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McQueen's reign of cool

The late Steve McQueen is once again the essence of cool, thanks in part to a commercial that puts him in the driver's seat of a car he helped make famous: Ford's Mustang.

By STEVE PERSALL
Published December 10, 2004

[Times files]

Left to right: The Thomas Crown Affair; The Great Escape; The Sand Pebbles; Papillon; Baby, the Rain Must Fall and Bullitt

	[Photos: Ford Motor Co.]
	Dozens of producers spent hours poring through Steve McQueen films to pick frames for Cornfield, a commercial introducing Ford’s 2005 Mustang.

It was just another test marketing audience, gauging the effectiveness of a television commercial before it went public.

What they witnessed was the resurrection of a Hollywood legend.

Recruited viewers saw a cornfield setting straight out of Field of Dreams, and heard that film's signature line whispered off-screen: "If you build it, he will come."

But it wasn't Kevin Costner on screen waiting for "him" to arrive. And it wasn't Ray Liotta emerging from a wall of corn stalks to approach a shiny silver 2005 Ford Mustang.

Some audience members immediately recognized the lean, laconic man with cropped blond hair, slipping into the driver's seat like a second skin. Others knew what he was, if not who he was:

Cool.

"Is that Sean Connery?" a viewer in his 20s asked.

No, he learned, that's Steve McQueen.

As what would have been the actor's 75th birthday approaches on March 24, 2005, McQueen's posterity is shifting into another gear. The Mustang commercial is keying a resurgence of interest in a career that prematurely ended in 1980, three months after McQueen's final film, The Hunter, was released.

McQueen died at age 50 of lung cancer, attributed by some to his cigarette habit and others to the asbestos linings of his auto-racing uniforms. Before that, McQueen lived hard, loved beautiful women, drove race cars and motorcycles, and made show biz rebellion a favorite pastime.

Recently, that timelessly anarchic image has been revived by musicians, including rock singer Sheryl Crow in her Grammy-winning song, Steve McQueen, and its use in Wrangler blue jeans ads. The Roger Richman Agency licensing McQueen's likeness lists 29 companies - from slot machines and sunglasses to menswear and wristwatches - using his mystique to attract customers. Ford makes it 30.

Music, marketing and access afforded to McQueen's movies on home video and cable television are making a new generation aware of what the actor's generation has known for decades.

"When you tell younger buyers that something's cool, it's instantly not cool," said Ford marketing spokesman Miles Johnson. "These younger buyers are figuring out on their own who Steve McQueen is. They're deciding he's cool on their own.

"They like the idea of going to the Internet or Blockbuster to find out who this guy is. They'll see a great car chase in Bullitt, then check out more of his films. When they put it all together, they'll say: "Wow."'

Chris Lambos already did. He's a University of Utah student and employee who was 4 years old when McQueen died. Lambos saw McQueen playing prison escapee Henri Charriere in Papillon (1973) in junior high, read the only biography he could find, and became fascinated by the story of a hardship child who became a movie star.

In March 1997, Lambos posted the Internet's first tribute site to McQueen's career, appropriately titled the First Steve McQueen Site (http://members.tripod.com/stvmcqueen/) It's obviously a labor of love.

"You can see how he is definitely the most imitated actor ever, and seems to be the one (that) actors in today's movies measure themselves by," Lambos said through an exchange of e-mails.

"I've seen Brad Pitt, who happens to be a fan, copy a photo shoot Steve McQueen did, right down to McQueen's old Triumph motorcycle and clothes. McQueen was authentic and original, unlike today's Hollywood actors, who are just creations of agencies and publicists that try to sell them to the public. People would go to see a Steve McQueen movie just to see Steve McQueen."

Lambos' Web site is stocked with photographs, trivia and links to other Internet sites offering information, collectibles, even the actor's mug shot from a 1972 DUI arrest in Alaska.

The image is vintage McQueen: Blue eyes focused straight ahead, a slightly defiant smile crossing his lips and a cut on his nose from doing something reckless. One hand holds a mug shot I.D. sign while the other flashes a peace sign. Other than that anti-war gesture and a flashy shirt, he could be the "Cooler King" needling Nazi captors in The Great Escape.

Despite the driving offense, McQueen's persona is perfectly matched 32 years later with an auto manufacturer.

Celebrities are occasionally resurrected by advertisers with enough computer wizardry at their disposal. But this isn't a case of making Fred Astaire dance with a vacuum cleaner or John Wayne haggle over who's buying beer. The Mustang's connection with McQueen is screen history; a star and his car sharing 9 minutes 42 seconds of breathtaking pursuit through the streets of San Francisco and beyond in Bullitt.

Only car buffs recall McQueen, playing a tough detective, was chasing - and being chased - by a Dodge Charger. But anyone who saw Bullitt remembers McQueen's 1968 Mustang GT 390 fastback, and that he handled the risky driving maneuvers himself. Shots of McQueen and Lalo Schifrin's musical score are used in Ford's commercial.

"One chase scene really put us on the map as far as making high-performance cars," Johnson said.

In 2001, Ford created a limited edition Mustang Bullitt GT, an updated version of McQueen's joyride. More than 6,000 rolled off assembly lines and into garages. The collaboration between manly man and machine is now hereditary; McQueen's son Chad, a veteran straight-to-video action star, retraced his father's skid marks on closed San Francisco streets to promote the car's release.

Chad McQueen, representing his father's estate, is proud of the interest rekindled by the Mustang connection then and now.

"You know how quick kids are today to forget people," he said by telephone. "It's a wonderful feeling. My father must have done something right. When I first saw the (cornfield) ad on storyboards, I got goose bumps."

On Internet bulletin boards, a few fans have complained that Ford's use of McQueen is akin to sacrilege. "Grave robbing" is a term often used. Johnson denies that charge.

"What we did was very genuine," he said. "Had we tried to do something off-the-wall with him, it wouldn't be. McQueen's so ingrained with the Mustang; it was as much a star of that movie as he was. You have a natural fit there. There will always be a few people who don't like it.

"We have a very good relationship with the McQueen estate. They are very, very protective of his likeness. They had to put the stamp (of approval) on everything we did. Had they thought we were doing something they didn't like, they wouldn't let us do it."

Devoted fans such as Lambos aren't complaining. The Mustang commercial is simply a pop culture adjective for someone who otherwise can't be adequately described. And it's cooler than the advertising legacy of a certain other blue-eyed movie star whose screen presence is often compared with McQueen's: Paul Newman.

"For me, I didn't see any comparison," Lambos said. "Steve McQueen came from nothing. Paul Newman was a rich kid, a frat boy and a pretty boy. Now, 25 years after McQueen's death, Paul Newman has salad dressing named after him, and Steve McQueen has a Mustang named after one of his movies. How cool is that?"

1. Daredevil cool - The Great Escape (1962). Playing a rebellious American POW, McQueen frustrated Nazi captors, whether jumping a motorcycle over barbed wire or bouncing a baseball off solitary confinement walls for a game of one-man catch.

2. Poker-faced cool - The Cincinnati Kid (1965). A rising card shark (McQueen) takes on the master (Edward G. Robinson) with more than money at stake.

3. Compassionate cool - Love with a Proper Stranger (1963). A fling with a devout Catholic (Natalie Wood) leads to pregnancy and possibly abortion, unless they fall in love.

4. Martyr cool - Papillon (1973) and The War Lover (1962). In the former, McQueen plays a wrongly convicted man surviving in a brutal South American prison. The latter casts him as a dangerously eager World War II bomber pilot.

5. Crime-busting cool - Bullitt (1968). Before Dirty Harry, McQueen created a cop playing by his own rules, especially when it comes to San Francisco traffic laws.

6. Larcenous cool - The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) and The Getaway (1972). Crown is a sophisticated jewel thief. Doc McCoy is a down-and-dirty bank robber. Either way, McQueen is an amoral icon.

7. Fire-fighting cool - The Towering Inferno (1974). McQueen plays a fire chief battling a skyscraper fire while matching Paul Newman spark for spark.

8. Patriotic cool - The Sand Pebbles (1966). A gunboat engineer (McQueen) in 1926 China is considered an ugly American until duty calls him to rescue missionaries.

9. Speedy cool - Le Mans and On Any Sunday (both 1971). McQueen's real-life infatuation with race cars and motorcycles placed these films among his personal favorites.

10. Silly cool - The Honeymoon Machine (1961) and The Reivers (1969). McQueen's comedic side was rarely expressed on screen, but these larks are worth looks.

11. Saddled-up cool - The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Junior Bonner (1972). One is a bona fide Old West classic, the other is a New West drama set among rodeo riders. McQueen could handle any kind of horsepower.

12. Vengeful cool - Nevada Smith (1966). A half-breed (McQueen) relentlessly pursues his parents' murderers in remarkably harsh fashion for the era.

13. Protege cool - Soldier in the Rain (1963). A veteran Army con artist (Jackie Gleason) shows a sergeant (McQueen) the ropes, forging a surprisingly tender bond.

14. Paroled cool - Baby, the Rain Must Fall (1965). McQueen plays a released jailbird returning home to sing in a saloon band. His vocals were lip-synched, suggesting that singing was the only thing McQueen couldn't do on screen.

[Last modified December 9, 2004, 08:15:06]