The Getaway is a 1972 American action thriller film based on the 1958 novel by Jim Thompson. The film was directed by Sam Peckinpah, written by Walter Hill, and stars Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Ben Johnson, Al Lettieri, and Sally Struthers.
Peter Bogdanovich, whose The Last Picture Show impressed McQueen and producer David Foster, was originally hired as the director of The Getaway. Thompson came on board to write the screenplay, but creative differences ensued between him and McQueen, and Thompson was subsequently fired, along with Bogdanovich. Writing and directing duties eventually went to Hill and Peckinpah, respectively. Principal photography commenced February 7, 1972, on location in Texas. The film reunited McQueen and Peckinpah, who had worked together on the relatively unprofitable Junior Bonner, released the same year.
Principal photography of The Getaway began in Huntsville, Texas, February 7, 1972. Peckinpah shot the opening prison scenes at the Huntsville Penitentiary, with McQueen surrounded by actual convicts. Other shooting locations included the Texas towns San Marcos, San Antonio and El Paso. The climactic scenes at El Paso’s Laughlin Hotel — demolished in 2013 (along with City Hall) to make way for Southwest University Park — include the curved framework of the Abraham Chavez Theatre, visible under-construction nearby, and the construction site, including the adjacent El Paso Civic Center.
Associate producer Gordon Dawson recalled: “It was not an easy task as we had to take McQueen and one hundred and thirty crew members inside the walls. The night before we began filming we were told that if a hostage situation developed, even if it included McQueen, the prison officials would do nothing, their policy was not to negotiate with inmates, they’d shoot first and ask questions later. That was a difficult night, Sam and I killed a bottle of tequila, we asked ourselves over and over, do we go in, or not? Something deep inside Sam loved taking risks, we got the first shot (the next morning) by nine thirty.”
Peckinpah’s intake of alcohol increased dramatically when making The Getaway, and he was fond of saying, “I can’t direct when I’m sober.” He and McQueen got into occasional heated arguments during filming. The director recalled one such incident on the first day of rehearsal in San Marcos: “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.”
Producer Katy Haber recalled: “Steve actually nearly got hurt bad. We were shooting the sequence where the prisoners are cleaning scrub and brush, we’d finished this particular shot, and Steve left the line of men to go back to the trailer, well, all the prison dogs are trained to run down anything in white, because that’s the prison garb, the dogs went after Steve, he just made it to the trailer, it was pretty hairy.”
McQueen recalled the same moment: “On our first afternoon there, when the scene was wrapped and Sam yelled ‘Cut!,’ I took off toward my dressing room for some coffee. Well, here I was, in prison duds, splitting away from the other cons. Suddenly, I’m running like hell, because this pack of hounds are snappin’ at my ass. They’d been trained to go after any con who broke ranks, and nobody had bothered to tell them this was a movie. I barely made it out of that yard in one piece. I almost got my ass chewed off.”
McQueen had a knack with props, especially the weapons, he used in the film. Hill remembered, “You can see Steve’s military training in his films. He was so brisk and confident in the way he handled the guns.” It was McQueen’s idea to have his character shoot and blow up a squad car in the scene where Doc holds two police officers at gunpoint.
Under his contract with First Artists, McQueen had final cut privileges on The Getaway. When Peckinpah found out, he was upset. Richard Bright said McQueen chose takes that “made him look good,” and Peckinpah felt that the actor had played it safe. Said Peckinpah: “He chose all these Playboy shots of himself. He’s playing it safe with these pretty-boy shots.”
The Getaway premiered December 19, 1972. Despite the negative reviews it received upon release, numerous retrospective critics give the film good reviews. A box-office hit earning over $36 million, it was the eighth highest-grossing film of 1972, and one of the most financially successful productions of Peckinpah’s and McQueen’s careers. A film remake of the same name starring Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger was released in 1994.
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