Steve McQueen

When McQueen appeared in a two-part television presentation entitled The Defenders, Hollywood manager Hilly Elkins (who managed McQueen's first wife, Neile) took note of him and decided that B-movies would be a good place for the young actor to make his mark. McQueen was subsequently hired to appear in the films Never Love a Stranger, The Blob (his first leading role), and The Great St. Louis Bank Robbery.

McQueen's first breakout role did not come in film but on television. He appeared on Dale Robertson's NBC western series, Tales of Wells Fargo. Then McQueen's manager, Elkins, successfully lobbied Vincent M. Fennelly, producer of the western series Trackdown, to have McQueen read for the part of bounty hunter Josh Randall in a Trackdown episode. McQueen appeared as Randall in the episode, having been cast opposite series lead and old New York motorcycle racing buddy Robert Culp. Read Less

At 29, McQueen got a significant break when Frank Sinatra removed Sammy Davis, Jr., from the film Never So Few after Davis supposedly made some mildly negative remarks about Sinatra in a radio interview, and Davis's role went to McQueen. Sinatra saw something special in McQueen, and ensured that the young actor got plenty of good close-ups in a role that earned McQueen favorable reviews. McQueen's character, Bill Ringa, was never more comfortable than when driving at high speed—in this case at the wheel of a jeep—or handling a switchblade or a tommy-gun.

After Never So Few, the film's director John Sturges cast McQueen in his next movie, promising to "give him the camera." The Magnificent Seven (1960), in which he played Vin Tanner and co-starred with Yul Brynner, Robert Vaughn, Charles Bronson and James Coburn, became McQueen's first major hit and led to his withdrawal from Wanted: Dead or Alive. McQueen's focused portrayal of the taciturn second lead catapulted his career. His added touches in each scene, such as shaking a shotgun round before loading it and wiping his hat rim, which annoyed co-star Brynner, who protested that McQueen was trying to steal his spotlight. (In his autobiography, Eli Wallach, who acted as the movie's villain, Calvera, reports struggling to conceal his amusement while watching the filming of the funeral-procession scene where Brynner's and McQueen's characters first meet: Brynner was clearly furious at McQueen's shotgun-round-shake, which effectively diverted the viewer's attention to McQueen.) Brynner also refused to draw his gun in the same scene with McQueen, not wanting to have his character outdrawn. Read Less