A 2008 commemorative Ford Mustang inspired by McQueen’s 1968 film Bullitt sold for $60,000. His U. S. passport sold for $9,000.
Steve McQueen was known for such movie hits as The Great Escape, an action-packed war film that featured McQueen making a dramatic escape from a German prison camp.
In Le Mans, he portrayed a driver in the celebrated French auto race. McQueen was an avid racer and did many of his own driving scenes, deferring to his stuntman only when directors insisted. McQueen did much of the motorcycle riding for The Great Escape. Stuntman Bud Ekins took over to do a dramatic jump over a barbed wire fence. Ekins also did much of the wild driving through the streets of San Francisco in Bullitt, after filmmakers worried that the star might be injured.
McQueen’s ex-wife, Neile Adams, got the idea for the sale of Hollywood mementos after she watched a DVD of The Thomas Crown Affair, the 1968 crime thriller starring McQueen and Faye Dunaway. In a romantic scene, they were drinking from brandy glasses.
“Something clicked in my head, and I said I have those somewhere,” said Neile Adams. “And I ran downstairs to the basement and started rummaging around and there they were.”
Those glasses brought $3,200 at auction.
She recalls the actor as funny and charming, but moody.
“You could take a dictionary, and every adjective would apply to him,” she said. “He was charming. He was darling. He was adorable. He was a pain the neck. He was mean. He was everything.”
| 
|