Marc Eliot. (2011). Steve McQueen: A Biography. Crown.

Marc Eliot. 2011. Steve McQueen: A Biography. Crown.

Marc Eliot, Steve McQueen: A Biography. Crown, 2011.

Marc Eliot. Steve McQueen: A Biography. Crown, 2011.

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1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Eliot, Marc
   • bioText: Marc Eliot is the "New York Times" bestselling author of more than a dozen books on popular culture, among them the highly acclaimed biographies American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart; the award-winning Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince; Down 42nd Street; what many consider the best book about the sixties, his biography of Phil Ochs, Death of a Rebel; Take It From Me (with Erin Brokovich); Down Thunder Road: The Making of Bruce Springsteen; To the Limit: The Untold Story of the Eagles; and Reagan: The Hollywood Years. He has written on the media and pop culture for numerous publications, including Penthouse, L.A. Weekly, and California magazine. He divides his time among New York City; Woodstock, New York; Los Angeles; and the Far East. Visit him at www.MarcEliot.net
   • name: Marc Eliot

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title

Steve McQueen

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Steve McQueen is one of America’s legendary movie stars best known for his hugely successful film career in classics such as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, and The Towering Inferno as well as for his turbulent life off-screen and impeccable style. His unforgettable physical beauty, his soft-spoken manner, his tough but tender roughness, and his aching vulnerability had women swooning and men wanting to be just like him. Today—nearly thirty years after he lost his battle against cancer at the age of fifty—McQueen remains “The King of Cool.” Yet, few know the truth of what bubbled beneath his composed exterior and shaped his career, his passions, and his private life. 
           
Now, in Steve McQueen, New York Times bestselling author, acclaimed biographer, and film historian, Marc Eliot captures the complexity of this Hollywood screen legend. Chronicling McQueen’s tumultuous life both on and off the screen, from his hardscrabble childhood to his rise to Hollywood superstar status, to his struggles with alcohol and drugs and his fervor for racing fast cars and motorcycles, Eliot discloses intimate details of McQueen’s three marriages, including his tumultuous relationships with Neile Adams and Ali MacGraw, as well as his numerous affairs. He also paints a full portrait of this incredible yet often perplexing career that ranged from great films to embarrassing misfires. Steve McQueen, adored by millions, was obsessed by Paul Newman, and it is the nature of that obsession that reveals so much about who McQueen really was. Perhaps his greatest talent was to be able to convince audiences that he was who he really wasn’t, even as he tried to prove to himself that he wasn’t who he really was.
           
With original material, rare photos, and new interviews, Eliot presents a fascinating and complete picture of McQueen’s life.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: USAToday.com, 3 out of 4 stars
   • content:

     "Most of us aren't really interested in the real McQueen, we just want the tough guy from Bullitt. Fortunately, author Marc Eliot isn't in that group. In Steve McQueen: A Biography, readers meet a complex, haunted man who might not make many most-admired lists....Eliot doesn't pass judgment on McQueen. Instead, he essentially retells the classic American drama: a man coming up from nothing and but for a quirk of fate -- in McQueen's case, possession of a steely gaze that would do nothing on a stage but rivet a camera."

2. • premium: False
   • source: David Thomson, The New Republic
   • content: "As Marc Eliot reminds us, Steve McQueen was just eight weeks older than Clint Eastwood. He might be alive still, as prominent, laconic, and anti-heroic a screen figure as Clint, and maybe even a notable producer and director. Eastwood has won just about every prize there is, and he has made the journey that probably appealed to him the most--from a working-class kid to a movie cowboy to one of the most esteemed figures and authentic stars remaining in American show business. Eastwood is an auteur and a respectable American. McQueen was none of those things.... [Yet] you can't take your eyes off him. As an actor, he is more compelling and mysterious than Eastwood. "
3. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist
   • content: "A fine biography that makes us feel like we know and understand its subject."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Library Journal

   • content: "McQueen's life and the cultural context Eliot explores make for a good read."
5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     June 27, 2011
     Following his biographies of Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Walt Disney, Phil Ochs, and others, Eliot now traces the "tragically short" career of McQueen, ranking him as "one of those actors, who, along with Eastwood and Newman, became a seminal force in the wake of the postwar Brando cinematic tsunami." This uneven biography devotes only a few pages to McQueen's turbulent, troubled youth (including 14 months in reform school), quickly moving on to Broadway, where he appeared in A Hatful of Rain. In 1958, after the top-10 success of his Wanted: Dead or Alive series on CBS, McQueen became "Hollywood's number one hotshot." During the 1960s, he ascended as a superstar in such films as The Great Escape, The Cincinnati Kid, The Sand Pebbles (which brought him an Oscar nomination), and Bullitt, moving into the 1970s with The Getaway and Papillon. By 1974, he was the world's highest paid actor, indulging in "drugs, fast cars, faster women" and confrontational, "idiosyncratic behavior'' on film sets. Eliot manages to capture the powerful drive and rough-hewn qualities of the adventurous actor, but many pages rehash the same anecdotes found in a dozen previously published McQueen biographies.

6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     August 1, 2011
     

     On-screen and off with the "King of Cool."

     Veteran celebrity biographer Eliot's (Paul Simon: A Life, 2010, etc.) portrait of film star Steve McQueen (1930–1980) is a curiously sour reading experience. The subject emerges as a singularly petty and unpleasant personality, a minor talent who left a meager cinematic legacy completely out of proportion with his enduring status as an icon of mid-20th-century "cool." In this telling, McQueen's less-than-impressive filmography is the result of the star's persistent small-mindedness, as he habitually gravitated toward working with directors he could dominate and turned down promising roles—he could have been the Sundance Kid, but walked when he couldn't get top billing over rival Paul Newman—out of spite, laziness and easily injured ego. A hardscrabble childhood led to a period of small-time criminality and military service before McQueen drifted into acting, attracted to the profession for its many opportunities to smoke dope and sleep with pretty young actresses. He made a hit with the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive, in which he perfected a sullen, wary, catlike screen presence that radiated charisma and danger, and he would keep sounding those same few notes throughout his career. Eliot praises McQueen's iconic impact in such films as The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt and The Getaway, but these successes come off as lucky intersections of good timing and congenial material rather than the expression of a significant artistic talent. Eliot's matter-of-fact recounting of McQueen's gluttonous appetite for drugs, compulsive womanizing, sickening instances of wife-beating and petulant bullying are difficult to stomach, as they seem less like the torments of a complicated artist than the sordid habits of a profoundly spoiled, selfish, bitter man. The author writes of McQueen poring over the script of The Towering Inferno, counting his lines to make sure that co-star Paul Newman didn't have more to do and childishly insisting on delivering the last line of the film. That about sums it up.

     A dispiriting account of a great star and not-so-great human being.

     (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     August 1, 2011
     

     Eliot has authored several celebrity bios, including American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood. Here he focuses on Steve McQueen, whom he can't help but compare to Eastwood. They were both born in 1940, and their careers began at about the same time. But unlike Eastwood, whose acting style is instinctive and who has essentially played the same character to great commercial success, McQueen was a product of the Method; Eliot asserts his career was hampered by less-than-inspiring directors and his early death at 50, when Eastwood was just hitting his stride. Still, McQueen starred in iconic films (The Magnificent Seven; The Great Escape). Eliot covers McQueen's lonely and angry early life and the juicy details of his marriages, most famously to Ali MacGraw. VERDICT Eliot's penchant for portraying the thoughts of McQueen and others ("From the moment Steven arrived in New York City, nothing felt right") is annoying, but McQueen's life and the cultural context Eliot explores make for a good read. Several McQueen biographies have appeared over the last few years; purchase for need and demand.--Rosellen Brewer, Sno-Isle Libs., Marysville, WA

     Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

8. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     September 15, 2011
     In one sense, this lively biography of Steve McQueen tells a familiar Hollywood story. A young man stumbles into acting, then moves from job to job until falling into the role that makes him a star. But in another sense, it offers something quite fresh, simply because McQueen, who died of cancer in 1980, hasn't been in the public eye for more than three decades. Most readers will recognize him as a movie star (Bullitt, The Great Escape), but his personal life is less well known. His reputation as a womanizer, we learn, is probably justified, but he may not have been the egotist some have claimed. Rather, he was a perfectionist almost self-destructively determined to prove that he was a legitimate actor. Surprisingly, McQueen passed up a lot of good moviesThe French Connection and Apocalypse Now, among othersand it's interesting to imagine how his career might have been different had he said yes to one of those now-classic films. A fine biography that makes us feel like we know and understand its subject.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     August 1, 2011
     

     On-screen and off with the "King of Cool."

     Veteran celebrity biographer Eliot's (Paul Simon: A Life, 2010, etc.) portrait of film star Steve McQueen (1930-1980) is a curiously sour reading experience. The subject emerges as a singularly petty and unpleasant personality, a minor talent who left a meager cinematic legacy completely out of proportion with his enduring status as an icon of mid-20th-century "cool." In this telling, McQueen's less-than-impressive filmography is the result of the star's persistent small-mindedness, as he habitually gravitated toward working with directors he could dominate and turned down promising roles--he could have been the Sundance Kid, but walked when he couldn't get top billing over rival Paul Newman--out of spite, laziness and easily injured ego. A hardscrabble childhood led to a period of small-time criminality and military service before McQueen drifted into acting, attracted to the profession for its many opportunities to smoke dope and sleep with pretty young actresses. He made a hit with the TV series Wanted: Dead or Alive, in which he perfected a sullen, wary, catlike screen presence that radiated charisma and danger, and he would keep sounding those same few notes throughout his career. Eliot praises McQueen's iconic impact in such films as The Magnificent Seven, Bullitt and The Getaway, but these successes come off as lucky intersections of good timing and congenial material rather than the expression of a significant artistic talent. Eliot's matter-of-fact recounting of McQueen's gluttonous appetite for drugs, compulsive womanizing, sickening instances of wife-beating and petulant bullying are difficult to stomach, as they seem less like the torments of a complicated artist than the sordid habits of a profoundly spoiled, selfish, bitter man. The author writes of McQueen poring over the script of The Towering Inferno, counting his lines to make sure that co-star Paul Newman didn't have more to do and childishly insisting on delivering the last line of the film. That about sums it up.

     A dispiriting account of a great star and not-so-great human being.

     (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

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Steve McQueen is one of America’s legendary movie stars best known for his hugely successful film career in classics such as The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, and The Towering Inferno as well as for his turbulent life off-screen and impeccable style. His unforgettable physical beauty, his soft-spoken manner, his tough but tender roughness, and his aching vulnerability had women swooning and men wanting to be just like him. Today—nearly thirty years after he lost his battle against cancer at the age of fifty—McQueen remains “The King of Cool.” Yet, few know the truth of what bubbled beneath his composed exterior and shaped his career, his passions, and his private life. 
           
Now, in Steve McQueen, New York Times bestselling author, acclaimed biographer, and film historian, Marc Eliot captures the...

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