Original Steve McQueen2

Steve talked about his racing suits, which were insulated with asbestos. He didn’t go into any detail back then. But over time, with all the books written about him, I’ve learned more about it. In the 1940’s, when he was only 16, Steve joined the merchant marines—actually somebody got him drunk and he woke up on a ship already out at sea. They made him swab the decks and clean up the pipes. He was probably exposed there. And then there was the Marine Corps. He blew up a can of beans and they punished him by making him strip the asbestos off the pipes of a ship. That was in the late 1940s. Steve did not talk about it much but I have a tape recording in which he was asked just before he died what caused his mesothelioma. He said: “asbestos.”