Get Mahoney! by Jim Mahoney

Author:Jim Mahoney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2023-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

I’ll Take What I Want

STEVE MCQUEEN KNEW what he wanted from the very start: stardom.

More than any other personality with whom I have ever been associated, McQueen’s quest to be Hollywood’s biggest star was unstoppable. No one was going to get in his way.

He mentally beat up everyone associated with him for this quest. I can’t ever remember him being satisfied with anyone’s effort on his behalf. His agents suffered unmercifully, even though they did an excellent job managing a career that was, from the very beginning, average at best.

McQueen didn’t explode off Broadway like Brando or Newman, or any number of other megastars. His feature film debut was in the “The Blob.”

I first became acquainted with Steve McQueen when I was representing Four Star Television. As previously mentioned, he was starring in one of their shows, “Wanted Dead or Alive.” Four Star, originally founded by Dick Powell, David Niven, Joel McCrea, and Charles Boyer, was a very successful operation and produced such hits as “Zane Grey Theatre,” “The Rifleman,” and “The Big Valley.” Onetime advertising guru Tom McDermott was running the company during this period, and one of his young stars, McQueen, was making life miserable for everyone. Nearly every meeting I had with McDermott had to be postponed because of “another problem with McQueen.”

The problems were always something small, but annoying, like his dislike of a script, or the director wasn’t any good, or they weren’t paying enough for the supporting cast.

One day, McDermott said, “Jim, you’d be doing me a great favor if you’d go to work for McQueen and get him off my back.”

As it happens, I did just that.

During this period, I was doing a pro bono piece of work for an agent by the name of Stan Kamen at the William Morris Agency. He told me if I’d do a pro bono Academy Award campaign for one of his new clients, who was crying poverty, he’d see to it that I’d be rewarded somewhere down the line. His new client was Peter Falk, and the movie was “Murder Inc.,” what we all thought was a “B” picture. As it turned out, Falk went on to win an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for the role.

Kamen’s payment to me was convincing McQueen he needed me as his PR man.

There’s no doubt Steve McQueen had a certain style, look, attitude, and talent. We gave him the nickname, “The King of Cool.” The TV show gave him a platform to play up this image, and with our well-placed “guest spots” on late night television and an occasional Bob Hope special, he was getting good exposure. He was a racecar enthusiast, and this kind of hip hobby helped, too.

Hedda Hopper took an early interest in his career and went out of her way to give him ink. He had charm, and when he turned it on, he was a killer.

Though he was a tough personality to manage, Steve and his wife, Nellie Adams, became good enough friends that he made my wife and I godparents to their daughter Terry.

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