The Sand Pebbles

[Mendocino]

Is just starting on TCM. A fine film!

[Harker]

1. Yes, a very good film.

Since childhood, I've sympathetically remembered "main stim stop wow."

[Mendocino]

3. The wonderful actor Mako

was nominated for the Academy Award for his role as Po-han.

[James48]

2. Everyone has his bowl of rice.

N/t

[Paladin]

4. Pretty good. "Nevada Smith" is the McQueen film that deserves more attention.

Excellent western. Brian Keith---as the gun dealer---steals the show, as usual.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. Not many people look as good in a cowboy hat as Steve McQueen.

The Western career of Steve McQueen



Trying to upstage

The Magnificent Seven, er, shot Steve McQueen to fame and marked him out immediately as a Western actor of note. It is in some ways surprising that he didn’t do more in the genre, although of course Westerns were becoming less frequent and McQueen’s tough-guy persona could appear instead driving race cars or as a hard-bitten cop (or in the case of Bullitt, both). Steve was all for doing the sequel Return of the Seven but it is said that Brynner vetoed the idea.

Nevada Smith (Paramount, 1966), which was produced and directed by Henry Hathaway and photographed by the great Lucien Ballard, ought to have been better than it was. A straight revenge Western, it suffers from implausibility and wooden acting. McQueen was 35 and blond yet trying to play a sixteen-year-old half-breed Kiowa. The movie has a ponderous plot. It was written by John Michael Hayes “based on the character in” the extraordinarily popular Harold Robbins novel (not to say potboiler) The Carpetbaggers. Brian Keith is solid if uninspiring as the traveling gunsmith who befriends McQueen and teaches him to shoot after Karl Malden, Arthur Kennedy and Martin Landau have brutally killed the boy’s parents. But the rest of the acting is pretty dire. Of course, the cast are not helped by the corny dialogue. The worst is Karl Malden, never a good Western actor, who hams it up embarrassingly badly. He is last seen screaming hysterically at the top of his voice, a typical mode for Malden.
....



Nevada

[Wounded Bear]

9. Caught the end of Bullitt last night...

Trend setting cop flick from '68. Set a high bar for car chases that has seldom been met.

McQueen nailed that character.

[Paladin]

10. So did I. For about the 100th time.

Funny how as time goes on and your "Bullitt" viewings increase, that car chase becomes less and less a factor. It's the little things that get to me now: McQueen nearly getting his eye put out by the careless waiter at that restaurant, with the jazz quartet playing in the background; the exchange on the street between McQueen and the big-sideburned character about the guy McQueen is after; McQueen sitting miserably on his bed in the morning, waiting for the instant coffee to perk, while his sharp partner deliberately gets him pissed by mouthing off the newspaper headlines.

Great, great movie. McQueen's cool masculinity was such a big factor in shaping guys like me, back in the 60's.

[Mendocino]

11. The trench coat

and turtleneck. The brown suede ghurka boots. The frozen food from the bodega. The texture of a film adds so much.

[Paladin]

13. The way he stacks together those TV dinners, with the mournful piano accompaniment.

Yeah, I've seen "Bullitt" a few times. And I'm guessing you have, as well. Good stuff.

[Mendocino]

14. Jaqueline Bisset

[Paladin]

15. Jaqueline Bisset, and that yellow Porsche...... (nt)

[Mendocino]

12. McQueen was set to play

the Sundance Kid until top-billing negotiations with Paul Newman broke down. Jack Lemon and Warren Beatty were also considered.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

5. Great flick.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. I've never seen that. IIRC, I have the DVD. I'll have to dig that out. NT

[malthaussen]

8. A better book. n/t