Paul's Ride Guide: King Of Cool

Tuesday 8 August 2017

King Of Cool

On the set of "The Great Escape"

Not everyone knows about Steve McQueen, a.k.a. the "King Of Cool". You'd have to be my age or older to have seen or remember McQueen in his era as an actor who rose to fame in the 60's and 70's, based on his anti-hero persona. I remember seeing a young fellow with a Steve McQueen image on his t-shirt and when I commented on it the guy admitted he didn't really know anything about McQueen and got the shirt from his dad because he knew he liked motorcycles. haha.
I remember him first from seeing him in the t.v. series "Wanted: Dead or Alive", where he played a bounty hunter who had a sawed off Winchester rifle instead of a Colt 45 in his gun belt. His acting career was going places but McQueen was also an avid motorcyclist and, in fact, prior to his film career he made some decent money racing bikes while picking up those smaller, supporting roles in various films and getting into television. He got his breakout role in "The Magnificent Seven", but by that time had to make the decision to give up the racing and pursue his acting and film career. Reluctantly, though wisely, he decided to follow the path of acting, though he did inevitably manage to use his star power to manipulate the studios to include motorcycles into his roles, a big success in films like "The Great Escape". McQueen went on to star in some fairly impressive films, like "Papillon" and "the Sand Pebbles', the latter for which he received an Oscar nomination.
As for the motorcycles, McQueen always rode, got back into racing and had plenty of bikes as a collection. One of his very rare bikes was purchased by E.J. Cole and eventually was sold at an auction for $800,000 + ( check out my blog post "E.J. Cole Collection" ) There were also numerous cars and a few airplanes as well, something well afforded by a solid acting career and likely not possible if he had stuck with racing.