Reel Classics — A Kentucky Connection: ‘Steel’

With today’s ver­sion of Reel Classics, I am tak­ing a bit of a turn from my usu­al efforts. All of the films I have reviewed in the past were films I have per­son­al­ly seen and liked. 

I must admit I have nev­er seen today’s film, Steel, star­ring Lee Majors. I received a sug­ges­tion sev­er­al weeks ago from a friend who asked me to con­sid­er review­ing this movie, as it was filmed in Lexington, Kentucky, and starred a Kentuckian. He thought folks might be inter­est­ed in the local con­nec­tion. I agreed to look at the film, and in doing so, it aroused my curios­i­ty about oth­er films with a Kentucky con­nec­tion that I might explore in the future.  I began research­ing and found a fair­ly com­pre­hen­sive list of such films.  With that, I decid­ed that I would do a peri­od­ic “Reel Classics — A Kentucky Connection” fea­ture.  Today’s film will be the ini­tial entry into that series.

Steel stars Lee Majors and a num­ber of well-known and rec­og­niz­able actors, includ­ing George Kennedy, Art Carney, R. G. Armstrong, Albert Salmi, and Jennifer O’Neill. The set­ting is Houston, Texas, where we find con­struc­tion boss Lew Cassidy (George Kennedy) lead­ing a crew to com­plete the con­struc­tion of a down­town sky­scraper. He is finan­cial­ly strapped and has a three-week dead­line to com­plete the project. 

Unfortunately, Lew Cassidy falls from the struc­ture and is killed. 

His daugh­ter, Cass Cassidy (Jennifer O’Neill), is bound and deter­mined to see the project com­plet­ed and to pre­vent her father’s schem­ing broth­er, Eddie Cassidy (Harris Yulin), from tak­ing over the com­pa­ny. She is advised to seek out Mike Catton (Lee Majors) to head up the project. Catton had once been very suc­cess­ful and well-known in the con­struc­tion trade, but had giv­en it up after an on-site acci­dent left him with a very seri­ous fear of heights. Cass con­vinces Catton to take on the project to com­plete the last nine sto­ries of the build­ing in three weeks. 

Catton begins by seek­ing out a crew of for­mer friends and co-work­ers that he believes can get the work done.  Cass is bound and deter­mined to run the busi­ness side of the project and some ten­sions arise between her and Catton.  There are also some ten­sions with­in the work crew as they ques­tion Catton’s desire to super­vise from the ground and not climb the beams. 

As the project pro­ceeds, the work crew expe­ri­ences numer­ous obsta­cles, includ­ing bad weath­er and faulty equip­ment.  The ten­sions between Catton and Cass begin to ease as roman­tic inter­ests between the two begin to rise.  Catton also has to con­front his fears when he has to climb the sky­scraper to help res­cue an employ­ee trapped on a col­laps­ing beam dur­ing a storm. 

The ini­tial part of the film deals with Catton’s efforts to round up the “right men” for the job.  He seeks out for­mer co-work­ers that are excel­lent in their skills and with whom he is con­fi­dent they can met the demands of the job in the short peri­od of time they have.  This seg­ment is sim­i­lar to the theme in the Western movie The Magnificent Seven.  Thus, one of the taglines for Steel is “The Magnificent Eight!” Some reviews iden­ti­fied this crew in var­i­ous terms such as “the dream team” and the “wild bunch.” 

The sec­ond part of the movie is about the chal­lenges in get­ting the con­struc­tion com­plet­ed with­in the three-week time line and of course the grow­ing roman­tic rela­tion­ship between Catton and Cass. 

At the time, Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett were mar­ried and oper­at­ed Fawcett-Majors Productions.    Steel was one of six films made by their com­pa­ny.  At the time of the film­ing, Lee Majors was a well-known and pop­u­lar TV star with roles in Big Valley and The Six Million Dollar Man. 

And now for the “Kentucky Connection.”  We’ll begin with Lee Majors.  Majors was born Harvey Lee Yeary in 1939 in Wyandotte, Michigan.  His father died from a work-relat­ed acci­dent five months before he was born, and his moth­er was killed in an auto acci­dent when he was only 16 months old.    He was adopt­ed by his uncle and aunt, Harvey and Mildred Yeary, and they moved to Middlesboro, Kentucky. 

Growing up in Middlesboro, Majors became very active in school sports and was involved in both track and foot­ball at Middlesboro High School.  He grad­u­at­ed in 1957 and went to Indiana University, where he played col­lege foot­ball. In 1959 he trans­ferred to Eastern Kentucky University and played foot­ball until suf­fer­ing a back injury that end­ed his foot­ball play­ing aspi­ra­tions.  After the injury, he got more involved in act­ing and per­formed in plays at the Pioneer Playhouse in Danville, Kentucky.  In 1962 he grad­u­at­ed from EKU with a major in his­to­ry and phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion.  He want­ed to be a foot­ball coach. 

After grad­u­a­tion, he moved to Los Angeles and worked as a parks and recre­ation direc­tor.  He also enrolled in act­ing school and found his way into the film busi­ness, chang­ing his name from Harvey Lee Yeary to Lee Majors.

Filming for Steel began in July 1978 in Lexington, Kentucky and at var­i­ous sites with­in Fayette County.  The con­struc­tion site was the Kincaid Tower on Vine Street.  It was under con­struc­tion at the time.  The film mak­ers uti­lized the steel frame­work, the scaf­fold­ing, the cranes and oth­er equip­ment along with the visu­als of the sky­line from the site to pro­vide a very real­is­tic per­spec­tive of such an endeavor. 

Utilizing an exist­ing site such as Kincaid Tower also did away with the need to build elab­o­rate sets for the pro­duc­tion.  There was a set con­struct­ed on the roof of the Patterson Office Tower on the cam­pus of the University of Kentucky.  Most of the top-floor scenes were filmed there so as to not inter­fere with the actu­al Kincaid Tower con­struc­tion efforts. 

Unfortunately, a very trag­ic acci­dent occurred dur­ing the film­ing.  Stuntman A.J. Bakunas died from injuries sus­tained in a fall from the top of the Kincaid Tower.  He was the stunt dou­ble for George Kennedy and per­formed the stunt depict­ing Lew Cassidy’s death from a fall ear­ly in the film.  The orig­i­nal scene had been filmed with Bakunas falling from the ninth sto­ry of the build­ing with no prob­lem.  He pos­sessed the world record for high­est free-fall.  However, he learned that his record had been sur­passed by anoth­er stunt­man, Dar Robinson, and he want­ed to redo the scene from the top of the Kincaid Tower. 

Robinson’s record-set­ting jump was 286 feet, and the jump from the Kincaid Tower would be 323 feet.  The sec­ond jump was after film­ing had been wrapped up in Lexington, and Bakunas and Lee Majors trav­eled back to Lexington to redo the scene.  Reportedly, the speed of the fall would reach 115 miles per hour.  A huge airbag was set up at the foot of the build­ing and a large group of local cit­i­zens as well as local TV sta­tion reporters and cam­era­men stood by to cap­ture the event.  The airbag burst upon impact and Bakunas suf­fered injuries to his hips, shoul­ders and lungs.  He was rushed to a local hos­pi­tal, where he died from his injuries 15 hours later. 

WKYT-TV did a brief sto­ry on the inci­dent, and the clip is includ­ed below. 

The film’s orig­i­nal title, Look Down and Die, was changed to Steel after this trag­ic incident.

Steel had its world pre­mière in the Philippines in July 1979. It opened in the United States in November 1980. It did not do very well at the box office. Critical reviews were also mixed, with some crit­ics char­ac­ter­iz­ing the film as a blue-col­lar dra­ma and a B‑movie. Some saw it more as a “made for TV” kind of movie. More recent reviews have clas­si­fied it more as a “cult” film with an audi­ence appre­cia­tive of the themes of blue-col­lar hero­ism and resilience. The dra­mat­ic death of the stunt­man has also con­tributed to the cult appeal. It has report­ed­ly been fea­tured on var­i­ous pod­casts focus­ing on cult films, includ­ing “Quentin Tarantino’s Video Archive.”  Such efforts have rein­tro­duced the film to new audiences.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) rates Steel at 6 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes had no crit­ics con­sen­sus and no Critics Score for the film.  The Audience Score was 33%. 

In search­ing my Roku device, I could find no stream­ing sites, though I did find the movie avail­able for free on YouTube.  There is no copy of the DVD at the Clark County Public Library (though I feel cer­tain they will obtain a copy if you request it).

I am sor­ry to say that I could not find a trail­er for the film oth­er than a clip of open­ing or end­ing cred­its.  However, as men­tioned above, I am includ­ing the link to the WKYT news sto­ry on the trag­ic death of  A.J. Bakunas.

So here we have our first edi­tion of Reel Classics — A Kentucky Connection.  Filmed in Lexington and Fayette County, Kentucky, with a home­grown star from Middlesboro, Ky.  There will be more to come in the future, so be on the look­out for that Kentucky Connection.  One of the upcom­ing films even goes so far as to have a Winchester, Kentucky connection. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from sources includ­ing the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

Link to WKYT sto­ry:  https://youtu.be/BeeDimMrY20