'The Thomas Crown Affair': A Look Back At The Classic Caper

"The Thomas Crown Affair" was one of the most stylish movies of the 1960s -- stylish for the icy cool of Steve McQueen as the millionaire who robs banks for kicks; for the similarly frosty cool of Faye Dunaway as the investigator who plays an erotic game of cat-and-mouse with him; for the costumes of Theadora Van Runkle, who helped make Dunaway a fashion trendsetter in "Bonnie and Clyde" and did the same for her here with no fewer than 29 haute-couture outfits; for the jazzy score of Michel Legrand, including the Oscar-winning ballad "The Windmills of Your Mind"; and for the camera trickery of director Norman Jewison, the first Hollywood filmmaker to shoot heist scenes and love scenes in split-screen.

The 1968 caper flick was a favorite of both McQueen and Dunaway, as well as of moviegoers, many of whom prefer it to the similarly slick 1999 remake that starred Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo. You can make the comparison yourself when the McQueen-Dunaway original comes out on Blu-ray this week. In it, you'll see many performers who went on to have celebrated careers in film and TV. Let's take a look back at the entire cast and crew of "The Thomas Crown Affair," below.

Gallery | 'The Thomas Crown Affair': A Look Back At The Classic Caper

• Steve McQueen

  The once and future king of cool almost wasn't cast as Thomas Crown; director Jewison, who'd worked with McQueen on "The Cincinnati Kid," thought the part was too different from the hot-tempered, man-of-action roles that had made McQueen a star. In retrospect, the cool, laconic rebel that Crown turned out to be was of a piece with the other roles McQueen played before and after, from the untameable POW in "The Great Escape," to the lead-footed detective in "Bullitt," to the hard-boiled thief in "The Getaway," to the world-weary bounty hunter in "The Hunter." McQueen was just 50 when he died of mesothelioma in 1980, but he lives on as an icon of style; his image in ads for products from cars to sunglasses has made him one of the top-earning dead celebrities.

• Faye Dunaway

• Faye Dunaway

  When "Thomas Crown" was casting in 1967, the 26-year-old Dunaway's first starring role, in "Bonnie in Clyde," hadn't been released yet. But advance footage from the film was enough to win her the lead in "Crown" over such established stars as Eva Marie Saint, Brigitte Bardot, Leslie Caron, Julie Christie, and Vanessa Redgrave. After "Crown," she appeared in such landmark films as "Chinatown," "Network" (for which she won a Best Actress Oscar) and the notorious "Mommie Dearest" (featuring Dunaway's legendary, over-the-top performance as Joan Crawford, for which she won a Razzie Award for Worst Actress). In 1999, she had a cameo in the "Thomas Crown" remake as Crown's therapist. Now 71, she remains in demand as a TV and film actress. She's currently completing a film version of the Broadway play "Master Class," which she directed and stars in. (In March, she posted a still from the movie on her Twitter feed.)

• Jack Weston

  Weston was a reliable comic actor, but he enjoyed a rare dramatic role as Erwin, whom Crown hires as a getaway driver. Weston went on to earn laughs in such films as "Cactus Flower," "A New Leaf," "The Four Seasons," "Ishtar," and "Dirty Dancing" -- probably the film for which he's best remembered, in which he played the jovial resort owner. Weston died of lymphoma in 1996 at age 71.

• Yaphet Kotto

• Yaphet Kotto

  "Thomas Crown" marked the mainstream movie debut of Kotto, who played Carl, one of the robbers. HIs intense presence made him an in-demand character actor in such films as "Live and Let Die" (as Bond villain Mr. Big), "Blue Collar," "Alien," "The Running Man," "Midnight Run," and the TV series "Homicide: Life on the Street," in which he starred as Lt. Giardello for six years. The 72-year-old's most recent role was in the 2008 spoof "Witless Protection," opposite Larry the Cable Guy.

• Paul Burke

  Burke's Emmy-nominated role as a police detective on "Naked City" made him a natural to play Eddie Malone, the skeptical cop investigating Thomas Crown's heist. Unfortunately, his performance in "Crown" did not erase the stink from the previous year's "Valley of the Dolls," the campy turkey in which he was unfortunate enough to be one of the male leads. He continued to find guest work on TV, notably in the soaps "Dynasty" and "Santa Barbara." In 1989, Burke and New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick Sr. (father of the crooner) were tried as co-conspirators in a gambling and racketeering case. Both were acquitted. After that, his career was effectively over, though he lived for another 20 years. He died in 2009 at age 83 after battling leukemia and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. His granddaughter is "Arrested Development" actress Alia Shawkat.

• Norman Jewison

• Norman Jewison

  Jewison was coming off the success of "In the Heat of the Night," the landmark racial drama/murder mystery that won the 1967 Oscar for Best Picture, when he made "Thomas Crown." It was a light, airy change of pace for the director, who would become known for addressing issues of bigotry, faith, and social injustice in his films, from such musicals as "Fiddler on the Roof" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" to legal dramas "And Justice for All" and "The Hurricane." He also directed such romantic comedies as "Send Me No Flowers," "Moonstruck," and "Only You." His last film was 2003's "The Statement," starring Michael Caine as a French Nazi collaborator who evades justice for decades. He was nominated three times for a Best Director Oscar but never won, though he did get the Academy's honorary Irving Thalberg prize in 1999. Today, Jewison is 85 and lives in his native Ontario.

• Michel Legrand

• Michel Legrand

  Equally adept at jazz, classical, and film and stage scoring, the Paris-born Legrand came to the attention of Hollywood with his lush, romantic scores for Jacques Demy's movie musicals "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "The Young Girls of Rochefort." He reportedly composed the "Thomas Crown" score after seeing a rough cut, which Jewison then edited to fit the music (rather than the standard practice of making the music fit the edited film). For this innovation, Legrand earned Oscar nominations for his score and for his original song, the dreamy "The Windmills of Your Mind," sung on the film's soundtrack by Noel Harrison (son of Rex Harrison). "Windmills" won Legrand his first Oscar; he'd win again for the scores of "Summer of '42" and "Yentl." Ultimately, he was nominated 13 times and composed some 200 film and TV scores. Over the last 15 years, he's composed just for the stage, including the musicals "Amour" and "Marguerite." At 80, he continues to perform in cabarets with "Amour" star Melissa Errico and divides his time between Paris and New York.

• Hal Ashby

  Ashby had won an Oscar for editing "In the Heat of the Night" shortly before reteaming with Jewison on "Thomas Crown." Along with Jewison and cinematographer Haskell Wexler, he helped create the movie's innovative split-screen effects. He went on to become a celebrated director in his own right, filming such 1970s classics as "Harold and Maude," "The Last Detail," "Shampoo," "Bound for Glory," and "Coming Home." In his last major film, the dryly satirical "Being There," he referenced the famous chess-game seduction scene in "Thomas Crown" by including a sequence where Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine clumsily ape the scene after they watch it on TV. Ashby died of pancreatic cancer in 1988 at age 59.

• Theadora Van Runkle

  Like Dunaway, Hollywood costumer Van Runkle broke through on "Bonnie and Clyde," dressing the actress in a beret, sweater, and calf-length skirt that made Dunaway a fashion trendsetter. Soon, she was styling Dunaway's wardrobe offscreen as well. A year after "Bonnie," Van Runkle created no fewer than 29 fashion-forward outfits for Dunaway in "Thomas Crown," doing what she called "Method accessorizing" -- dressing Dunaway in items that suggested her character's state of mind, like red gemstones for when she was on the hunt. She dressed McQueen and Dunaway again on their next movies ("Bullitt" and "The Arrangement," respectively). Over the years, Van Runkle would earn Oscar nods for her work on "Bonnie," "The Godfather Part II," and "Peggy Sue Got Married." Her last feature was 1998's Hollywood satire "I'm Losing You." She died in 2011 of lung cancer at age 83.

• Haskelll Wexler

• Haskelll Wexler

  Legendary cinematographer Wexler had already won an Oscar for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and had worked with Jewison on "In the Heat of the Night" when he rejoined the director for "Thomas Crown." For the innovative robbery sequence, Wexler heightened the realism by shooting with hidden cameras inside a real bank; the result was so realistic that (according to Jewison) some customers thought they were witnessing a real robbery. The chess match love scene was similarly tricky and took three days to complete; to shoot the 360-degree pan around McQueen and Dunaway as they kissed, Wexler stood on a skateboard and had assistants wheel him around the smooching stars. Wexler went on to direct the seminal "Medium Cool" (mixing shots of actors with actual footage he captured amid the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago). He reportedly encouraged a young George Lucas to go to film school; he ended up working for the director as the cinematographer on "American Graffiti." He won a second Oscar for Hal Ashby's "Bound for Glory" and earned three more Oscar nominations over the course of his career. At 90, he continues to shoot documentaries, including this year's "Occupy LA," which sees him once again filming street protesters as he did 44 years ago.

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