- Warner Home Video’s recently released Steve McQueen DVD collection box set consists of six “essential” features starring one of Hollywood’s groovy “rebels”: Never So Few, The Cincinnati Kid, Bullitt, The Getaway, Papillon, and Tom Horn.
Steve McQueen DVD collection comprises 6 titles, including The Cincinnati Kid and Bullitt
Though best remembered as one of the leads in big, bombastic action movies like The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, The Getaway, and The Towering Inferno, Steve McQueen was at his best in smaller efforts like Robert Mulligan’s romantic drama Love with the Proper Stranger, in which he gives a surprisingly sensitive performance as the (Italian-American?!) man who impregnates Natalie Wood, and Norman Jewison’s psychological drama The Cincinnati Kid, as a deceptively cocksure card shark playing opposite – and against – veteran card shark Edward G. Robinson.
The latter title is found among the six movies that make up Warner Home Video’s DVD box set “The Essential Steve McQueen Collection,” which came out on May 31. The other five are:
- John Sturges’ World War II-set drama Never So Few (1959), in which McQueen has a supporting role.
- A two-disc special edition of Peter Yates’ cop thriller Bullitt (1968).
- A deluxe edition of Sam Peckinpah’s action thriller The Getaway (1972).
- Franklin J. Schaffner’s prison drama Papillon (1973).
- William Wiard’s low-key Western Tom Horn (1980).
Below is a brief overview of each title.
Never So Few
Best Director Oscar nominee John Sturges (Bad Day at Black Rock, 1955) and screenwriter Millard Kaufman – adapting Tom T. Chamaless’ 1957 novel – are partly to blame for what must be one of the most tedious movies in Sturges’ career.
Equally to blame is Frank Sinatra, badly miscast as a U.S. army captain stationed in Southeast Asia during World War II. In a supporting role, McQueen plays a tough-minded corporal.
The year after the unessential Never So Few came out, Sturges and McQueen would be reunited on one of the seminal McQueen titles, The Magnificent Seven, a United Artists release left out of Warners’ “Essential” DVD box set.
Also in the Never So Few cast: Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lawford, Richard Johnson, Paul Henreid, Brian Donlevy, Dean Jones, Charles Bronson, and Philip Ahn.
The Cincinnati Kid
Steve McQueen delivers one of his most effective performances as the titular card shark in The Cincinnati Kid. Having said that, the movie’s climactic sequence belongs to the antihero’s card-sharking rival: Edward G. Robinson.
The fact that the Hollywood veteran failed to be shortlisted for 1965’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar – which he should also have won – is one more case of malpractice by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Actors’ Branch.
Besides McQueen and Robinson, The Cincinnati Kid features Tuesday Weld, Ann-Margret, Rip Torn, Jack Weston, Cab Calloway, and, in what unfortunately amounts to a cameo, Joan Blondell (Robinson’s leading woman in Bullets or Ballots).
Director Norman Jewison provides the audio commentary for The Cincinnati Kid.
Bullitt
Bullitt features what may well be Steve McQueen’s most iconic performance: Detective Lieutenant Frank Bullitt, a good San Francisco cop out to bring mobsters to justice.
While doing his man’s job, the detective takes part in what may well be the most iconic (and most unrealistic) car chase sequence in movie history, which helped earn film editor Frank P. Keller that year’s Academy Award.
Also in the Bullitt cast: Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Don Gordon, Robert Duvall, Simon Oakland, and Norman Fell.
Note: The Steve McQueen collection’s two-disc Bullitt DVD includes commentary by director Peter Yates, in addition to two new documentary features:
- Wendy Apple’s The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing (2004), narrated by Oscar winner Kathy Bates (Misery, 1990), and featuring interviews with Thelma Schoonmaker, Steven Spielberg, Jodie Foster, George Lucas, Sally Menken, Wes Craven, Sean Penn, James Cameron, and others.
- Mimi Freedman’s Steve McQueen: The Essence of Cool (2005), which includes interviews with Robert Vaughn, Peter Yates, Suzanne Pleshette, Robert Culp, Norman Jewison, Eli Wallach, and others.
The Getaway
A mindless but enjoyable romp, The Getaway – which was to have been directed by Peter Bogdanovich before Sam Peckinpah came on board – stars Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw as married crooks/bank robbers on the run from both the cops and assorted mobsters.
Future director Walter Hill (The Driver, The Warriors) was credited for the screenplay, based on Jim Thompson’s 1958 novel. (Thompson had been originally attached to adapt his book, but that reportedly didn’t work out for McQueen.)
Also in The Getaway: Recent Oscar winner Ben Johnson (The Last Picture Show, 1971), Al Lettieri, and Sally Struthers.
Note: This edition of The Getaway features a “virtual” audio commentary by McQueen, MacGraw, and Peckinpah. Here’s what that means: Snippets from different interviews edited together as a single joint commentary.
A couple of asides:
- McQueen and MacGraw would tie the knot in 1973. They would divorce five years later, which left McQueen’s life in disarray.
- Released in 1994, Roger Donaldson’s far less successful The Getaway remake starred then-married couple Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.
Papillon
Adapted by former blacklistee Dalton Trumbo (A Guy Named Joe, Roman Holiday) and Lorenzo Semple Jr. (Batman, Pretty Poison) from Henri Charrière’s 1969 novel, Papillon features one of Steve McQueen’s most unusual – and most effective – portrayals: An increasingly decrepit prison inmate who – following in the footsteps of Ronald Colman (Condemned), Clark Gable (Strange Cargo), Humphrey Bogart (We’re No Angels), et al – attempts to escape from Devil’s Island.
If only the movie itself had been as compelling as its star.
Also in the Papillon cast: Dustin Hoffman, Victor Jory, Don Gordon, Anthony Zerbe, Robert Deman, Bill Mumy, and George Coulouris.
Tom Horn
The (however fictionalized) story of the titular real-life outlaw of the late-19th-century American West, Tom Horn is an honorable attempt at a thoughtful, nuanced Western, though one that, however handsomely mounted, fails to reach its lofty goals.
It should be noted that unlike The Cincinnati Kid, The Getaway, and Papillon, Tom Horn – which happened to be Steve McQueen’s next-to-last release – turned out to be a box office disappointment.
Also in the cast: Linda Evans (who has the movie’s most memorable [blood-splattered] scene), Richard Farnsworth, Billy Green Bush, Slim Pickens, and Elisha Cook Jr.
Thomas McGuane and Bud Shrake were credited for adapting Horn’s 1904 autobiography Life of Tom Horn, Government Scout and Interpreter.
“Steve McQueen DVD Collection” notes/references
Warner Bros. website.
Also released on May 31 was Warner Home Video’s “The Complete James Dean Collection” (East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause, Giant).
Steve McQueen DVD box set cover: Warner Home Video.
“Steve McQueen DVD Collection: 6 ‘Essential’ Titles” last updated in November 2024.