''Westerns are on the way out'': Steve McQueen knew the genre was in trouble
The television and film industries often focus on one genre at a time. In the Fifties and Sixties, Westerns were especially popular, with nearly every show featuring a brave cowboy hero. It wasn't long until those stories started to fade away.
You might have heard about the rural purge, but Westerns started disappearing even earlier. Steve McQueen from Wanted: Dead or Alive said he saw it coming. "I've felt for some time that Westerns are on the way out, and last year I wanted to leave the show. We got into a terrible hassle about it," he told the Associated Press in 1961. "But they wouldn’t let me out. What still bothers me is that I was turning down picture offers left and right."
While the end of the show likely affected the rest of the cast and crew financially, McQueen said he was enjoying this new chapter.
"It's fantastic. I know that a swing from television to motion pictures is always a precarious thing. But two major studios have offered me great deals — one picture a year for five years for $1 million and a percentage of the profits, and I can do other things as well."