The Getaway ***** (1972, Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Ben Johnson, Al Lettieri, Sally Struthers, Jack Dodson, Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, Bo Hopkins, Richard Bright) – Classic Movie Review 1355

Sam Peckinpah’s 1972 action crime thriller The Getaway is one of this great director’s greatest movies, and most successful. Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw star as jailed bank robber ‘Doc’ McCoy and his loyal wife Carol. 

Director Sam Peckinpah’s 1972 action crime thriller The Getaway is one of this great director’s greatest movies, and most successful. Peckinpah and screenwriter Walter Hill turn esteemed pulp-fiction writer Jim Thompson’s 1958 novel into a sweaty-palmed, edge-of-seat, blood-soaked chase movie. Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw star as jailed bank robber ‘Doc’ McCoy and his loyal wife Carol, who bargains for his release in exchange for robbing a Texas bank.

Also in the tremendous Seventies cast are Al Lettieri, Sally Struthers, Jack Dodson, Slim Pickens, Dub Taylor, Bo Hopkins and Richard Bright.

Steve McQueen stars as bank robber Carter ‘Doc’ McCoy, a convicted felon in Texas, who is granted parole and released from jail. But Jack Beynon (Ben Johnson) expects a return favour – robbing another bank. Beynon does not really plan to let McCoy walk away after the heist and neither does deranged co-robber Rudy Butler (Al Lettieri). After the heist goes awry, ‘Doc’ and his loyal wife Carol set out on the run on an exhilarating  life-or-death journey across a hostile landscape for Mexico, battling the violent villains and ruthless cops in hot pursuit.

The two charismatic stars are seen at their best in this original Seventies action favourite. McQueen steps up manfully to his archetype as a brooding anti-hero of few words and much action, a lot of it very violent. Ex-model MacGraw is an intense and forceful presence as his co-star, though she struggled with the role through her inexperience as an actress, and it does show slightly.

The character acting is a major driving force of the movie, particularly by Ben Johnson as Jack Beynon, Al Lettieri as Rudy Butler, Sally Struthers as Fran Clinton, Slim Pickens as the wise old truck driver Cowboy, Richard Bright as The Thief, a con man who tries to get away with the McCoys’ loot, Jack Dodson as Fran’s veterinarian husband Harold Clinton, Dub Taylor as the hotel keeper Laughlin, and Roy Jenson as Beynon’s devious brother Cully.

The Getaway 1972 cinema release poster.

Obviously, this is a world where there is not a good guy in sight, and we are invited to accept the subversive idea that Doc and Carol are somehow actually the good guys, killers and robbers though they made be. We want them to get away. We certainly don’t want Beynon or Butler or The Thief or Cully and his men to get the loot, or even survive.

Lucien Ballard’s widescreen cinematography is a major triumph, pointing his cameras probingly and excitingly at the Texas landscapes, roads and railroad stations. Here we have the authentic American rural and small town look and mood of the Seventies.

Shootind began in Huntsville, Texas, on 7 February 1972. McQueen is surrounded by actual convicts for the opening prison scenes at the Huntsville Penitentiary. Other locations included the Texas towns San Marcos, San Antonio and El Paso, with the climactic scenes at El Paso’s Laughlin Hotel.

The film opened in Los Angeles on December 19, 1972. It was a huge box-office hit, earning more than $36 million in the United States alone, on a budget of $3.3 million, easily one of the most financially successful in Peckinpah’s and McQueen’s careers.

Jim Thompson was hired by McQueen and producer David Foster (his publicist) to adapt his own novel, working on the screenplay for four months and producing a treatment, with alternate scenes and episodes. But McQueen objected to Thompson’s depressing ending and he was replaced by Walter Hill. Peter Bogdanovich was set to direct, wanting Hill to turn the material into a Hitchcock-type thriller, but then McQueen fired the director and Peckinpah (whom McQueen had liked on 1972’s Junior Bonner) came aboard.

However, they argued during filming. Peckinpah recalled: ‘Steve and I had been discussing some point on which we disagreed, so he picked up this bottle of champagne and threw it at me. I saw it coming and ducked. And Steve just laughed.’

Incidentally Junior Bonner has a similar budget of $3.2 million but took only $2.8 million at the box office.

McQueen’s continual interference included dumping the original score by Peckinpah’s long-time composer Jerry Fielding and hiring Quincy Jones to provide music with a jazzier edge and harmonica solos by Toots Thielemans. An unhappy Peckinpah took out a full-page ad in Daily Variety thanking Fielding for his work. Nevertheless, the Quincy Jones score is very striking, and adds a lot to atmosphere and enjoyment.

McQueen also had final cut and an upset Peckinpah said: ‘He chose all these Playboy shots of himself. He’s playing it safe with these pretty-boy shots.’ it’s true, there are a few too many pretty-boy shots for such a tough guy story. We say pretty-boy, but McQueen was 42, already looking craggy and crumpled, but that really does suit the role.

Well, they may have changed a lot from Jim Thompson’s novel, shifting the period from the Fifties to the Seventies present, adding action, toning down the violence, and changing the surreal ending, but they have created something else more or less in the same spirit.

Ali MacGraw in The Getaway (1972).

McQueen and MacGraw began an affair during production, with MacGraw later leaving and divorcing her film producer husband Robert Evans and becoming McQueen’s second wife from 1973 to 1978.

Walter Hill says: ‘Of the films I wrote, I thought it was far and away the best one and the most interesting. Biggest hit Sam ever had.’

The Getaway was remade again as The Getaway in 1993 by director Roger Donaldson, with Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.

Jim Thompson

Jim Thompson was born on September 27, 1906 in Anadarko, Oklahoma. He was also known for Paths of Glory (1957), The Killing (1956), The Grifters (1990), The Killer Inside Me (1976, 2010), Coup de torchon [novel Pop. 1280] (1981) and The Kill-Off (1989). He was a member of the American communist party for a time and was blacklisted during the McCarthy communist witch-hunt era. But he eventually broke with the party. After a series of strokes, he starved himself to death on 7 April 1977 in Hollywood.

David Foster

RIP veteran Hollywood publicist and producer David Foster, who died on 22 December 2019, aged 90. His career spanned 60 years and he produced McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Getaway, and The Thing.

The cast

The cast are Steve McQueen as Doc McCoy, Ali MacGraw as Carol McCoy, Ben Johnson as Jack Beynon, Al Lettieri as Rudy Butler, Sally Struthers as Fran Clinton, Slim Pickens as Cowboy, Richard Bright as The Thief, Jack Dodson as Harold Clinton, Dub Taylor as Laughlin, Bo Hopkins as Frank Jackson, Roy Jenson as Cully, John Bryson as The Accountant, Bill Hart as Swain, Tom Runyon as Hayhoe, and Whitney Jones as The Soldier.

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