They bought him a drink and told him they could get him signed on, even though he was legally underage. Steven was interested. They made a call, and a little while later someone came by with fake papers and told him where to sign up.1

  Early the next morning, Steven found himself on the SS Alpha. When it left New York, the ship headed to the West Indies to pick up a cargo of molasses. At first, Steven was excited about his new life as a sailor, but the romance of it quickly turned into a nightmare. Being the new hand, he was assigned the dirtiest of jobs—swabbing the deck, cleaning the heads, garbage detail. He hated all of it, and on top of that the ship itself was a rotted hulk. It caught fire at sea and had to stop for repairs in the Dominican Republic. It was there that Steven jumped ship and disappeared into the tropical night. “Taking orders still bugged me. I decided to become a beachcomber and live the free life.”

  He resurfaced as a towel boy at the most notorious bordello in the country, where blond-haired, blue-eyed boys were in short supply. The working girls, especially, couldn’t get enough of him. Now this was a job he really enjoyed, especially when nobody seemed to mind if he helped himself to the merchandise whenever he wanted. All the girls loved him.2

  But after eight weeks he’d had enough even of that and was ready to return to the States. In Port Arthur, Texas, he quickly found work on an oil rig before he quit that job to sell “golden” pen points in a small traveling carnival, a two-ring set-it-up-and-break-it-down affair. Whenever a customer bought a pen point, he also received a free pen-and-pencil set. “The whole thing was worth, at most, twenty-three cents, and we got a dollar for it. My pockets rejoiced but my stomach couldn’t take it and soon I said, ‘Stevie boy, it’s time to shove.’ ”

  He left the show in Ottawa and found work there briefly with a lumber company as a “hijacker,” climbing tall trees and sawing off the upper branches. From there he drifted back down to the Carolinas, where he met a well-bred southern girl whose family was from Myrtle Beach. Her name was Sue Ann and she was young, sweet, and willing. Steven blissfully spent his seventeenth birthday in the comfort of Sue Ann’s arms. He wanted to stay with her forever, he said,
but one day not long after, he upped and enlisted in the United States Marines. Private First Class McQueen, Second Division of the Fleet Marine Force, was initially stationed at Camp Pendleton, forty-eight miles north of San Diego, California.

  In the aftermath of World War II, when most of the wartime recruits had opted for civilian life, only the hard-core vets who had seen it all were left. These marines were tough, hard, strong, and mean and didn’t take shit from anyone, especially pretty-boy enlistees they considered still wet behind the ears.

  Assigned to boot camp on notorious Parris Island, Steven got off the train, bent over to pick up his bag and was greeted with a drill sergeant’s bullet-studded swagger stick across his ass. When he complained, he was marked a troublemaker and assigned to sand decks with a brick in his so-called spare time. He did it until his hands bled. He also had to march through swamps and sleep on a bed covered with twelve loaded guns.

  Things were rough for him until someone noticed that Private McQueen looked like he might be a scrapper and slapped a pair of gloves on him. He was assigned to fight the ugliest and biggest marine in the camp. Not surprisingly, it was a one-sided bout. Steve went down ten times and got up nine before giving in (the other guy eventually wound up in Leavenworth Prison because of his penchant for punching out officers). For Steven, the loss was a victory: he had proved his toughness and marked himself a true marine. After that, things got a little better for him.

  On his first weekend pass, he met up with Sue Ann and turned it into a two-week vacation in bed, until he was arrested by the MPs for going AWOL and thrown into the brig for forty-one days (twenty-one for going AWOL, twenty for resisting arrest). He was assigned to the engine room of one of the fleet’s ships to scrub and repair the asbestos-laden pipes. Upon his release, he was assigned to duty in the tank division, where he learned how to fix their engines.