McQueen's Jump

Steve McQueen is one of my all-time favorite actors. In addition to his tough guy persona McQueen was a car guy. You've probably all heard about McQueen spending the better part of a year shooting racing scenes at LeMans for the film of the same name and how he was a pretty decent hotshoe driver, too.

In The Great Escape McQueen played a US POW trying to get out of a German prison camp. The highpoint of the film was McQueen's character jumping a motorcycle over a barbed wire fence to escape into Switzerland. The bike was actually ridden by the late Bud Ekins since the movie's insurer forbade McQueen from doing the jump.

The Sunday Times of London re-created the incredible jump in observance of the film's fortieth anniversary. A video of the jump can be found here.