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McQueen was born in Beech Grove, Indiana, a suburban community bordering Indianapolis, in Marion County. His father, William, a stunt pilot for a barnstorming flying circus, abandoned McQueen and his mother when McQueen was six months old. His mother, Julia, was a young, rebellious alcoholic. Unable to cope with bringing up a small child, she left him with her parents (Victor and Lillian) in Slater, Missouri, in 1933. Shortly thereafter, as the Great Depression set in, McQueen and his grandparents moved in with Lillian's brother Claude on the latter's farm in Slater.



McQueen had good memories of the time spent on his Great Uncle Claude's farm. In recalling Claude, McQueen stated "He was a very good man, very strong, very fair. I learned a lot from him." On McQueen's fourth birthday, Claude gave him a red tricycle, which McQueen later claimed started his interest in racing. At age 8, he was taken back by his mother and lived with her and her new husband in Indianapolis. McQueen retained a special memory of leaving the farm: "The day I left the farm Uncle Claude gave me a personal going-away present; a gold pocket watch, with an inscription inside the case." The inscription read: "To Steve-- who has been a son to me."
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"In 1979, McQueen was diagnosed with terminal cancer and checked into a shady Mexican clinic run by an ex-dentist and organic-food salesman named Willian Kelley, and actually seemed to be getting better until he succumbed to a heart attack following a relatively minor medical procedure. Kelley, who himself later died of cancer, told me that the official “complications from surgery” version of events was a sham and that in fact “someone with access to Steve’s room” had deliberately injected him with a blood-clotting solution to induce a cardiac arrest. When I asked Kelley why anyone would do so, he replied that it was because McQueen was recovering under his care, and his survival would have been seen as an intolerable threat to the “mainstream cancer-treatment racket.”

Before Mexico, however, there was the ranch and Americana, and what was perhaps a surprising move to most. McQueen began attending worship services at the nearby Ventura Missionary Church, where he one day introduced himself—as though his face might not already be familiar—to the pastor, Leonard De Witt, informing him that he was sick and tired of Hollywood, had “led a godless life,” and was ready to be born again. Unsurprisingly, some of the actor’s old gang had a cynical interpretation of what followed. By then, the theory went, McQueen already knew he was ill; he would never have set foot in a church except as a kind of insurance policy. But set against this, there’s the testimony of De Witt himself, no soft touch when it comes to character judgment, who told me: “Steve made a genuine conversion. Christianity was all of a piece with his leaving Hollywood and searching for new values. That’s what we talked about for literally hours on end.”

The guy who tried to walk off with $250 of studio cash plastered to his frame was also capable of great generosity. “I believe that spiritual side to him was always there,” insisted Pastor De Witt, “and he was a living example of practical Christianity long before I met him, anonymously buying thousands of dollars’ worth of new sports equipment for schools and youth clubs, leaving expensive gifts at peoples’ doors in the middle of the night, and then giving them that ‘Who, me?’ look if they asked him about them.” De Witt summed it up this way: “Most of us are really two people, if not more. But the split in personality was unusually wide in McQueen’s case. You could even use the word schizophrenic. There was the tough guy, obviously, and just below that there was an endearingly vulnerable, sweet-natured kid signaling wildly to be let out. I think you can see both sides of Steve at work long before the day he knocked on my office door and asked to be baptized.”

All-American Steve McQueen

Being called an anti-semite is like being called anti-pedo, anti-bullshit, anti-genocide and a nationalist all in one.

Being called a racist is like being told I recognize biological tendencies in mother nature. It's practically like calling me smart by a dumb ass that doesn't even know what smart is.

Do the time do the crime

Starter kit: "The Great Escape", "Nevada Smith" and "Bullitt".

they're going to bomb your dresden anyway. might as well not build camps.