POSITIVE VIBES SENT YOUR WAY!

Steve and Barbara McQueen
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Many of you who are voracious book readers inspire me as I get around to your Blogs and see how many books you've read in a month. As a Steve McQueen superfan, I just finished "Steve McQueen: The Last Mile". It contains 400 photos of Steve (that have never been published) and shot through the lens of wife Barbara McQueen's camera. There is a short story here that I wanted to Blog about since dark stories of Hollywood melt-downs and local homicides does absolutely nothing to to build Hope, in my personal opinion.

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During the filming of Steve's final motion picture, "The Hunter", much of the location work took place in Chicago on the dangerous Kenmore Street. There had been a homicide there a week before the film crew set up and it was certainly no place to be during the day or night. During a scene with lots of extras, a young feisty girl caught Steve's eye. Keen to children who had a hard life as he did growing up, he asked her "Why aren't you in school?" The girl, Karen Wilson, replied, "Because I need to make extra money". Steve was shocked. As it turned out, Karen was baby-sitting a 7-year old neighbor named "Bobo". Physically abused and malnourished by his parents, Karen became Bobo's caregiver. Steve and his wife Barbara visited Karen's mother, where they found her entire family living in unspeakable conditions in a ghetto. The mother had no interest in Karen. Steve got to the point. "We'd like to take Karen back with us to California, put her in a good school so that she has a chance to get out of here", he said. Earlier that year, Steve was quite sick on the set of "Tom Horn", a Western film he researched tenaciously and filmed here in Arizona co-starring Linda Evans. While largely retired from film acting at a young age, Steve read Christopher Keane's 1976 biography of "Papa Ralph Thorson", a bounty hunter. Despite having dyslexia, Steve finished the book in one sitting and he felt energized to make a film. Barbara recalls Steve telling her, "There's a helluva story here". But his health condition worsened during filming of "The Hunter" from Mesothelioma, a very painful and terminal form of cancer brought about by asbestos exposure. Production on "The Hunter" began on September 10, 1979. Once filming wrapped, Steve and Barbara became Karen's legal guardians and they enrolled her in a private boarding school in Ojai, California . On weekends, the McQueens would pick Karen up from school for the weekend so she could have some sense of stability with love and acceptance. Word reach The McQueens that Karen's mother died in June, 1980. (Steve would die just five months later). But the McQueens made sure Karen graduated from high school. Today, Karen is happily married and a mother of four children working for an escrow company in Los Angeles. At just 50, Steve was ready to retire early from the Hollywood scene. He had sold the couple's Malibu home, achieved all of his professional goals and found the spiritual solace that he was searching for his entire life. Together with Barbara, the happy couple had planned a quiet life and starting a family in Ketchum, Idaho. Steve was by all accounts a very private person who preferred breakfast at Denny's and driving an old Ford Pickup truck, or taking a motorcycle ride. He and Barbara were avid motorcyclists who earned their private pilots licenses and enjoyed the hobby of collecting antique furniture, toys and automobiles. This is quite a contrast to today's overblown displays of egos awash on "TMZ "or "Entertainment Tonight". With a full beard and long hair he was able to go anywhere unnoticed. There are many stories of Steve's generosity. Sometime later, I'll share one about actor Levar Burton, another young person who caught Steve's eye as a promising talent who just needed "a break". It's quite a shame that stories like this one are hardly featured on television. But I hope that this one brightened your day.

Photo Courtesy of Barbara McQueen
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HAPPY FRIDAY ALL!