JUNIOR BONNER!

The film poster I have framed in my home featuring Steve with the lovely and talented Barbara Leigh. For those of you just joining us, Barbara took time out of her busy schedule to be my Featured Guest here on a recent "THE INTERVIEW" and remains as lovely today as ever.

Scenes from an unforgettable film: Steve with Ida Lupino in the famous "kitchen scene" Marshall Terrill referenced in his visit with us; Ida with Robert Preston and of course the unforgettable Barbara Leigh with Steve at the "airport scene". This is a warm and wonderful film.

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This film became Steve McQueen's favorite. According to Screenwriter Jeb Rosebrook (who will join us for a visit tomorrow), McQueen loved the script and agreed to play the lead role in April, 1971. The following month, Sam Peckinpah signed on to direct the film after completing the intense and violent Straw Dogs with Dustin Hoffman in England. Filming for JUNIOR BONNER began on June 30th in Prescott, Arizona with the nation's largest rodeo scheduled to begin on July 14th. To be certain, McQueen felt a great deal of tension at the prospect of working with Peckinpah, who was fired six years earlier as director of The Cincinnati Kid and replaced by Norman Jewison. For his part, Peckinpah felt McQueen failed to stand up for him at the time of his firing. Co-star Ben Johnson, who had recently completed his role as "Sam The Lion" in Peter Bogdanovich's epic, The Last Picture Show remembers that McQueen and Peckinpah "fought like cats and dogs". Peckinpah was eager to direct Junior Bonner to soften his image as "The Master of Violence" in film. Junior Bonner would be the exception to this rule with a brilliant cast surrounding Steve. Ida Lupino played Elvira, mother to McQueen and his huckster real estate mogul brother Curly (played by Joe Don Baker). Robert Preston was cast as Ace Bonner, Steve's good-for-nothing, womanizing boozer of a father and Ben Johnson as rodeo owner Buck Roan. As readers of this BLOG Page will recognize, Steve's love interest in the film (and in life at the time) was actress and model Barbara Leigh, my delightful Guest who appeared recently here on "THE INTERVIEW".

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The subtext of this film centers on a slightly over-the-hill former rodeo star (McQueen) whose life is faltering. A desire to redeem his fortunes by returning home to Arizona and reconcile with the family he hasn't seen in years leads to the shocking discovery that the family is in the process of disintegrating. Bonner's parents have separated, and his huckster brother Curley has been busy turning every square inch of his parent's land into cash as quickly as he possibly can to construct a mobile home park. The existential crisis for McQueen's character is a family and town he no longer recognizes when materialism and the speed of a changing world clash with the simpler values he once related to. With no money and few prospects for regaining his stature on the rodeo circuit, Junior struggles to come to terms with his hometown by attempting to win the Fourth of July Frontier Day Rodeo. It is here where he is determined to strike a deal with rodeo owner Buck Roan to ride "Sunshine"--a wild bull deemed impossible for a cowboy to endure the required 8 second ride. Filming took approximately 10 weeks to film and found McQueen casual and comfortable in his role, which drew some of the best critical reviews of his career. Indeed, "The Master of Violence"--Peckinpah had succeeded in altering his image.

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The Reviews are in. According to author Marshall Terrill, The Los Angeles Times wrote: "Steve McQueen is explosive and forceful in one of his finest performances". The New York Daily News' Kathleen Carroll wrote: "A nice, loose, easygoing rodeo picture. McQueen has met with a role that fits him like a glove". And "across the pond", The London Times wrote: "For those of us who have come to expect (or fear) that each new Sam Peckinpah film will be a new bloodbath, this comes as a pleasant surprise, a reminder of milder, gentler films. As the fourth film this author saw in a first run release inside a small Mid-West movie theater, Junior Bonner was refreshing and exhilarating as a film that people could relate to (not to mention introducing one of the most beautiful actresses my 14 year-old eyes had ever seen in Barbara Leigh).

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One of the most memorable if not heart-wrenching scenes in the movie occurs during a conversation on an outside train station bench between Junior and his father, Ace when Junior is approached to finance Ace's dream of traveling to Australia to discover gold. Junior reveals that he is flat broke. The tension and heartbreak created in this scene was a very difficult task for McQueen to access emotionally. But it came across on the big screen just as it does today on the DVD release as packing a wallop, shattering McQueen's assertion in 1968 to Bullitt Director Peter Yates that "I'm not an actor, I'm a reactor". Then as today, what emerges is quite the opposite. McQueen is clearly an excellent actor who reveals an intense instinct unmatched by anyone. As Marshall Terrill's interview with me so clearly demonstrates, time and again in this film, McQueen delivers from the emotional depth of an actor who was deeply concerned about lavishing on his films an unmistakable authenticity. He cared and as the audience, we care too.

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During the summer of 1972, no less than three rodeo films, "J.W Coop", "The Honkers" and "When Legends Die" were all released within a three-month period to a wary public rendering the film as the only McQueen project to lose money. Steve had this to say about the film in retrospect: "I liked Junior Bonner very much. It was the first time I'd worked with Sam, and we got it together. I thought the script was tremendous---one of the best properties I've come across. But I think the film is a failure, at least financially, and in this business, that's what counts". A final note...

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Beginning in 2000, two McQueen DVD's that did not succeed financially in finding their respective audiences as first run films, curiously, began building a unique following. One of those films is JUNIOR BONNER. It is excellent, and I believe it will find a place in your heart. And that is the reason I selected it for inclusion in the 2009 4th Annual Steve McQueen Film Festival.

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Jeb Rosebrook, the Screenwriter for Junior Bonner will visit here with us tomorrow! I hope you love and enjoy this film as much as I do!

Michael