On last week’s installment of our Prove Me Wrong segment I asserted that “Sedans are now cooler than wagons” and expected a fusillade of hatred and, actually, you were all mostly reasonable? Let me try something I also sincerely believe but maybe other people will not: Steve McQueen looked cool but wasn’t actually cool and you shouldn’t pretend to be him. Instead, if you feel the need to cosplay as mid-century actor you should model your life after James Garner. James Garner was cooler than Steve McQueen ever was.
This has been brewing in me for a while, but I was hanging out at a coffee shop in Monterey a couple of weeks ago during car week and a dude in the full McQueen walked in. He had the Steve McQueen Gulf Oil leather jacket. He had the Steve McQueen sunglasses. I’m pretty sure he had one of the watches. Then this dude takes off his jacket and he has a Steve McQueen shirt on underneath.
I will admit that the aesthetic works. For all the things you can say about Steve McQueen that are negative–keep reading for me to share some of those things–it’s hard to argue that he didn’t at least look cool. Steve McQueen looked more like a movie star than any three macho modern movie stars you can think of: Chris Pine, Michael Fassbender, and Tom Hardy? Nope. Christian Bale and both Hemsworths? Not even close.
Steve McQueen, visually, perfectly embodies some sort of platonic ideal of a famous alpha male and that’s one of the big reasons why people ape his style. It doesn’t work. Don’t do that. You are not Steve McQueen and you don’t want to be Steve McQueen.
I’m not going to critique his acting because I think he was a good actor and he had a rough start to life that he wore very clearly on his face even in ridiculous early films like The Blob. When Steve McQueen smiles in a film, and he doesn’t do it all that often, it feels great, partly because it doesn’t happen that often. It’s charming. He steals The Towering Inferno from Paul Newman. Paul Newman!
As a person, though, not so great. I read “Steve McQueen: A Biography” by Mark Eliot a few years ago and it’s kind of a hagiography so I don’t really recommend it just on principle, but if you like Steve McQueen I extremely suggest you don’t read it. Like, Werner Herzog in “Grizzly Man” imploring the woman whose friend was just eaten by a bear to not listen to the tape of the friend being eaten levels of: DO NOT READ. In fact, don’t read any further. Just take my word for it and stop emulating him.
You’re still here? Ok.
Even in a book that gives Steve McQueen an awful helluva lot of credit due to his not-so-great childhood it’s hard to ignore that McQueen had a large side of him that treated other people terribly.
His ex-wife Nelle McQueen Toffel wrote a book about McQueen called “My Husband, My Friend” and there’s a scene in it where she goes to visit him in France while he’s making the film “Le Mans” and he’s clearly sleeping around on her even though they’re still married. There are all these girls following him from place to place. He admits it to her and then, maybe out of a sense of guilt, tries to get her to admit she cheated on him. She won’t do it. He coerces her to do a bump of coke and puts a gun to her head and forces her to tell him, saying he’ll find out and kill her and kill the guy so she might as well tell him.
It’s harrowing and it’s far from the only example of Steve McQueen being abusive and violent, towards women or towards anyone.
Also, on the topic of Le Mans. It’s fun to watch once because it has some rad shots if you view it as an art film and not a film that’s supposed to be narratively or emotionally fulfilling. If you want want the same emotions and same basic story you can watch Claude Lelouch’s A Man and a Woman and you even get a great Mustang. If you want to experience Le Mans, it’s a little more expensive to go to France and watch it but it’s way better and at least feels about half as long as the movie on the second watch.
Steve McQueen could act. He could look cool. He could drive cars fast. He was in that great war movie where he tries to escape from the Nazis. It’s a bummer he died young because if he’d have lived a little longer maybe he’d have reconciled with everyone and made a proper amens for all the shit he pulled, but he mostly didn’t and no amount of suave-looking sunglasses can really make up for what he was like if you take the time to dive deeper and find out what he was like.
You know who also could act? Who also looked cool and could drive fast cars? Who also made a movie about racing? You know who was in the same movie about getting away from Nazis? James Garner.
James Garner lived 86 years and, as far as I can tell, was fucking great for all 86 of them.
Acting? In the same way that McQueen gets the edge on Newman I’d give points to Garner in The Great Escape. While McQueens character gets to be moody and cool he mostly makes trouble and irritates people while Garner is key to the whole program. There are parallels here.
James Garner had a long career and did a bunch of great things, including Maverick and The Rockford Files. It’s not worth arguing over who was better because it’s more a matter of taste than anything quantifiable, but most of McQueen’s roles relied on him being the aloof tough guy whereas a great deal of Garner’s roles worked because, behind the smile and the charm, there was a profound sense of empathy. JG was way funnier, too, there’s no way to prove me wrong there.
This extends to real life as well. Garner also had a terrible upbringing. He was abused. His step mother tried to kill him. It’s pretty awful and it’s no good trying to stack someone’s victimhood against another person’s troubled formative years, but these kind of experiences can often lead people to become selfish for understandable reasons of self-protection or they can make you feel responsible for the larger world around you and it’s clear that Garner took the latter path.
“I cannot stand to see little people picked on by big people,” he told People magazine in an interview. “If a director starts abusing people, I’ll just jump in.”
Garner was a veteran with two Purple Hearts from serving in the Korean War. If this is important to you, he was married to his wife Lois for 58 years. He was a vociferous supporter of Civil Rights all his life and a patron of the arts.
Was he the better race car driver than Steve McQueen? Hard to say, but during the making of Grand Prix the great racing driver and coach Bob Bondurant said that Garner could have competed in Formula 1 at the time and beaten some of the drivers. Either way, he was involved with motorsports for most of his life after that point.
Not only did James Garner also do his own driving in Grand Prix, the movie is approximately 9 million times more fun to watch than Le Mans and I’d argue both technically the better movie and narratively better as well (which no sane person would argue with).
The Rockford Files is bonkers good. Let’s just stop reading and watch a minute and a half of “Rockford turns” aka j-turns.
From a fashion perspective I think the McQueen thing is so played out at this point that you’re better off trying to look like Jim Rockford. There’s definitely a ’70s-dad vibe to it. This is the same era that gave us Elliott Gould as the sexist man alive and, you know what? I’m here for it. Gimme a houndstooth jacket with a bigass collar and sunglasses dark enough to prevent any sunlight from ever entering or escaping.
I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. If you try to emulate Steve McQueen you are, at best, saying “He looks cool and I’ve given it no other thought” or, at worst, saying “I’ve actually given it some thought and I don’t really care about all the other stuff.”
Oh, and the person Steve McQueen thought that his wife was cheating on him with? Reportedly it was James Garner, to which Garner replied, with unsurprising grace: “He wasn’t a bad guy, just insecure.”
And I think that’s all that needs to be said. If you’re being generous, McQueen’s act was an expression of his own insecurity and, often I suspect, acting like Steve McQueen is in a way embracing that same insecurity.
Give it some thought. Be like James Garner. Or, Paul Newman, I suppose. That guy was pretty ok, too.
No argument here. Watching The Rockford Files with my dad is a memory I’ll always cherish
Totally agree the whole McQueen thing is totally overplayed especially in the car world (although the stupid overs on ex McQueen cars is apparently just a battle between one or two collectors and auction houses chandelier bidding the price up).
I’m glad Garner stuck around as long as he did. He made no secret of the fact he was just passing through on his way to Australia.
So true. Mr. Garner was such a great and funny man. Just watch his interview on Dick Cavett! He was so humble an had funny evil streak. My type of a person.
… in the full McQueen…
I feel like that needs to be capitalized, thusly: “…in The Full McQueen…”
Wouldn’t “The Full McQueen” be the opposite end of the spectrum from “The Full Chicago” that Click and Clack used to mention on “Car Talk”?
And re the McQueen vs Garner fashion thing, McQueen apparently thought so too.
He was said to have gotten super upset with Garner looking so cool in that turtleneck in the Great Escape. Garner, told about it later, expressed that he’d have happily given it to him if he’d just asked.
Fun trivia, George Lucas borrowed James Garner’s Lola T 70 for THX 1138.
That’s amazing, I’ve always wondered how Lucas managed to get that car while working with such a shoestring budget.
My thanks to Garner for doing so echoes across the years.
His Lola really tied that film together.
Steve McQueen was a talented actor who was also a massive dick.
James Garner was at the March on Washington.
Case closed.
COTD!!!
How could you not mention Garners documentary movie “The Racing Scene”
It’s on Amazon and also on YouTube
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LdiqOEZpR0Y
Very highly recommend. He was so much more serious about racing than McQueen.
Love Garner and have for a long time. He was always cool to me and I grew up watching him on the small screen as The Rockford Files was required watching both in my house and in my grandparents house. My mother had a crush on him when she was a young teen and we watched the reruns of Maverick also.
McQueen meh, not so much. If he was on, OK, but we never sought him out either.
i think the first thing i saw him in was my fellow americans. love that fucking movie. then he had space cowboys yaya sisterhood and the notebook. never did watch rockford.
Confession: I have never attempted a “Rockford” on dry pavement. This is a shortcoming that I regret, and will have to rectify someday.
Done plenty of them on dirt and snow, though…
They must be done in your parents fwd car/minivan. I cringe now at the thought. I would never do that to my car. Lots of G forces and its all backwards. Can’t be good on stuff. Anyway they never did figure out exactly how I got grass in the bead of the tire.
Can I come too? That sounds like a good time. Maybe DT and Torch can get us a press car, or something from Baeu…
But Steve McQueen directed “12 years a Slave”! He also acted in “The Great Escape” when he was -6 years old!!! Also, did you know that he is black and was born in London?
Sidenote: It is possible that I clicked on the wrong link in IMDb.
My Dad watched Rockford Files but it was past my bedtime. I begged enough times that I saw quite a few of them. The first thing I did when I got a car – found a parking lot and tried to learn a J-turn. I can tell you it’s nigh impossible with a Corvair umbrella style hand brake.
I think a nice scotch and a couple of episodes on FreeVee are in order.
A J-turn doesn’t require any use of the parking brake at all tho.
It does in a Firebird.
“When you are going straight in reverse about 35 miles an hour,” Garner explained of the maneuver, “you come off the gas pedal, go hard left, and pull on the emergency brake. That locks the wheels and throws the front end around. Then you release everything, hit the gas, and off you go in the opposite direction.”
I know from experience that an 81 Celica GT will do it fine on dry pavement, best to slightly over inflate the tires first. No parking brake required.
Yep. My ’80 Celica GT would do it , too. I used the handbrake, though, cause that’s the way Garner explained it. I never tried it without. Now I wanna go back in time, and have high school me, try it again. But that reminds me of how bad I wanted a Mustang GT, instead of that Celica GT, back in ’86.
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Tom Selleck talked about learning from James Garner during their time together on The Rockford Files. He said Garner was always early to work and knew every person’s name from the weekly guest stars down to the guy sweeping the floors.
I always like that Selleck lobbied the Magnum pi producers to dramatically alter the show’s concept to make it more Rockford Files in character…that Thomas Magnum wouldn’t be a rich playboy with all these resources at his command, but more a low key everyman who does his best with what he has. And does get beat up, like Jim always did.
Considering that Garner ran the Rockford Files production as his own production and fielded the expenses himself, that’s not a surprise.
Tom Selleck wasn’t in enough Rockford episodes. I wonder how Garner truly felt about the younger and quite dashing Selleck nipping at his tv stardom heels. He’s quite diplomatic in his memoir but …
I like to think Garner maybe brought a little of his feelings about Selleck into those episodes.
Jim frequently kinda rolls his eyes/half grits his teeth as Lance charms the police, is insanely knowledgeable about something, or gets the girl.
Those are some of my favorites of the series. “The alarm’s a reminder to stay on target Jim…time’s wasting, let’s go!”
Headline is too long, should simply read “James Garner Was The Man.”
Anyone know if Garner did his own stunt driving on Rockford Files? If so, color me impressed – some of those J-turns are in pretty tight confines.
Almost exclusively.
https://driving.ca/vehicle-types/classic-cars/famous-for-acting-but-a-racer-at-heart-the-cars-of-james-garner
James Garner’s memoir “The Garner Files” is a fantastically entertaining dishing of dirty laundry, just one jaw dropping revelation after another. While I knew he was overtly a Democrat (despite being from Oklahoma) I had no idea the depth of his progressive convictions. If he were alive today …
Garner thought McQueen was a pompous, insufferable Republican. Seems spot on to me.
https://www.amazon.com/Garner-Files-Memoir-Jon-Winokur/dp/145164261X/
It’s a fun read. I loved the end with the assorted other celebrities’ tales of him. I figure he himself didn’t want that (doesn’t seem in his character), but the publisher did it as a surprise for him.
Though I will say, in a tiny bit of consideration for McQueen, Garner does come off as more than a little preachy/self-righteous in it at times. And it’s his book, so it’s not like it’s some authorized, slanted bio.
If you can’t get a little preachy in your own memoirs, where can you? Outside of a pulpit, I mean. Readers are there to hear your perspective in your own words.
Garner was all over the place doing cool stuff. Acting, golfing, racing and advocating. He had a well rounded life and left the world a little better than he found it. Hard to argue with that.
The story about McQueen always getting drunk and pelting Jim Garner’s house with golfballs is hilarious Hollywood lore. (McQueen lived up the hill from Jim in West LA). Apparently McQueen never got over Jimmy making a better racing movie, earlier, with a better director (Frankenheimer). Hollywood feuds.
As much as I adored Garner, Paul Newman probably trumped both Jim and Steve with his racing chops. He was a serious racer, paid his dues, and was fast.
And, for your trouble? How about Jim Garner racing Baja?
https://youtu.be/uE8JPV-CCkc
The tales of the two of them racing their Minis (imported from the UK while making the Great Escape) around their neighborhood always makes me smile.
The whole thing seems so ’60s that it could even happen for awhile before people would think “hmmmm….maybe we *should* call the police…I know they’re just tiny Eur-o-pean cars, but somebody might get hurt damnit!”
Garner’s baja Olds 442 blew my mind as a kid.
I first saw it in some sort of Hot Rod Magazine retrospective, maybe in a “this month 20 years ago in Hot Rod”-type thing. “Whoa, an off-road 442? And racing at Baja? And with JIM ROCKFORD behind the wheel? Why didn’t anyone tell me this was a thing?”
Dunno– there were all sorts of production and script problems. Jim (and “Angel”) were great, as always, but they quickly did a Jump The Shark move and brought in “his meaner brother”.
It was all kind of a muddle, but very entertaining. IIRC, Lois Lane even showed up didn’t she?
And, wonderful early Harley– just for fun.
Site did a weird reply to the wrong comment thing just now. Sorry.
There’s a great extended Baja racing video with Jim driving the Ford– and he was totally focused. Not rude to the interviewer– but it was clear that he was there to race, race to win, and not waste time for the TV cameras.
You’ll get no argument from me. McQueen on his best day only comes across as insufferable and self-centered. Garner decent human being and that came through in every role I’ve ever seen him in. Not all of his stuff has aged really well (looking at you, Rockford) but that’s not his fault. In their era, his movies and TV shows were great. And the fact that he was also a helluva driver and would no doubt be an active commenter on The Autopian were he alive today, is just a little extra icing on the cake (or oil on the crankshaft, or whatever).
Garner was a decent human being…
My kingdom for an edit function!!
This. The stories about McQueen cheating on his wife during the making of LeMans are sickening– especially when you consider the carnage out ON the track under his oversight in filming.
Wait, what?
Heck yes! Love this content! Also the Rockford files intro music was as funky as the Sanford and Son intro so so 70s!
I pull up the Sanford and Son theme song every time I load up the truck and go on a dump run.
FYI, Garner was the better kisser as well. According to Sally Field, after Garner kissed her in Murphy’s Romance, she had to sit in her trailer for the rest of the day because she was all verklempt (look it up).
And this is a woman who kissed Burt Reynolds a lot, people.
McQueen’s best performance was alongside Dustin Hoffman in Papillon.
Now I wonder if there is a Garner-equivalent for James Dean…
This was a good read. Steve McQueen did have the edge of a snappy name *cue Sheryl Crow*
Steve McQueen is a pretty great song.
FYI: The Great Escape inspired this movie:
https://youtu.be/jVdlxwX6A7g