I can’t make it East to New York for the Steve McQueen retrospective going on at the Walter Reade Theatre through  May 26th so in lieu of attending I’ll talk instead about a Steve McQueen credit not on the roster of films there.  Before he was cool – before he was “Make it Vin” of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960), the “Cooler King” of THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963) or the vengeful NEVADA SMITH (1965) – Steve McQueen was like any number of actor hopefuls, just another blue-eyed blond boy living on handouts, bravado and chance.  At the time he appeared in THE GREAT ST. LOUIS BANK ROBBERY (1959), McQueen was newly married to cabaret singer Neile Adams and very much living in her shadow.  He’d done some stage work and live television (a babyfaced murderer on a two-part episode of STUDIO ONE broadcast in two parts in early 1957 and a forerunner of the later THE DEFENDERS series); he’d turned up in an uncredited bit in the 1956 Rocky Graziano biopic SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME starring Paul Newman and he acted alongside his wife and veteran Hollywood heavy Peter Lorre in a memorable 1960 episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS. Nevertheless, as he approached the age of 30, McQueen was by most standards (and his own) floundering.  He had a good supporting role as a an assistant district attorney in NEVER LOVE A STRANGER (1958), an adaptation of a Harold Robbins novel that nobody saw, but he spent the lion’s share of his time waiting for Adams to finish her Vegas act and spending her money on games of chance and new cars.  By this point, he hadn’t even yet starred in the cult classic THE BLOB (1958), which would throughout his short life sit at the bottom of his curriculum vitae like a badly digested bit of ham.  He was a nobody, going nowhere fast.

The offer of a lead role finally came McQueen’s way with the caveat that he would have to travel to Missouri for it.  The daring though failed robbery of a St. Louis branch of Southwest Bank on Friday, April 24, 1953, was a natural for the movies.  While a crew of Chicago gunmen lay siege to the bank, a government depository fat with payroll money, civilian onlookers and about a hundred local policemen surrounded the crime scene in a scenario that would be replayed in years to come in films from Rolf Olsen’s BLUTIGER FREITAG (BLOODY FRIDAY, 1972) and Sidney Lumet’s fact-based DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975) to Bill Murray’s QUICK CHANGE (1990) and Spike Lee’s INSIDE MAN (2006).  Charged with directing the film was Charles Guggenheim, an Ohio-born, New York-based filmmaker who would go on to win multiple Academy Awards for his documentary short subjects on desegregation, Robert F. Kennedy and the Johnstown Flood.  Prior to hiring on to direct THE GREAT ST. LOUIS BANK ROBBERY, Guggenheim had served as a producer of the NBC summer replacement series FEARLESS FOSDICK.  Enacted entirely with puppets, this spoof of Chester Gould’s supercop Dick Tracy was the creation of cartoonist Al Capp, who made Fosdick’s (mis)adventures the preferred reading matter of his hillbilly hero Li’l Abner.  Partnering with Guggenheim to co-direct was John Stix, a native of St. Louis who had become an Off-Broadway director and founding member of the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute.  In addition to his New York theatre work, Stix had helmed episodes of the anthology TV series OMNIBUS and WINDOWS.  Not much in the way of behind-the-scenes information survives but the likely deduction is that Guggenheim was attracted to the project for its verite possibilities while Stix would have been more adept handling the actors.

In the film, McQueen plays George Fowler, a high school football star whose college career was rendered considerably less than brilliant due to an unnamed indiscretion that got both him and his now ex-sweetheart Ann (Molly McCarthy, who went from this to the cult classic BLAST OF SILENCE) expelled.  (The extreme aura of sadness and regret that hangs between the former lovers in their handful of scenes together suggests nothing less than a teen pregnancy and a subsequent back alley abortion.)  Hard up for cash, George falls in with Ann’s ne’r-do-well brother Gino (David Clarke, a familiar face from such crime films as RAW DEAL, THE SET-UP, THIEVES’ HIGHWAY and THE NARROW MARGIN), who gets him included as a driver in the proposed robbery of a St. Louis bank.

Although the film is an early credit for him and McQueen isn’t quite the McQ of his best work, most of the elements that made the actor a household name are all in place.  At 5’9″, McQueen could never overpower other actors with his sheer physical presence but he knew how to steal focus, padding into frame on the balls of his feet like a dancer or a gymnast.  His George Fowler is dark and cynical but way out of his league and McQueen reveals George’s coping process with techniques upon which he would rely again and again in later films: a cat-like caution and an impassive, guarded expression betrayed by eyes that scan, assess and judge.  You’d see these mannerisms throughout the McQueen oeuvre, providing insight into the life of his characters’ minds – keeping a poker face in THE CINCINNATI KID (1965), planning and executing the perfect heist in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1968), scoping out a crime scene in BULLIT (1968), navigating the circles of betrayal and retribution of THE GETAWAY (1972), looking for a way out in PAPILLON (1973) and fighting the mother of high rise fires in THE TOWERING INFERNO (1974).

THE GREAT ST. LOUIS BANK ROBBERY is also remarkable for a number of reasons having little to nothing to do with Steve McQueen.  The film toggles intriguingly (if perhaps unevenly) between the neo-realism of the documentary-style crime films (THE NAKED CITY, HE WALKED BY NIGHT) that capped the film noir epoch a decade earlier and something more expressionistic.  The use of actual locations (including the very bank that was hit six years earlier) blesses the production with a YOU ARE THERE immediacy but Guggenheim and Stix particularize their dramatis personae with moody, Langian close-ups.  Scenarist Richard T. Heffron (later the director of such well-regarded TV movies as THE MORNING AFTER, I WILL FIGHT NO MORE FOREVER, A RUMOR OF WAR and DEATH SCREAM, a fictionalized account of the infamous Kitty Genovese murder) gives each member of the gang a telling psychological kink.  While George is embittered over his wasted life (compare this to the imaginary courtroom scenes of PAPILLON, where McQueen’s French recidivist pleads guilty to that charge) and Gino suffers from claustrophobia that borders on dementia, ringleader John Eagan (BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ‘s Crahan Denton) not only has serious mother issues but is involved (quite frankly) in a tortured homosexual relationship with the bespectacled Willie (James Dukas, from THE DETECTIVE, COOGAN’S BLUFF and NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY), who resents George’s involvement in the caper because he fears (and quite justifiably, it turns out) John is looking to replace him with the younger, handsomer boy.  (At one point, Eagen even asks George, albeit in an entirely different context, “All right, Fowler, which way do you go?”)  The unexpected murder of a sympathetic character at the end of the second act sets up the final third as a tragic fait accompli.  What’s really interesting, though, is that McQueen’s character, for all that he endures and survives from beginning to end, never really gets it, never really transcends his limitations, never really learns.  In preproduction of his penultimate film, TOM HORN (1980), McQueen famously chastened screenwriter William Goldman for giving his character a learning arc.  “I don’t want to be the guy who learns,” McQueen is alleged to have said.  “I want to be the guy who knows.”  At the fadeout of THE GREAT ST. LOUIS BANK ROBBERY, George is the guy who knows…  although said wisdom has come much too late to do him any good.

Although usually fobbed off by critics and McQ fans as the kind of B-movie programmers that McQueen had to do in order to pay his dues on the way up the Hollywood ladder (and to be honest, McQueen’s estimation of the film wasn’t much higher), THE GREAT ST. LOUIS BANK ROBBERYis considerably better than its reputation.  With so much attention being focused right now on McQueen’s 60s and 70s star vehicles (which are, I will admit, awesome), I’d like to think I might inspire some of you who love the late actor (despite his many faults) to go back and check out his earlier work.  A subpar but adequate transfer of THE GREAT ST. LOUIS BANK ROBBERY is available for rental and sale from the gray market DVD label Platinum.  Netflix carries the title, along with NEVER LOVE A STRANGER, NEVER SO FEW (1959), THE WAR LOVER (1962), TO HELL WITH HEROES (1962), BABY THE RAIN MUST FALL (1965), THE SAND PEBBLES (1966), all of the films mentioned above, as well as the STUDIO ONE episode “The Defender” and early seasons of his WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE series, which put the actor at long last on the industry map.