Steve McQueen Family Members Attend The King of Cool Returns To Hollywood

Neile Adams McQueen, the former first wife of the legendary iconic actor, Steve McQueen, and mother and grandmother of the McQueen Family, will attend the Jules Verne Festival's Official 30th Anniversary Tribute to Steve McQueen, entitled, "The King of Cool Returns To Hollywood," with McQueen family members, Chad McQueen (her son), Jeanie McQueen (her daughter-in-law) and her grandchildren, Steve R. McQueen (Vampire Diaries), Molly Flattery, Chase McQueen and Madison McQueen. The tribute, which will be held at the ArcLight Hollywood, Cinerama Dome; 6360 West Sunset Boulevard; Hollywood, CA 90028 on Thursday, November 11, 2010 at 7:00 p.m., is presented by the Jules Verne Festival creators, Jean-Christophe Jeauffre and Frédéric Dieudonne.

The year of 2010 marks the 30th Anniversary of Steve McQueen's untimely passing at the age of 50 on November 7, 1980, and at the same time this year marks what would have been the actor's 80th birthday year. Steve McQueen was born on March 24, 1930.

In observance and remembrance of Steve McQueen, the Tribute will feature a Star-Studded Red Carpet, the Presentation of the Jules Verne Légendairre Award to Chad McQueen and a Special Screening of Bullitt. Other celebrities confirmed to attend include: actress and co-star, Jacqueline Bisset; co-star and former second wife, Ali MacGraw; music composer, Lalo Schifrin and actor and co-star, Robert Vaughn.

This event is open for the general public to attend. Tickets for General Admission are $25 each (Unreserved Seating); VIP tickets are $45 each, which includes Reserved Seating, a Special Will Call Line and a Collector's Program. For further information please call Marie Bobin at the Jules Verne Festival at 213-884-7005. To buy tickets online, please visit www.julesverne.org.

The movie Bullitt was made in 1968 and stars Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Vaughn and Robert Duvall. Music for the film was written by Lalo Schifrin. The movie was directed by Peter Yates. Robert E. Relyea served as head of production for Solar Productions and Executive Producer of the film. Mario Iscovich, who served as Steve McQueen's personal assistant on the film, is now a film producer himself.

The Steve McQueen Tribute Event is the 6th installment of the Jules Verne Légendaire Awards, celebrating Legendary Movies and Stars. Previous celebrations had included: Blade Runner, The Birds, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Some Like It Hot, and hosted honorees James Cameron, Tony Curtis, Harrison Ford, Tippi Hedren and George Lucas, to name a few.

About Steve McQueen:
Steven Terrence McQueen (Steve McQueen's birth name) was born on March 24, 1930 in Beech Grove, Indiana, and endured a troubled childhood which included being abandoned by his father, left to be raised by a great-granduncle, and then taken by his mother to California to live with her husband. He became involved in gang life, eventually ending up in The California Junior Boys Republic, which later became The Boys Republic, where he finally learned responsibility. After a brief stint in the Marines, he went to New York and took up acting, winning a scholarship to Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. Of the 2000 performers who auditioned for The Actors Studio in 1955, only two were accepted: Martin Landau and Steve McQueen.

McQueen impressed everyone who saw him and quickly earned a small role in Robert Wise's Somebody Up There Likes Me as well as his first Broadway role in A Hatful of Rain. After a string of low-budget movies, including the cult classic, The Blob, McQueen landed the starring role in the Western television series, Wanted: Dead or Alive, playing a soft-spoken bounty hunter with a sawed-off rifle. Within a few years, he had become a household name.

A series of movies with director John Sturges soon followed, with McQueen holding his own opposite such top stars as Frank Sinatra in Never So Few and Yul Brynner in The Magnificent Seven before receiving top billing in The Great Escape.

In 1963, McQueen began his own Production Company, Solar Productions, for which he starred in the gritty police drama, Bullitt. The film is still famous to this day for its car chase through the streets of San Francisco. Other films which Solar Productions had involvement, and in which Steve McQueen played leading roles, include: The Cincinnati Kid, Nevada Smith, The Sand Pebbles, (for which he was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor), The Thomas Crown Affair, (a film in which he countered his typical blue-collar, tough guy roles he had been cast in by taking the suave lead role), and Le Mans.

About the same time, McQueen's 15 and 1/2-year marriage to Neile Adams was on the rocks over his frequent affairs, and sometimes, violent rages. Adams is the mother to McQueen's two children, the late Terry McQueen and Chadwick Steven McQueen (Chad). Steve McQueen and Neile Adams divorced in 1972. McQueen then married his co-star in the box office hit, The Getaway, Ali MacGraw.

In the midst of a career high for McQueen, which included bravura performances in The Towering Inferno and Papillon, he once again was hit with personal problems, as he and MacGraw quickly found they were completely incompatible.

McQueen entered a semi-retirement, appearing in the films, An Enemy of the People, Tom Horn and The Hunter. In 1977, McQueen and MacGraw finally called it quits, and McQueen developed a relationship with a young model named Barbara Minty. In addition, his health was beginning to fail him, when he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer caused by asbestos exposure.

Looking towards the future and refusing to accept his doctor's prognosis, McQueen married Minty in 1980, got a New Group of friends and became a born-again Christian. He then went to Mexico for alternative treatments for his illness, but the treatments did not help, and he passed away on November 7, 1980. Today, 30 years after his passing, Steve McQueen is regarded as one the most iconic movie stars of all time. His legacy lives on through the body of his work he left behind.

 

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