It got so bad that Brynner employed someone to watch McQueen and report back to him how many times Steve touched or played with his hat whenever Brynner was speaking.
Each one drew the audience’s focus off Brynner and onto him.
#THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN 1960 MOVIE#
When you watch the movie they really are quite obvious – McQueen shaking the shotgun shells (to check if they were loaded) was one holding his hat up to check on the sunlight and the wind’s trajectory was another leaning off his horse to scoop water with his hat as he crossed a stream was a third. Eli Wallach played the bandit leader Calvera, and in his biography he recalled at least three examples of this. Much of the friction between the two actors came about because of Steve’s blatant up-staging of Yul at every opportunity. Television was just one step on that ladder. McQueen knew a good part when he saw one and he planned to become a movie star. He overcame the problem by deliberately crashing his car into a tree, obtaining a medical certificate that excused him from the set of his TV show for several weeks, and hopping onto an airplane for Mexico as soon as he could.
#THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN 1960 SERIES#
McQueen was starring in his own TV series at the time ( Wanted: Dead or Alive), the producers of which refused him permission to do the movie. Even so, McQueen’s presence and performance helped turn the picture into a classic. Unfortunately, the two actors developed a disastrous relationship on the set and Brynner very quickly regretted giving him his support. So, too, was Gene Wilder (believe it or not), but Yul pushed hard for McQueen to play him and won him the role. George Peppard was approached for the role of Vin Tanner. It was Yul Brynner who suggested to Walter Mirisch that he adapt Akiro Kurasawa’s classic Seven Samurai into a western, and this gave the bald star a big say in who was cast in the picture. Its follow-up three years later, The Great Escape, turned him into a super-star. The iconic western cost $2 million to make, was shot on location in Mexico, and it made a star out of Steve McQueen. The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape were two more. The Mirisch brothers, Walter, Marvin and Harold, produced a number of highly profitable movies in the fifties and sixties – Some Like it Hot (1959), West Side Story (1961), The Pink Panther (1963) and In the Heat of the Night (1967) were among them.
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