OVP: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Film: The Towering Inferno (1974)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, Susan Blakely, Richard Chamberlain, Jennifer Jones, OJ Simpson, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner, Susan Flannery, Jack Collins

Director: John Guillermin

Oscar History: 7 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-Fred Astaire, Art Direction, Cinematography*, Film Editing*, Score, Song, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen's career hit its financial peak in 1974, when he starred with Paul Newman in today's film The Towering Inferno.  At this point, Newman & McQueen were two of the biggest names in movies, and there were quite a few arguments over who would get top billing in the picture (ultimately it was a draw, with McQueen's name first but Newman's name higher), but after this both would suffer career lulls.  Newman would rebound eventually in the 1980's with films like The Verdict and The Color of Money, the latter winning him his only competitive Oscar, but McQueen would never regain this position.  He'd make an ill-fated Ibsen film in 1978 (one that would basically disappear from public consciousness), and then a pair of pictures in 1980 (Tom Horn and The Hunter), both decent-sized hits that might have hallmarked a comeback, but that wasn't to be.  Just over three months after the release of The Hunter, Steve McQueen would be dead.

(Spoilers Ahead) But before we get into that, let's get into the height of his career, at least commercially.  The Towering Inferno was a landmark movie in terms of its box office in 1974.  In the previous years, films like Airport and The Poseidon Adventure had found a formula for success-put a bunch of famous stars, including at least a few studio system legends that can scoop up a supporting acting Oscar nomination, and place them in an insane disaster situation, one that will have at least a few of them die, but the audience can look on in horror as we wonder who from this insanely-stacked call sheet might be safe.  This film is no less than these, and arguably has the starriest cast  of the bunch, but is much more in the vein of Airport (which I did not enjoy) than The Poseidon Adventure (which I did enjoy, in large part due to Shelley Winters' solid work).  The film has the tallest building in the world on fire, and all of our characters, including architect Newman and firefighter McQueen, fighting to stay alive as more-and-more paths to the ground floor are forfeited.  Along the way, some live (including, surprisingly, conman Fred Astaire), and some die, most shockingly Jennifer Jones, who in a morbid twist would be flung from the top of a giant building in the movie two years before her daughter would commit suicide in exactly the same way.

If only the movie was any good.  Technically, this is impressive-the set design, effects, and especially the stunt work are out-of-this-world, but the film spends no time trying to develop the characters, giving us two-dimensional feats from genuinely talented actors.  It's not like someone like Faye Dunaway or Paul Newman can't add a bit of three-dimensionality to their work, but there's no call for it.  Our star of the month, Steve McQueen, feels almost ancillary to the plot of the picture even as he's supposed to be the hero.  Fred Astaire would receive his only competitive acting Oscar nomination for this movie, and man is it unnecessary-he barely has anything to do, other than shout for a dead Jennifer Jones toward the end of the picture.  It feels weird to live in a world where Fred Astaire (whom I love) never got a competitive acting nomination, but, like...over John Cazale in The Godfather, Part II or John Huston in Chinatown...let's not be ridiculous here.

As I said above, Steve McQueen would disappear from movies after this, having a bit of a nomad period where he just went out into the country in a motor home, in the process turning down parts in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Apocalypse Now that might've dramatically changed his legacy.  But his health by the late 1970's was in terrible shape, and he developed mesothelioma (likely due to asbestos exposure from his time in the Marines).  The National Enquirer, at that point most famous for its ongoing coverage of the death of Elvis Presley rather than the right-wing attack ads that it would become known for to modern supermarket shoppers, broke the story that McQueen was dying shortly before his death (he'd been trying to keep it a secret), and McQueen attempted a number of experimental procedures, including a surgery to remove a tumor from his liver in Mexico, a procedure he couldn't have performed in the United States because no doctor would do it (since it would kill him).  12 hours into the surgery, the American doctors were proven correct, and Steve McQueen died at the age of only 50 from a heart attack.

Next month, we're going to talk about a man who was good friends with McQueen, even if they also had something of a professional rivalry during McQueen's early stardom.  Like McQueen, he also would die young, but unlike McQueen, that death would cement his legacy in a way that would in many ways outlast any films he made in life...and would become the source of near constant conspiracy theory in the decades to come, in ways that would haunt his family for generations.

Le Mans (1971)

Film: Le Mans (1971)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Siegfried Rauch, Elga Andersen

Director: Lee H. Katzin

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

There are a long history of actors who largely got bored with being movie stars, and spent huge swaths of their careers basically just doing movie stardom as a side hustle.  Marlon Brando, Jean Seberg, Jane Fonda, & Sean Penn all clearly wished they could be full-time activists, rather than movie stars themselves.  Orson Welles spent his peak stardom years running across the country doing magic shows with Rita Hayworth & Marlene Dietrich.  Hedy Lamarr may have had the oddest side hustle, essentially inventing GPS.  For Steve McQueen, the coolest of movie stars, that side hustle was race-car driving, the coolest of sports.  McQueen frequently competed in car & motorcycle racing tournaments, and would incorporate his love of stunt driving into his films like Bullitt and The Great Escape.  No film, though, encapsulated his love of it quite like Le Mans, an expensive fictionalization of the famed French endurance car race that has been fictionalized in recent films like Ford v. Ferrari and Gran Turismo.

(Spoilers Ahead) Le Mans is a weird film to summarize, in part because it's not really a movie with a traditional narrative.  The film is about Michael Delaney (McQueen), who is about to race the 24 hours of Le Mans when he sees the widow Lisa (Andersen) of a driver that died in the previous year's tournament, and has flashbacks to the crash of his former competitor, whose death Lisa holds him responsible for.  This is one of several storylines that are told in an almost cross-plot anthology-style bit of storytelling, with everyone underlining the intoxicating nature of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and how it is seen as one of the pinnacles of athletics, and how important it is for their sponsor (Porsche) to get a 1-2 finish that will make the company look like the fastest car in the world.

The movie is weird, though, because for long stretches of it nothing happens.  This is, I'm going to be honest, also my reaction to car-racing in general (I am not the audience for this picture), but I was struck throughout it that it was meant to be melancholy and almost Malick-esque before Malick was even a thing.  We get extended sequences with wordless dialogue, and not just looking at cars passing each other on a track...it's also random stares between Andersen & McQueen, which might be cribbed from a French New Wave picture if you're being generous, but in reality feels more so like they didn't know how to put a story in here, and the whole goal of the film is to watch Steve McQueen sexily driving around cars the average audience member couldn't even buy if they sold their house.

That being said, on a technical level this film works really well.  The editing, sound work, cinematography, and especially the stunt driving are top notch.  When you have the film in the throes of competition, especially toward the end, it really draws you in and you can almost get why people will literally watch a car drive for 24 hours on their television each year.  But those documentary-style touches (including footage from actual Le Mans races), are more interesting in a technical capacity, and only hold your attention for so long.

OVP: The Reivers (1969)

Film: The Reivers (1969)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Sharon Farrell, Mitch Vogel, Rupert Crosse, Juano Hernandez, Burgess Meredith

Director: Mark Rydell

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Rupert Crosse, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen, fitting of a man synonymous with both a sex symbol persona and a cool guy elusiveness, had both a lot of romantic conquests in his life as well as not a lot of press about them, save for his marriage to 1970's superstar actress Ali MacGraw, whom he costarred with in 1972's The Getaway (which I'd already seen, hence why it's not the movie today) and which spanned most of MacGraw's time as a major box office draw post-Love Story.  McQueen, though, would marry three times, including model Barbara Minty very late in his life (they were married less than a year before his death), and would have affairs with Mamie van Doren & Lauren Hutton.  But fitting a man whose onscreen personas rarely are ones that a "woman can tame," none of these relationships really defined his career in the way that Joanne Woodward's relationship with his peer Paul Newman would (or Warren Beatty's legendary bed-hopping would until he married Annette Bening).  

(Spoilers Ahead) I bring this up because the movie we're watching today is something of an outlier in McQueen's career.  The Reivers, based on a work by William Faulkner, is a tale of the South (like all of Faulkner's stories), but one with very little complicated plot and were it not for the presence of McQueen (then a massive star in a way the studio couldn't afford) and the presence of a bordello, there are moments in this that have the vibes of a Disney film, with an unlikely parental guardian in Boon (McQueen) looking after young Ned (Vogel), taking him on an adventure through the countryside along with their friend Ned (Crosse) in a bright yellow 1904 Winton Flyer.  The film itself has multiple chapters, but not a lot of common thread, and is told through a rose-colored nostalgic narration by Burgess Meredith, who plays a grown Ned through voiceover.

McQueen's part here is really uninteresting.  He's not doing anything special-this doesn't have the direness of Cincinnati Kid or the sophistication of Thomas Crown, and doesn't have the gravitas of a western (which McQueen would make three of during his run as a leading man, most notably The Magnificent Seven which we covered for a past season of this series with Yul Brynner).  His Boon is a cad, a likable one, but one who treats his prostitute girlfriend Corrie (Farrell) like garbage, even though he does end up marrying her in the end.  There's nothing really here-it's just blank space, and like I said, were it not for the heavy subject matter, lends itself to the two-dimensional drift of a live-action Disney movie at this time.

The film is notable for its two Oscar nominations, which is a big reason why I picked this one.  Rupert Crosse would become the first Black man to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for this film (Sidney Poitier at this point had gotten two nominations in the lead category, but no Black person had somehow gotten into Supporting Actor).  His performance is just fine though-he in many ways has a scene-stealing role, but his performance doesn't have enough presence to really steal the scenes away from McQueen even on easy mode, and he likely got the nomination based on a late scene in the movie where he faces off against a racist Southerner.  Crosse would die relatively soon after this nomination from lung cancer, and really this is his only notable role.

The other nomination is from John Williams for Best Score.  Williams' work here is really fun (in many ways it feels like it's paying homage to Aaron Copland, which is not something you would oftentimes say about Williams, and proof of his versatility as a composer).  Williams was still in his Oscar infancy here, getting only his second nomination, and he had yet to win (that wouldn't happen for two more years), but it's also fun to think about the pre-Spielberg years given between this and his even better work in The Cowboys, he was doing a lot more playful stuff onscreen.  He correctly lost to Butch Cassidy, but it's fun to finally see one of his earliest nominations.

OVP: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Film: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, Jack Weston

Director: Norman Jewison

Oscar History: 2 nominations/1 win (Best Original Song-"The Windmills of Your Mind," Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Coming off of the success of The Cincinnati Kid, for the rest of the 1960's, you'd be hard-pressed to find a film actor who was more consistently bankable and electric than Steve McQueen.  In 1966, he won his first (and only) Academy Award nomination for The Sand Pebbles, a commercial triumph which got 8 nominations in total (McQueen would lose to Paul Scofield for A Man for All Seasons).  But it was in 1968 that he arguably hit his peak.  The most famous film of his career came out that year, the action flick Bullitt, which would be considered by many to be the greatest action film ever made (I liked it, but am not going to be quite that superfluous).  But I'd already seen that film, and with the Saturdays with the Stars, we stick entirely with movies I haven't seen of these actors, so we're going to focus on the other Oscar-winning film that McQueen made in 1968, a movie that was more polarizing with critics but nonetheless continued his trend of printing money: The Thomas Crown Affair.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is odd, and I'm going to start that right out because the plot is a bit thin.  It essentially follows Thomas Crown (McQueen), a bored millionaire who recruits a bunch of men (who know neither him nor their conspirators) to rob a bank, which they do successfully (and somewhat amusingly) in the film's opening moments.  It then shifts gears, with us meeting Vicki Anderson (Dunaway), a breathtaking blonde who is also clever, and who quickly figures out that Crown surely robbed the bank.  But there's a problem-there's no evidence other than common sense (and intuition), and both Crown & Vicki are mad horny for each other.  So Vicki is torn into a game of cat-and-mouse, with her seemingly closing in on him...all the while not realizing that she's getting played.  The film ends with Crown attempting another robbery, one that works perfectly and that he's confessed to Vicki already, implying to her that she loves him too much to stop him.  When she does, by showing up in the cemetery, she realizes that he did not, in fact, trust her, giving her the money from the second bank robbery for sport (along with his spectacular navy blue Rolls Royce), while he jets off to anonymity with the money from the first robbery.

Like I said, the plot doesn't resonate in a big way.  As I explained it above, it's quite straightforward, but doesn't read that way when you're watching the movie.  This is in part because it's severely underwritten-we don't get a lot of sense of who these characters are out of context with each other.  McQueen's Crown is essentially a thrill-seeker, a playboy, but we don't get much more.  Meanwhile, the only thing we learn about Dunaway's Vicki is that she doesn't play by the rules, which of course means that to all of the men around her, she's portrayed as a bitch (even though most of her best traits are lauded in Crown).  It's frustrating, and it feels stretched, like we're trying to make an excuse for this movie to exist.

But you see a 4-star review for a reason, and that's because it looks incredible.  The cars, the beaches, the costumes, the grand camerawork, it's all sublime.  There is a scene where Dunaway & McQueen, both just impossibly sexy, play the randiest game of chess you can ever imagine, us darting from his icy blue eyes to her pillow lips, each of them thumbing the pieces as if they're taking off each other's clothes.  Combined with a grand score, and the classic "Windmills of Your Mind" (one of the best movie songs of all time), it all adds up to film being a visual medium: who cares if none of it makes all that much sense when you are just looking for a cigarette to light afterward.

The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Film: The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann-Margret, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld, Joan Blondell, Rip Torn

Director: Norman Jewison

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen is a weird star persona today.  In his era, McQueen was a big name, one of the biggest in movies, but because of a combination of factors (movies that aren't entirely in the modern zeitgeist, as well as his estate limiting his visage in merchandise after death), he's not remembered in the same way as other stars of his era.  James Dean died younger, Elvis Presley was more ubiquitous, Robert Redford & Paul Newman lived longer and were therefore able to make movies with men like Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, & Chris Evans (i.e. the next generations of action heroes).  McQueen is remembered today by pop culture for Bullitt, being really cool, and dying young.  But he made a comparable amount of hits to Redford & Newman, and certainly more than Dean or Presley and he started it earlier in his career.  While he spent most of the 1950's doing television, theater, and B-movies (like The Blob), a chance skirmish in the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra essentially fired Sammy Davis, Jr. from working on Never So Few after they had a fight) gave McQueen the chance to really prove his worth, nearly stealing the picture from Sinatra.  The following few years included some massive hits, all led by McQueen, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and The Carpetbaggers, a now-forgotten sudser that was the #4 film of 1964, behind certified icons of the year Mary Poppins, Goldfinger, & My Fair Lady.  All of this is to say that by 1965, when McQueen was leading an all-star cast of Old & New Hollywood figures, he was already one of the definitive actors of the decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) Despite its name evoking a gangster picture, The Cincinnati Kid is not an actual action film (we'll get into a few of those to match our monthly theme with McQueen in the coming weeks).  The film is about The Kid (McQueen), a dynamite poker player who is tired of playing big games around New Orleans, and wants to move up in the ranks, potentially even moving to Miami, but knows he needs to beat Lancey (Robinson), the greatest poker player in the city, first.  The film's first half really focuses on the lead up to this, with Lancey clearly threatened by the Kid potentially coming for his throne, while the Kid's relationship with his best friend Shooter (Malden) and his girlfriend Christian (Weld) are thrown asunder, particularly as Shooter is blackmailed by local mobster Slade (Torn) into trying to fix the match for the Kid.  The film's most famous scenes are in the back half of the movie, when we see an aggressive, long-stakes game of poker between the Kid & Lancey, along with a host of other characters, most colorfully Joan Blondell as a boozy gambling diva named Lady Fingers.  The movie ends with Lancey once again beating the Kid, proving that youth and his cool demeanor are not enough to dethrone the champ.

The film's ending is maybe the most interesting part of the picture.  The entire high-stakes game is really something, and genuinely (and surprisingly, for a sports film) thrilling to see who might win.  It's pretty clear that so many of the side characters, especially Slade & Shooter's lusty wife Melba (Ann-Margret) want the Kid to win, which in movie language means that he won't, but the idea of the villainous older guy needing to make way for a new generation is also a trope of this genre that is ignored.  The ending also differs depending on the cut you see.  The one I saw was not what director Norman Jewison wanted.  He wanted a much more dour ending, with the Kid losing a game of penny-pitching against a kid who has been trying to beat him all film, ending with another shocking defeat for our leading man.  Instead, we get a more conventional ending with McQueen & Weld embracing, her forgiving him for having slept with Ann-Margret a few minutes earlier.

The movie's script needs tightening in this regard, but I get why this became storied in the world of poker, as it glamorizes the skill needed to make it in the world of poker, and the badass nature of it.  Most of the young cast is really hot, sexy cool spilling out from every corner of the film, including the end credits with a sleek, jazzy song by Ray Charles.  This might not shock people reading this about, say, McQueen or Ann-Margret or Tuesday Weld, but modern audiences will shocked to be reminded that Rip Torn at one point was a total Chad.  I can't quite put my finger on what might improve this film (one wonders if Karl Malden was miscast...you could see this part being played better by, say, Gene Hackman a couple of years later, and I say this as someone who generally likes Karl Malden), but most of it's great, including Robinson in one of his last roles, and Blondell totally stealing the picture.  As for McQueen-he plays this placid, unflappable, introverted character so well it makes sense it would become his go to for much of his career.

Saturdays with the Stars: Steve McQueen

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we talked about Charles Bronson, an actor who in the 1960's had a lot of promise as a performer who would, in the bluntest of terms, sell out for insanely high paychecks when Hollywood eventually found a niche for him in violent movies.  Bronson, in many ways, would become the template for a lot of the stars we'll profile in the back half of 2026, men who showed promise in early films but would frequently sell out their talent for bigger paychecks.  However, in May we're going to talk about a star who is so singular in Hollywood he doesn't really have a contemporary or a predecessor (though many have tried).  He therefore stands out as both an action star (he would star in some of the most successful action films of the late 1960's and early 1970's, and would rival Bronson as the highest-paid star in Hollywood), but also as an introvert's action hero, a man who would gain an Academy Award nomination during his period of great success for Best Actor, and would die far before his time, still shrouded in enigma.  This month's star is Steve McQueen.

McQueen's early childhood, like much of his life, has a sense of drama and mystery that feels clouded with a bit of tragedy.  His stunt pilot father abandoned him when he was less than a year old, and his mother eventually gave him up to live with his grandparents.  His mother would eventually remarry, bringing him back to her life (and an abusive stepfather), which led him to being sent to a reformatory school, where he matured quickly, and eventually served a brief stint in the US Marines before starting to act, first in New York and then in Hollywood, getting bit parts in TV shows and films, culminating in his first lead role in the classic horror film The Blob.  McQueen's big break happened later though, when Frank Sinatra (at the time in a feud with Sammy Davis, Jr. for comments that Davis had made about Sinatra's racist treatment of him, the rare time in their friendship where Davis stood up for himself), replaced Davis with McQueen in Never So Few, directed by John Sturges, who would put McQueen as the lead in his next picture The Magnificent Seven, a film that would cement his place as a leading man in Hollywood for the next twenty years.

McQueen is the "King of Cool" and as fascinating offscreen as he was onscreen.  He had a penchant for race-car driving, competing in a number of competitions alongside his movie career.  He was devoted to physical fitness, while obsessively using marijuana & for stints, cocaine.  When he was one of the most famous people on earth, he would be arrested for a DUI that somehow didn't remotely derail his career.  He would romance actresses as varied as Mamie van Doren, Lauren Hutton, and (most famously) Ali MacGraw, being one of the principal super-couples of the 1970's.  He was indispensably cool...but still voted for Richard Nixon in 1968 when that was a decidedly square thing to do.  And he would appear as a new type of action star-one who had some of the bravado of Connery & Bronson, but also with a sensitivity that would be more at home with Marlon Brando or Paul Newman.  And all of this he would achieve in just 50 years, for as we'll talk about this month, unlike Connery & Bronson, Steve McQueen wouldn't live long enough to have late-in-life career changes that would reshape his legacy.

OVP: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Film: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Stars: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn, Eli Wallach

Director: John Sturges

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Yul Brynner: click here to learn more about Mr. Brynner (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Throughout this year, we're profiling a lot of western stars, obviously, and with that, a lot of westerns.  These are all westerns that I've never seen before, and for the most part, are westerns I'm pretty comfortable saying that I've never seen before.  The films of Anthony Mann & Budd Boetticher are classics, but if we're being honest, they're not classics in the same way that The Searchers or The Wild Bunch are...they aren't universally-seen films by most film fans.  Today, though, we're getting to one of the few classic films of the western genre that I'm kind of looking sideways on, admitting that I have somehow never seen before.  Yul Brynner in 1960 was cast in a movie that, quite frankly, didn't do super well at the domestic box office (it was a smash hit overseas, particularly in the Soviet Union), but in the years that followed has become synonymous with the genre and is arguably the most important (culturally) western that we'll profile all year, and one pretty much everyone who is invested in the genre has seen before.  It is also one of the only westerns to spawn a genuine franchise, with three sequels, a remake, and a TV series all coming out of it, along with an Elmer Bernstein score that counts as one of the most iconic in film history.  Today, we are going to talk about The Magnificent Seven.

(Spoilers Ahead) Based on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the movie is about a poor Mexican village that is run by Calvera (Wallach), a ruthless leader of a group of bandits who frequently rob the villagers, who are defenseless, of their food to feed his men, leaving them largely to live by on scraps.  They decide one day to fight back, and look to initially buy guns to defend themselves.  When Chris Adams (Brynner) tells them that men are cheaper than guns (great line), Chris helps them recruit a band of men, seven in total, to defend the city.  Throughout, we learn about these men, who come from different backgrounds (a hotheaded young shootist, a fortune seeker, a knife expert, a drifter...it's a motley crew), but come to find some honor in defending the people of the city.  This honor is what Calvera, who keeps assuming they'll give up, can't see beyond, and it is his downfall.  In a shootout that kills four the seven, Calvera dies, and the townspeople are saved, with Chris and one of the other men, the drifter (played by McQueen) going off into the sunset, with Chris ending with the enigmatic line "only the farmers won...we lost...we'll always lose."

The film itself, I'll be honest, is a pretty standard western on its surface.  The cast was in various stages of their careers, with Brynner at the peak of his stardom, while McQueen, Coburn, & Bronson were all years away from the peak of theirs, and it shows in the casting.  Given where they were in their careers I get why some of these supporting parts weren't given stronger credence in the story (Brynner was the headliner in 1960), but Bronson & Coburn are such good actors I kept wanting more from them.  So the cast itself feeds into the standard western line-a basic story, admittedly one stolen from one of the greatest films ever made, with a misused cast should be cause for complaint.

But it's impossible to care too much because even if it's misused, the film itself still comes off successfully.  The scenes we do get of Coburn, Bronson, and especially Wallach are well-done, and the dialogue is solid, and a bit above-the-board for a western in 1960.  It's also aided by a grand slam score from Elmer Bernstein.  This lost to the theme from Exodus, which is a fine piece of music, don't get me wrong, but given that Bernstein was writing one of the defining pieces of music (it is regularly used in everything from Oscar clips to commercials to other movies) at the time, and that the theme from Psycho, another anthem of Hollywood, wasn't even nominated...the Academy missed the train a little bit on this one.

The Blob (1958)

Film: The Blob (1958)
Stars: Steve McQueen, Aneta Corseaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland, Stephen Chase
Director: Irvin Yeaworth
Oscar History: Never nominated
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

We are winding down our month devoted to Classic Horror with Halloween fast approaching, and have reached our penultimate movie this week.  The drive-in monster movies of the 1950's have not survived in the same sense as the Universal Horror films, especially of the early-1930's.  While the Lugosi & Karloff pictures have developed a famous, almost mythic place in Hollywood lore, the films of the 1950's feel campy, and are more-related to something you'd see at 2 AM on cable than you would get in a deluxe Blu-Ray package.  Which made the history of The Blob fascinating to me.  This is a movie that should, by all accounts, have ended up in the annals of camp classics, and in many ways it has, but it's also gotten some prestige treatment in the years since that defy its less-than-auspicious roots.  It has been released in a Criterion package, and it's one of the few monster movies of this era with a new creation that is easily name-checked if you're listing horror movie icons (we've all heard of "the Blob").  And, perhaps most surprising if all you know of it is the title, it stars one of the biggest actors of the 1960's in his feature film debut, Steve McQueen.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is centered around Steve (McQueen) and Jane (Corsaut), his girlfriend who while making out in his convertible see a meteorite crash in the distance.  When they drive to see what it is, they come across an old man (Howland) who is covered in some sort of gelatinous goo, and appears to be in great pain.  They take him to Dr. Hallen (Chase), who is stumped, but soon realizes that the goo is expanding into a Blob, and killing the old man.  Soon, the Blob has killed Dr. Hallen, and both Jane & Steve are running around the town, trying to convince the police that they aren't pulling a prank, and that the Blob is real; it keeps escaping before they can prove its existence to the "adults" (I say that in quotes because McQueen is pushing thirty in this film and looks it).  Eventually the Blob expands to the point where no one can deny it as it attacks the movie theater, and then a diner where Steve & Jane are.  In the diner, Steve realizes that the Blob is vulnerable to cold, and soon fights off the Blob, with the Blob being put in the Arctic to stay frozen & docile (yet another problem we're going to have because we ignored climate change).

The film is not flexing a lot of intellectual muscle.  It wasn't intended to be a hit when it came out (it was the B-movie to I Married a Monster from Outer Space until demand for The Blob bumped it to top billing for the double-feature), and there's very little to the plot other than a repetitive cat-and-mouse game with the blob, the adults, and the teens.  The creature and the effects of the film, even in 1958, felt a bit cheesy, & the acting is not something you'd brag about; while McQueen would go on to become an iconic movie star, you'd be forgiven if you were a studio chief watching this movie at the time & describing the actor as "handsome but flat."

Yet there is something here-I get why it became a classic.  The color photography for a horror film feels authentic & interesting.  Yes, it's cheesy, but the monster is kind of fascinating-it changes color throughout the film, making it almost seem (to a modern audience) like it's expressing mood or feeling, and thus isn't "just a blob."  It's bad, but it has strange parables to some of the scare tactics of the 1950's (in this case, no one believes the threat, which they assume is imaginary, until it's too late...which in hindsight reads as the reverse of some of the Red Scare), and while it's drier than it should be (I'd like more camp), it's a fun movie, to the point where I get why it was a hit with drive-in crowds.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Masque of the Red Death

OVP: The Sand Pebbles (1966)

Film: The Sand Pebbles (1966)
Stars: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Richard Crenna, Candice Bergen, Marayat Andriane, Mako
Director: Robert Wise
Oscar History: 8 nominations (Best Picture, Actor-Steve McQueen, Supporting Actor-Mako, Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

This week we've covered four screen legends for the Best Actor field (John Travolta, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, & Cary Grant), but today as we wind down our Best Actor tribute, we're going to pick a fifth legend, but one with two distinctions from this group.  The first is that despite a pretty robust film career before his early death, Steve McQueen only scored one Oscar nomination.  McQueen had other films that might have popped with Oscar if they'd been a bit more smitten with him (Love with a Proper Stranger, The Reivers, Papillon), but this was the only time Oscar went with the cinematic rebel, and they did it in (second distinction from this week's movies) a Best Picture nominee.  The Sand Pebbles is probably best-remembered in terms of Oscar for its Best Picture nomination, and that it is the rare film to win eight citations from AMPAS and not win a single one in the year where A Man for All Seasons and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? were scooping up most of the trophies.  However, we'll try to frame it at least slightly from the Best Actor front today to go with our theme.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Sand Pebbles is a long movie, a proper three-hour epic, and thus we've got a plot to slice through, but I'll try to boil it down.  Essentially we have Jake Holman (McQueen) who is a rebellious maintenance officer in the United States Navy.  He is assigned to the USS San Pablo, nicknamed the "Sand Pebble" and thus the men on the ship are called the "Sand Pebbles."  The boat is  stationed in China in the 1920's, and they hire Chinese men as laborers on the ship to run the ship and do most of the manual work.  This doesn't fly with Holman, who takes over the engine room and instantly causes friction with the other men aboard the ship as a result, with the exception of Frenchy (Attenborough).  This continues as one of the Chinese men who had run the ship prior to Holman is killed in an accident due to Holman wanting to implement better maintenance onboard, and Holman has to hire an additional Chinese laborer Po-Han (Mako), whom he befriends, but their association costs Po-Han his life.  We continue to see increased tension between the Chinese and the Americans as the National Revolutionary Army begins to gain power, and in the end, it's obvious that the Americans are in over-their-head, as one-by-one pretty much every major Sand Pebble is killed as a result of the increasing tension with the Chinese.

There's a lot more to the plot than that, but I don't want to spend this whole article recapping rather than reviewing.  Let's start out with the acting, particularly McQueen's.  McQueen had an effortless cool onscreen in all of his roles (also, he was sexy as hell), which translates here, but in terms of heavy-lifting for his character, it kind of gets lost.  McQueen is watchable, but is a weird counter to the rest of the cast, ranging from the "ACTING!" being done by Richard Attenborough to the distinguished work of Richard Crenna's lieutenant (for my money, best in the cast) to Candice Bergen's "I'm going to under-emote as much as possible which you hopefully won't notice because I am so beautiful" role as the girlfriend (Bergen's role, in particular feels like exactly the kind that Oscar notices for some reason with pretty young actresses even when they don't really do much onscreen, and I'm kind of floored she wasn't nominated as a result).  As a result, McQueen's performance feels too strained, doesn't get enough background, and is out-of-kilter with the rest of the movie.

The movie itself is grand, and I'm a sucker for such things (I love a long movie if it gets a big enough payoff, which this movie does in the final moments), but it never really justifies its length.  The love story between McQueen & Bergen has zilch chemistry (I swear, I like Bergen as a rule, but this movie does nothing with her tenacity), and Attenborough seems to be more in love with his girlfriend's (Maily, a virgin who is wading into prostitution) situation than with herself.  The movie is good, but it never goes for great, and when you get a cast & crew that looks like this, great is what you should be expecting.

The other six nominations need their due before we close.  Mako's turn as Supporting Actor is instantly sympathetic, and one of the rare circumstances where an Asian actor was nominated by Oscar, but it's a misdirect as he has very little to do other than be sympathetic & someone to show a shift in McQueen's character.  His work here is unusual as Attenborough & Crenna both have bigger parts (Attenborough even won the Golden Globe), so it's cool such a small role won an Oscar nod, but it's pretty one-note even if it's physically demanding.  Mako's biggest scene in the movie is an intense boxing match that lasts a while, and while it's riveting/exhausting, it's also lensed in an unusual way that felt disjointed, which I can't decide to blame on either the editor (who could have trimmed half an hour from this movie & made everything sharper) or the cinematographer (who otherwise does brilliant work in the waters, especially as the San Pueblo attempts to fjord enemy lines late in the movie).  The Sound is strong, and does great things with quiet (rare for a war picture), especially the thrilling final showdown between McQueen and the NRA soldiers, and the Art Direction was fine, though occasionally feels too "filmy" (the bar/brothel looks so much like a blank movie set you half expect the men to start singing on the tables).  The best nomination, though, was the Score-which is breathtaking.  Jerry Goldsmith (one of my favorites) gives the film a haunting romance with his horns & strings that, quite frankly, the story never earns, but it's radiant stuff.

OVP: Papillon (1973)

Film: Papillon (1973)
Stars: Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman, Don Gordon, Robert Deman
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We're going to conclude our weeklong look at some of my (unseen) films of 1973 with by far the longest movie on the docket, Papillon.  The film clocks in at 150 minutes, and like Scarecrow earlier this week, features two of the most important leading men of the era: Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman.  Unlike Scarecrow, though, Papillon was a big hit in its era, keeping Hoffman in the public eye and theoretically moving McQueen into the echelon of the era's top star...though McQueen, infamous for turning down role-after-role-after-role that might have cemented his legend, didn't make much use of the film's success (at some point we'll start featuring male performers in the Saturdays with the Stars series, and McQueen is going to be toward the top of the list of people whose career I want to discuss).

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is loosely based on a true story, about Henri "Papillon" Charriere (McQueen...Papillon is the French word for butterfly), who was sentenced to a prison sentence in French Guiana for a murder he didn't commit.  There he meets Louis Dega (Hoffman), a (guilty) forger & embezzler who needs protection, but doesn't want to escape because he's confident his wife is working to ensure that he will be freed.  Dega helps Papi in several escape attempts, the first of which lands him in solitary confinement for two years, during which time he never once outs Dega as his co-conspirator despite basically being starved and going half insane.  On the second attempt, they enlist the help of Andre Maturette (Deman), a gay man there for murder who one of the guards has developed an infatuation with (yes, there is a gay subplot, yes, it's problematic, but not nearly to the degree of Scarecrow as Maturette is at least given some dignity in his portrayal).  They succeed in escaping, though eventually they are all caught (with Papi lasting longer than the others), and are each sentenced to five years in solitary, which basically kills Maturette.  Papi wants to attempt escape one last time from Devil's Island, but Dega refuses, saying it's too dangerous.  Papi then jumps from a gigantic cliff, near certain to die, but doesn't, and is taken out to sea by a raft made of coconuts.  Somehow, the narrator tells us, he survived and went on to live a free man.

This is an incredible story, and would be even more incredible if it were true.  While Henri Charriere definitely existed, and definitely was a prisoner in the French penal system (which was truly atrocious in its treatment of prisoners, using the guillotine way later than you would have expected, legally ending in 1981 and practically ending in 1977), there's no evidence that the portion of his book where he escaped from Devil's Island is reality (records at the time indicate he was never sentenced to serve there).  This is pure Hollywood fiction, as even at the time they would have been aware that this was disputed.

I don't normally have a problem with biopics taking liberties (the reason I dislike the genre as a whole is because truth is not, in fact, stranger than fiction), but I point this out because it shows the biggest issue with Papillon-it never looks below the surface of its major characters.  This isn't because McQueen and especially Hoffman aren't capable of crafting complex characterizations, but for some reason neither actor looks beyond the page with these portrayals.  We get some incredible action sequences (particularly that final moment of Papillon jumping into the sea, swimming off into the unknown), but there's nothing there.  You spend the movie hoping it'll just be over, as it drags and repeats without any sense of character growth, and Papillon is a character that certainly could grow as he keeps beating against a system that insists on him losing his spirit.  This could've been a great movie-all of the elements are there for it-but it's just dull & pretty.

The movie's sole Oscar nomination was for its score.  The main title here is superb.  This could have been a gut-check nomination for Jerry Goldsmith, who was nominated constantly during the 1970's by the Academy, but the main theme has a windswept quality I loved.  The use of a percussion instrument (I couldn't quite pinpoint what it was, but it sounds like some sort of electrified marimba) adds texture to the music, and invites the gargantuan task that Papillon & Dega are undertaking.  Unfortunately, the rest of the music isn't nearly as inspired-we are, like the plot itself, given the same course over-and-over again, no growth in the music.

AFI's 25 Greatest Actors, Part 4

This article is part of a 15-Year Anniversary series commemorating the American Film Institute’s 25 Greatest Stars.  For the Actresses, click the numbers for Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.  For the Actors, click the numbers for Parts 1, 2, and 3.

We've now gone through all of the actors that were on the list of the 25 greatest from the AFI.  A crowning achievement, to say the least.  And yet, don't you feel like a few names were missing?  Like I did with the actresses (click through all of the links above if you're catching up, as there's been a lot of discussion centering around this conversation), I thought it was appropriate to chronicle ten superstars of the era who probably just missed the cut.  These ten men were the closest in my opinion (if you disagree, click on the comments below):

Montgomery Clift (1920-1966)

Oscar Nominations: 4 nominations, though he would never win an Academy Award during his short but celebrated career.
Why He Was Close to the List: Montgomery Clift was one of the first leading men to really be emotional or sensitive onscreen.  Paving the way for the likes of James Dean and Marlon Brando (and people like Ryan Gosling and James Franco today), he was intensely beautiful, but also someone with a secret, an introvert with something to tell.  He probably is still referenced so often today not just because of his tragic life and his closeted homosexuality (the gays are taking over this list, for the record-he's not the only one that I'm name-checking), but because his acting style is far more utilized by today's leading men and women than that of Bogie or John Wayne.  He was a pioneer of the hidden emotion.
Why He Missed: Clift's career never fully recovered after his near-fatal car accident in 1956, when his emotional state (already a bit damaged) and his physical appearance became altered and deteriorated quickly as a result.  Consequently, his filmography is impressive but quite brief, costing him against someone as prolific as Edward G. Robinson or Robert Mitchum.
My Favorite Performance: Looking through, I've actually seen almost all of Clift's films (I didn't realize this, but I have well over 50%, better than any other actor we've profiled, male or female, except for James Dean).  I will go with his sensational work in A Place in the Sun, where he plays a social-climber who wants nothing more than to leave his past where it is, but cannot escape it.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: As I said, I've seen most everything.  I'll go with Hitchcock's I Confess as I'm curious to see what Hitch does with an actor that he knew was gay off-screen (Hitchcock was pretty good about the gay allegory and worked it well with Anthony Perkins).

Bing Crosby (1903-1977)

Oscar Nominations: Crosby received three nominations in his career, winning for Best Actor for Going My Way.
Why He Was Close to the List: Crosby's stature in the film community is still recognized today, particularly with his work in Holiday Inn and White Christmas (it helps when you star in a holiday classic-take note actors wanting longevity).  Crosby's vocal prowess and singing ability was legendary, and his many films with Bob Hope are still remembered to this day.
Why He Missed: A couple of reasons.  For starters, like Hope, his principle fame didn't seem to just be from the cinema, but instead from a different format (for Hope, it was stand-up and television, for Crosby, it was music).  It appears that most of the actors listed by the AFI are chiefly famous for their on-screen ability (only Judy Garland really made the crossover to another medium with an equal level of success).  There's also the little factor that Crosby's reputation has taken a severe downturn since his death due to his parenting skills and bizarre will (much like Joan Crawford's, an actress who probably could have made it to the Top 8 had it not been for Mommie Dearest).
My Favorite Performance: Unlike Clift, I don't love Crosby in quite the same way (I always found Bing a bit stiff onscreen) and so I'll go with a personal favorite from childhood in White Christmas.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: In one of those rare situations where I haven't seen a Best Picture winner (I've seen over 80% of them), I've never seen Going My Way, which would need to be at the top of the list.

Errol Flynn (1909-1959)

Oscar Nominations: Flynn never received an Oscar nomination or win in his career, a stunning bit of news considering how long he was a Box Office draw.
Why He Was Close to the List: Flynn lives on today as a swashbuckler par excellence.  His name conjures images of dashing technicolor and elaborate sword battles.  It helps when you're creating an on-screen persona if you have one that no one else has ever had or can imitate, and that was the case with Flynn, who was a cad but one that you rooted for onscreen.
Why He Missed: Flynn doesn't have a particularly large list of easily-recognizable classics in his oeuvre, with the obvious exception being The Adventures of Robin Hood.  His extremely questionable relationship with Beverly Aadland (when she was just fifteen) further damaged his reputation in Hollywood, which was already pretty badly damaged from years of pretty open philandering (he reportedly romanced Marlene Dietrich and Delores del Rio while married).
My Favorite Performance: I'm not going to embarrass myself here.  I've seen a spattering of Flynn films, but none of note, and none that I'm going to claim as a favorite for such a legendary actor.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Clearly I've got my work cut out for me (there's a chance you do too if my theories about his filmography are to be believed).  Together we can make a point of hitting The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and The Sea Hawk.

Charlton Heston (1923-2008)

Oscar Nominations: Heston received only one Oscar nomination in his career, but he won for it in Ben-Hur.  He also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1978.
Why He Was Close to the List: Heston was one of the biggest and most recognizable stars of the 1950's, frequently leading his way through biblical epics like El Cid, Ben-Hur, and in particular The Ten Commandments that are still watched heavily today (most of these films you can catch on Turner Classic Movies during Easter).  He also made Planet of the Apes late in the 1960's, adding another classic to his list of motion pictures.  All-in-all, there is no one else in the history of the movies that quite had the stature and heroic gravitas that Heston did onscreen (for those unfamiliar with his onscreen work-and for the love of pete, please change that-Russell Crowe in Gladiator probably comes the closest), and with the shift toward more relatable heroes, we probably won't see another one ever again.
Why He Missed: While with Flynn and Crosby I think part of their miss on the list came from their offscreen behavior, I'm utterly confident that Heston's was a result of that as his filmography is too big to ignore otherwise.  Heston's neoconservative beliefs and in particular his strong advocacy for the National Rifle Association alienated him from a generation of moviegoers and bitterly divided public opinion on him, an opinion that only got worse in the years following the creation of this list (particularly after Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine was released).
My Favorite Performance: I genuinely loved Ben-Hur and think that it's an epic masterpiece, but Heston was better in Touch of Evil, where he has to match wits with Orson Welles and watches his entire world slowly deteriorate.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've seen the Big Five films from Heston (all name-checked above), so I'll go with The Agony and the Ecstasy, an adaptation of the Irving Stone novel where Heston plays Michelangelo.

Rock Hudson (1925-1985)

Oscar Nominations: Hudson received one Academy Award nomination in 1956 for Giant (he lost to Yul Brynner).
Why He Was Close to the List: Hudson's fame comes from two different places.  First was his acting in the 1950's and 1960's in larger-than-life roles romancing Elizabeth Taylor and most frequently Doris Day (he later enjoyed success on television opposite Susan Saint James in McMillan & Wife).  The second source of his fame surrounded his personal life (he was one of the very first major stars in Hollywood to come out as gay) and his bringing AIDS to light in a major way to the public (Hudson ended up dying from the disease, but his admission that he had AIDS was a hugely influential point in the AIDS awareness movement considering now everyone in America knew someone who had the disease).
Why He Missed: Hudson's fame at this point is almost entirely surrounding his sexuality and his association with AIDS.  His filmography hosts films like Giant and Pillow Talk, but it's not really large enough to compete with someone like John Wayne or Kirk Douglas who enjoyed decades of hits and significant movies.  Also, Hudson suffers a bit from that stereotype that pretty men can't act (don't believe this is a stereotype?  Compare the Best Actor lineup to the Best Actress lineup in any given year and tell me I'm wrong).
My Favorite Performance: I love Hudson as the hunky fake Texan in Pillow Talk, where he manages to be both charming and incredibly sexy while wooing Doris Day.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: Like Clift, I've seen most of Rock Hudson's most significant films. I'll probably pick Ice Station Zebra (which plays constantly on Turner Classic Movies), one of his last major hits.

Charles Laughton (1899-1962)

Oscar Nominations: Laughton earned three Oscar nominations during his career, winning for The Private Life of Henry VIII.
Why He Was Close to the List: One of the great Shakespearean and theater actors, Laughton commanded major respect on the screen in almost everything he did (for those unfamiliar with his persona, think Philip Seymour Hoffman meets Laurence Olivier, with a bit of homosexuality for flavoring).  He brought a theatrical sense to the screen, and had the good sense to play in large epics during most of his career, meaning that his filmography is spattered with major classics from Mutiny on the Bounty to The Hunchback of Notre Dame to Witness for the Prosecution.
Why He Missed: Laughton never quite had THAT film to claim as his own.  All of those films are bona fide classics, but they aren't classics you instantly think of when discussing the term.  As a result, you end up with someone similar to Myrna Loy for the ladies-when you mention them as a candidate for a greatest stars list, you say "of course!" but they don't spring to mind unprompted.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to cheat here, as I've missed most of Laughton's most significant acting work and don't want to embarrass myself, so I'll go with his sole directorial effort in The Night of the Hunter.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: If I cannot find a favorite performance that means another marathon list, so we'll put the four films I listed above along with Spartacus and Captain Kidd and make up for lost time.

Steve McQueen (1930-1980)

Oscar Nominations: McQueen received just one Oscar nomination in his career, for 1966's The Sand Pebbles.
Why He Was Close to the List: What James Dean was to the 1950's, Steve McQueen was to the 1960's.  McQueen was a devilishly handsome daredevil who played by his own rules and frequently romanced some of the leading ladies of his day (including Ali McGraw) and played rebellious, modern roles like that of Frank Bullitt in Bullitt, one of his most noted pictures.  His death at only age fifty added a mystique to McQueen's already enormous aura.
Why He Missed: Two reasons: one, McQueen's partying and racecar-driving caused him to miss out on a huge number of classic films, and as a result his filmography is much slimmer than most of the men listed here.  Secondly McQueen was more of an actor that was famous in the 1960's, considerably later than Hollywood's Golden Age and is more in-line with the likes of Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, and Paul Newman, though his early death occasionally groups him with the stars of an earlier era.
My Favorite Performance: I have always enjoyed him as the totally crushable Rocky in the (admittedly dated, but still enjoyable) Love with the Proper Stranger.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never seen McQueen in Bullitt, a genre of film that isn't really my cup of tea, but clearly is one that I should hit sooner rather than later regardless of the film subject.

Anthony Quinn (1915-2001)

Oscar Nominations: Quinn received four Academy Award nods in his career, winning twice for Supporting Actor in Viva Zapata! and Lust for Life.
Why He Was Close to the List: Quinn was one of those actors that everyone deeply admired for his tenacity onscreen and his thespian chops.  Though he starred in very few major films (outside of a supporting role in Lawrence of Arabia), he, like Spencer Tracy, was an actor who carefully selected projects that would enjoy prestige and acclaim from critics, audiences, and awards' bodies.  It also helps that he worked for decades, right up until his death, giving multiple generations a chance to see his work in a theater.
Why He Missed: I touched on it, but Quinn never broke out in a specific role like other actors did.  His most famous part would be Zorba the Greek, but that's not a film a number of people see today.  He's well-respected, but not someone who survives in a memorable way in films since then (he also did a number of supporting parts, which may have cost him considering how headliner-heavy the AFI was in creating this list).
My Favorite Performance: It's been years since I saw it, but I have to imagine that Zorba the Greek will age pretty well if I ever re-visit it in the upcoming years, so I'll go with that for Quinn.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've seen neither of his two Oscar-winning roles (though oddly enough I've seen both of the films he lost the Oscar for).

Mickey Rooney (1920-2014)

Oscar Nominations: Rooney received four competitive Academy Award nominations in his career, but won for none of them.  He did win a Juvenile Oscar in 1939 along with Deanna Durbin and then won an Honorary Oscar in 1983 for life achievement.
Why He Was Close to the List: He was the top box office draw of 1939 and 1940!  Okay, that's a joke that has frequently been thrown out (I don't know why Rooney in particular gets hammered with swipes in that regard).  He was clearly a very popular entertainer (his fellow actors adored him), and his star endured for decades (his career ended up spanning over ninety years), ending only this past year with his death.  He is one of those rare actors who did musicals, dramatic pictures, silent films, child star to aging grandpa-he was one of a kind.
Why He Missed: His onscreen (and offscreen) persona was an acquired taste, and one that not everyone was a fan of, quite frankly.  He was a very good actor, though, and I think if this list had been made a decade later, seeing that Rooney would still be working and would become one of the final links to Hollywood's Golden Era, he probably would have made the cut.
My Favorite Performance: I'm going to cheat here, but not in the way that I did with Laughton.  I'm going to pick Rooney's terrific solo effort on The Twilight Zone in "The Last Night of the Jockey"-if you want proof the man could act, here's a fine place to start.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I could go with one of the Oscar-nominated roles, but I'll instead go with some of the Andy Hardy pictures, getting a view of what Rooney truly became famous for (he made fifteen of these pictures in the days before television).

Peter Sellers (1925-1980)

Oscar Nominations: Sellers received two Oscar nominations for acting, for Dr. Strangelove and Being There, losing for both.  He also was nominated for his Live Action Short Film The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film, which he also lost the trophy for.
Why He Was Close to the List: Sellers has long enjoyed an enduring fame, particularly amongst comedians, as one of the pioneers of the art form.  Think of how Steve Martin is revered amongst almost all comics now as being a true pioneer and artist-that's largely what Peter Sellers was in his era.  He also starred in Dr. Strangelove in not one but three roles, a comic triumph any actor would be envious of achieving.
Why He Missed: Sellers, like Steve McQueen, enjoyed his principle fame in later years, particularly the 1960's and 1970's, and as a result may not have felt like an appropriate choice for the "Golden Age Stars" list.  He was also very difficult to work with and very reclusive in his personal life, adding mystique but less public consciousness as a result.
My Favorite Performance: Only a fool wouldn't pick his comedic triumph in Dr. Strangelove, one of the most biting, provocative, and cutting films ever made, and Sellers is a key reason for all of that.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never seen Sellers in his last great film role, that of Chance Gardner in Being There with Shirley MacLaine (who, contrary to some opinions of Sellers, thoroughly enjoyed working with him).

And there are my hunches as to the ten men who just missed the AFI list-what are your guesses?  Who do you think was the closest (my gut is Heston)?  Who are your favorites?  Who did I forget from the just misses?  Share your thoughts in the comments!