1001 Steve McQueen Facts. Tyler Greenblatt

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СКАЧАТЬ California, in 1937. Hal had only recently divorced his wife of 13 years and was 8 years older than Julian. The three of them moved to 1810 Ewing Street in Echo Park, and Steve took on the last name of Berri. A short while later, they moved to a nice home at 1966 Preston Avenue, also in Echo Park. Although the family seemed normal on paper, in reality Hal’s previous wife divorced him because he was an alcoholic who disappeared for days at a time with other women, and he physically abused her many times.

      13. Sharing a roof with Hal Berri was one of the most difficult times of young Steve’s life. He was subjected to daily beatings “for the sheer sadistic pleasure it gave him, which included the joy he obviously derived from my pain,” Steve later said. Although he vowed to bear the beatings until he was old enough to run away, he couldn’t help himself from fighting back. Returning punches did little against the much-larger man, but it made Steve feel good, even though it often brought on even worse repercussions. “I would have borne any punishment, anything just for the pleasure of knowing that I had given back even a little of the pain he had inflicted on me,” Steve said. Among the punishments for fighting back was being tossed into a pitch-black room with no food or water, not unlike the punishment he received in the film Papillon.

      14. When Steve McQueen was young, he went by the nickname “Buddy.” He even used the nickname on his social security card when he filled in his name as Buddy Steven McQueen.

      15. In the early 1940s, young Steve was sent back to his uncle Claude’s farm in Slater, Missouri. His mother had written Claude about the boy’s behavior, and rather than send him to reform school, Claude offered to take him in. Claude enrolled the eighth grader at the Orearville School as Steve Berri, and he was the only blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy in his class, making him even more of an outsider from the get-go. He rarely attended school, opting instead to hang out in downtown Slater.

      16. Among his familial and upbringing issues that handicapped his youth, Steve also had a few physical handicaps that added to his challenges. He had a mastoid infection behind his right ear that made it difficult for him to hear.

      17. Steve was diagnosed in later years with dyslexia, which made reading extremely difficult as well. Between that and the mastoid infection, school would have likely been quite difficult for him.

      18. When Steve was 13, he incurred the anger of Uncle Claude when he and some friends shot out the windows of a local restaurant with a BB gun. Rather than accept his punishment, he got a job with the traveling carnival that happened to be in Slater at the time. When the carnival left, Steve left with it, not telling anyone. Claude searched for him for days before accepting that Steve had actually run off. This was Steve McQueen’s first great escape.

      19. His carnival days didn’t last long, and he quickly found himself living back with his mother and her husband, Hal Berri. Hal’s beatings picked up right where they left off for 13-year-old Steve, but by May 1943, the couple separated. Julian and Steve moved into an apartment at 3266½ Descanso Drive in Los Angeles. Rather than work and go to school, however, Steve became involved with a “bad crowd” and was once again a juvenile delinquent.

      20. After his mother and her husband Hal Berri separated, she made 13-year-old Steve apply for a social security number so that he could get a job and help with the rent, although there’s no evidence that he ever did actually hold a job.

      21. Steve McQueen was sent to the Boys Republic School in Chino, California, on February 6, 1945, by a court order obtained by his mother. The school was set up as its own little society in which the students were responsible for every facet of everyday life including running their own government. Students were responsible to themselves and their classmates, which taught respect and inspired confidence.

      22. Boy’s Republic School is a well-known, popular reform school today, but when Steve arrived, there were about 100 students, and he was given the number 3188. He lived at the John Brewer dormitory cottage and his mother paid $25 a month for his room and board.

      23. Although he looked back at his time at Boys Republic with fondness, while there he and some buddies tried to escape. His friends made it as far as Long Beach, California, before getting caught. Steve had decided to go it on his own and was caught underneath the entrance bridge to Boys Republic. This was the last formal education Steve received, having never made it past ninth grade.

      24. On April 1, 1946, Steve McQueen left Boys Republic, after his mother secured his release, and moved to be with her in New York. She was living at 240 Sullivan Street in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village with artist Viktor Lukens. It was he who pushed for Steve to come live near them, and upon his arrival, Lukens took on a paternal role. They rented a room from an actor down the street for Steve to live.

      25. At age 16, Steve joined the Merchant Marines after hearing about the adventures of a couple of sailors he met while drinking in a bar. He boarded a ship, the Alpha, in Yonkers, New York, and headed for the West Indies to pick up a cargo of molasses. Among the jobs he had on his maiden voyage were cleaning the decks under the hot summer sun, cleaning garbage receptacles, and cleaning toilets.

      26. The ship caught fire just after leaving port and almost sank. The crew wasn’t sure it could even reach the West Indies. McQueen jumped ship while docked at Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and quickly ended his career as a merchant marine.

      27. While in Santo Domingo, Steve secured a job as a towel boy at a brothel, which he often recalled with a certain fondness. His tropical tenure lasted two months before he made his way back to the United States.

      28. McQueen finally landed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, working at another carnival. He slept on a park bench, an object that became sentimental to him later. “Sometimes, when I start to figure I’ve got the world by the tail, I think back to the bench and remember that it could’ve ended up a lot differently.”

      29. Did you know that Steve once worked as a lumberjack in Canada? He ditched the carnival while there, but his fear of heights led him to quit and return to the United States. He spent 30 days on a chain gang after being arrested as a vagrant, then celebrated his 17th birthday in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

      30. In April 1947, living back in New York City, Steve reached out to his mother to sign a waiver so he could enlist in the Marine Corps at the age of 17. “I suppose I had heard enough of the stories about how tough the Corps was that I considered it somewhat of a challenge,” he said. Interestingly, he likely had no knowledge of his family’s extensive military service or that his father served in the Marine Corps from 1927 to 1929! On April 28, at the USMC Northeastern Recruiting Division District Headquarters at 90 Church Street, he filled out the official application, falsely saying that he had never been in jail or at a reform school.

      31. Although his relationship with his mother was tenuous, he signed over 75 percent of his Marine Corps enlistment pay to her and received the military number 649015.

      32. When discussing his time in the military in his later years, McQueen often joked that he had been “busted back down to private about seven times.” However, his service records don’t show a single demotion. In fact, his former drill instructor even said that he had been promoted at an impressive rate for peacetime service. The real joke is that one of his few friends in the Marines nicknamed him “Tough Shit McQueen” because the name on his uniform read “T. S. McQueen.”

      33. Although Steve’s documented birthday is March 21, his mother claimed it was really March 24. Interestingly, he always celebrated on the 21st even though the 24th is considered the accepted day.

      34. Steve’s Civil War veteran ancestor, Pike Montgomery Thomson, was captured by the Union army and awaiting execution when a Union captain decided otherwise. Rather than hang him like so many others, he exiled Thomson, his wife, and their child СКАЧАТЬ