This Adam West and Steve McQueen interaction gave the Batman star a small ego boost
Kids of celebrities don't get starstruck often because they're around famous people all the time. Now, heroes are a different story.
If you ask any child, celebrity kid or not, whether they want to meet a superhero or a Hollywood star, most would say the superhero. In his book Back to the Batcave, Adam West recalled a time when children were more excited to meet him than Western star Steve McQueen.
"One day, we were filming outside on the Fox lot, around a giant umbrella the Penguin had left in the street. Between takes, I went over to greet a crowd of children who'd been watching the filming. The first two I greeted, were standing next to a small, thin blond-haired man in a seersucker jacket and a white shirt: it took me a long moment before I realized it was Steve McQueen," West said.
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McQueen was the King of Cool. He rode motorcycles and never held back a thought. Although he was filming a movie and was the star of an acclaimed film Adam West had seen years ago, McQueen seemed invisible to the children while the Caped Crusader stood there.
"He introduced himself and said he had a day off from shooting 'The Sand Pebbles' and had brought his kids to meet Batman. It was a strange feeling: just three years before I'd been sitting in a movie theater watching him elude the Nazis in 'The Great Escape.' Now, here he was, smiling like a kid as he shook my hand and called me Batman. And I admit getting a small ego boost by the fact that none of the other kids gave the movie star a second glance. Their eyes were on me."