The co-star who wanted to become Steve McQueen’s worst enemy: “Not while I’m around”
In the summer of 1961, a mistake by Steve McQueen’s agent found the iconic star running around the Price Ranch in Cottonwood, California, with a group of actors recreating an intense World War II battle. They were portraying a squad of US soldiers holding off an entire German company along the Siegfried Line, and director Don Siegel was determined to make the scene as intense and realistic as possible. Unfortunately, this was a particularly sweltering summer, and McQueen already didn’t want to be there. Tempers soon frayed between McQueen and one of his co-stars, who declared himself the Bullitt star’s worst enemy after they supposedly came to blows.
Throughout his career, McQueen was known to be a demanding customer. Even in his early days starring on the television show Wanted: Dead or Alive, McQueen threatened to quit multiple times when he felt the series wasn’t meeting his lofty expectations. He reportedly brooded and sulked and bit the head off anyone in his vicinity and only decided that he’d remain in the role when director John Sturges told him, “Fish or cut bait. Do the series as best you can under the existing conditions, or get into another line of work. You won’t find it any different in the movies, on Broadway, or even in the little art theatres.”
McQueen always had a fierce competitive streak within him, too, and this reared its head many times during his career. He famously feuded with Paul Newman on The Towering Inferno, and once said, “I don’t want to be second-best. Man, I’m not built that way. A runner-up is the most pathetic creature I know because he came so close to being top dog.”
Perhaps this unnecessary drive to always establish himself as the dominant force when other men crossed his path played into the rumoured feud on the set of Siegel’s war picture, Hell Is for Heroes. Maybe he was so pissed off with his agent for not securing his usual upfront fee that he was spoiling for a fight. Whatever the case, it’s also entirely possible that the feud was started by his co-star Bobby Darin, a man who wasn’t exactly known to be a shrinking violet and had plenty of his own disagreements in his career.
The iconic ‘Mack the Knife’ singer began forging an acting career in the early ’60s, and Hell Is for Heroes was his fifth movie in only two years. He’d already begun rubbing people the wrong way on the set of 1961’s Too Late Blues, though – so much so that co-star Stella Stevens told reporters she’d rather not talk about him if she didn’t have to.
In truth, putting these two combustible elements in full military gear in a sweat-drenched battle scene was probably a recipe for disaster. Rumours of a spectacular bust-up soon filtered out into the media, with an anonymous source claiming to TV Radio Mirror, “A feud? They say it was a regular donnybrook! Steve McQueen and Bobby Darin trading snarls and dirty looks – maybe a couple of punches, too – then Nick Adams getting the rough side of the tongue from both parties…Talk about bad blood among the movie stars.”
Darin played down the rumours, though, claiming that he and his wife Sandra Dee actually spent a lot of time with McQueen and his wife, Neile Adams. “The fact is, we all led the quietest kind of life,” he mused. “If we hadn’t, we’d have passed out. Sandy was with me, and Steve’s wife Neile had us over for dinner.” He argued that all the actors were so exhausted by the end of each day that they couldn’t have fought with each other, even if they’d wanted to. “I’m not saying nobody ever blew his stack,” he admitted. “But, under the circumstances, we were a pretty tame lot. I’m personally not feuding with anybody.”
So, was this ‘feud’ a case of tabloid gossip run amok, or was Darin simply saying what the studio wanted him to? Well, perhaps a better indicator of what really happened came when columnist James Bacon visited the set, and heard someone referring to McQueen as his own worst enemy. Darin supposedly overheard this and quipped, “Not while I’m around.”
