American Mirro-Krome postcard by H.S. Crocker Co. Inc., San Francisco, Calif., no. HSC-305. Lee Marvin in the TV series M Squad (1957). Caption: Lee Marvin plays the role of Lieutenant Ballinger in M Squad, an action-detective series filmed at Revue Studios. In addition to starring in his M Squad series, Lee also appears as a guest star in television specials.
He caught the acting bug
Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. was born in 1924 in New York City. He was the son of Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive and later the head of the New York and New England Apple Institute, and Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion and beauty writer/editor. As with his elder brother, Robert, he was named in honour of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, who was his first cousin, four times removed. His father was a direct descendant of Matthew Marvin Sr., who emigrated from Great Bentley, Essex, England, in 1635, and helped found Hartford, Connecticut.
Marvin studied the violin when he was young. As a teenager, Marvin "spent weekends and spare time hunting deer, puma, wild turkey, and bobwhite in the wilds of the then-uncharted Everglades". He attended Manumit School, a Christian socialist boarding school in Pawling, New York, during the late 1930s, and later attended St. Leo College Preparatory School, a Catholic school in St. Leo, Florida, after being expelled from several other schools for bad behaviour.
Marvin left school at 18 to enlist in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in 1942. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific Theater during World War II. While serving as a member of "I" Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines, 4th Marine Division, he was wounded in action on in 1944, during the assault on Mount Tapochau in the Battle of Saipan, during which most of his company were casualties. He was hit by machine-gun fire, which severed his sciatic nerve, and then was hit again in the foot by a sniper.
After over a year of medical treatment in naval hospitals, Marvin was given a medical discharge with the rank of a private first class (he had been a corporal years earlier but had been demoted after causing trouble) in 1945 Philadelphia. Marvin's military awards include the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Combat Action Ribbon.
After the war, while working as a plumber's assistant at a local community theatre in upstate New York, Lee Marvin was asked to replace an actor who had fallen ill during rehearsals. He caught the acting bug and got a job with the company at $7 a week. He moved to Greenwich Village and used the GI Bill to study at the American Theatre Wing.
He appeared on stage in a production of 'Uniform of Flesh', an adaptation of the novel 'Billy Budd' (1949). It was done at the Experimental Theatre, where a few months later Marvin also appeared in 'The Nineteenth Hole of Europe' (1949). Marvin began appearing on television shows like Escape, The Big Story, and Treasury Men in Action. He made it to Broadway with a small role in another production of 'Uniform of Flesh', now called 'Billy Budd' in February 1951.
American Arcade card.
Gloria Grahame's vicious boyfriend
Lee Marvin's film debut was in You're in the Navy Now (Henry Hathaway, 1951), which also marked the debuts of Charles Bronson and Jack Warden. This required some filming in Hollywood. Marvin decided to stay there. He had a similar small part in Teresa (Fred Zinnemann, 1951). As a decorated combat veteran, Marvin was a natural in war dramas, where he frequently assisted the director and other actors in realistically portraying infantry movement, arranging costumes, and the use of firearms.
He guest-starred on episodes of Fireside Theatre (1950), Suspense (1950), and Rebound (1952). Hathaway used him again on Diplomatic Courier (Henry Hathaway, 1952) and he could be seen in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (Edmund Goulding, 1952), We're Not Married! (Edmund Goulding, 1952), The Duel at Silver Creek (Don Siegel, 1952), and Hangman's Knot (Roy Huggins, 1952).
He guest-starred on Biff Baker, U.S.A. (1952) and Dragnet (1952-1953), and had a decent role in a feature with Eight Iron Men (Edward Dmytryk, 1952), a war film starring Bonar Colleano and produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin's role had been played on Broadway by Burt Lancaster. He was a sergeant in the Western Seminole (Budd Boetticher, 1953), and was a corporal in The Glory Brigade (Robert D. Webb, 1953), a Korean War film starring Victor Mature.
He was now in much demand for Westerns: The Stranger Wore a Gun (Andre DeToth, 1953) with Randolph Scott and Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953) with Rock Hudson and Donna Reed. Marvin received much acclaim for his portrayal as villains in two Film Noirs: The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) where he played Gloria Grahame's vicious boyfriend, and The Wild One (László Benedek, 1953) opposite Marlon Brando. Marvin's gang in the film was called "The Beetles".
He continued in TV shows such as The Plymouth Playhouse (1953) and The Pepsi-Cola Playhouse (1954). He had support roles in the 3D horror mystery B-movie Gorilla at Large (Harmon Jones, 1954) and had a notable small role as smart-aleck sailor Meatball in The Caine Mutiny (Edward Dmytryk, 1954), produced by Stanley Kramer. Marvin was in the war film The Raid (Hugo Fregonese, 1954) with Van Heflin and Anne Bancroft, and in episodes of the TV series Center Stage (1954), Medic (1954), and TV Reader's Digest (1955).
He had an excellent part as Hector, the small-town hood in Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955) with Spencer Tracy and Robert Ryan. Also in 1955, he played a conflicted, brutal bank-robber in the thriller Violent Saturday (Richard Fleischer, 1955) with Victor Mature. A latter-day critic wrote of the character, "Marvin brings a multi-faceted complexity to the role and gives a great example of the early promise that launched his long and successful career."
Marvin played Robert Mitchum's friend in Not as a Stranger (Stanley Kramer, 1955), a medical drama also produced by Kramer. He had bigger supporting roles in A Life in the Balance (Harry Horner, Rafael Portillo, 1955), Pete Kelly's Blues (Jack Webb, 1955) and I Died a Thousand Times (Stuart Heisler, 1955) with Jack Palance. Marvin was the villain in 7 Men from Now (Budd Boetticher, 1956) with Randolph Scott, and was second-billed to Jack Palance in Attack (Robert Aldrich, 1956). Marvin had good roles in The Rack (Arnold Laven, 1956) with Paul Newman, Raintree County (Edward Dmytryk, 1956) starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, and The Missouri Traveler (Jerry Hopper, 1958).
Marvin finally got to be a leading man in 100 episodes in the successful television series M Squad (1957-1960). Set in Chicago, Illinois, it starred Marvin as Detective Lieutenant Frank Ballinger, a member of "M Squad", a special unit of the Chicago Police, assisting other units in battling organized crime, corruption, and violent crimes citywide. One critic described the show as "a hyped-up, violent Dragnet ... with a hard-as-nails Marvin" playing a tough police lieutenant. Marvin received the role after guest-starring in a memorable Dragnet episode as a serial killer. When the series ended Marvin appeared on such TV shows as Wagon Train (1960-1961), Route 66 (1961), Bonanza (1962), The Untouchables (1961-1962), The Virginian (1962), and The Twilight Zone (1961-1963).
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no 289. Photo: Lee Marvin in Monte Walsh (William A. Fraker, 1970).
A hard-nosed criminal bent on revenge
Lee Marvin returned to features with a prominent role in The Comancheros (Michael Curtiz, 1961) starring John Wayne. He played in two more films with Wayne, both directed by John Ford: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Donovan's Reef (1963). As the vicious Liberty Valance, Marvin played his first title role and held his own with two of the screen's biggest stars (John Wayne and James Stewart). In 1962 Marvin appeared as Martin Kalig on the TV western The Virginian in the episode titled 'It Tolls for Thee'. He continued to guest star on shows like Combat! (1963), Dr. Kildare (1962-1964), and The Great Adventure (1963).
For director Don Siegel, Marvin appeared in The Killers (1964) playing an efficient professional assassin alongside Clu Gulager. The Killers was also the first film in which Marvin received top billing. Marvin finally became a star for his comic role in the Western comedy Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) starring Jane Fonda. This was a surprise hit and Marvin won the 1965 Oscar for Best Actor and several other awards.
Playing alongside Vivien Leigh and Simone Signoret, Marvin won the 1966 National Board of Review Award for male actors for his role in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer, 1965). Marvin next performed in the hit Western The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966), in which he played the leader of a small band of skilled mercenaries (Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan, and Woody Strode) rescuing a kidnap victim (Claudia Cardinale) shortly after the Mexican Revolution.
He followed that film with the hugely successful World War II epic The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967) in which top-billed Marvin again portrayed an intrepid commander of a colorful group (future stars John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas, Jim Brown, and Donald Sutherland) performing an almost impossible mission.
In the wake of these two films and after having received an Oscar, Marvin was a huge star, given enormous control over his next film Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967), co-starring Angie Dickinson. He portrayed a hard-nosed criminal bent on revenge. Marvin, who had selected Boorman himself for the director's slot, had a central role in the film's development, plotline, and staging. Marvin also appeared in another Boorman film, the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful World War II character study Hell in the Pacific (John Boorman, 1968), also starring famed Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune.
Marvin was originally cast as Pike Bishop (later played by William Holden) in The Wild Bunch (1969), but fell out with director Sam Peckinpah and pulled out to star in the Western musical Paint Your Wagon (Joshua Logan, 1969), in which he was top-billed over a singing Clint Eastwood. Despite his limited singing ability, he had a surprise hit song with "Wand'rin' Star". By this time, he was getting paid a million dollars per film, $200,000 less than top star Paul Newman was making at the time.
Marvin had a much greater variety of roles in the 1970s, with fewer bad-guy roles than in earlier years. His 1970s films included Monte Walsh (William A. Fraker, 1970), a Western with Jack Palance and Jeanne Moreau; the violent Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie, 1972) with Gene Hackman; Pocket Money (Stuart Rosenberg, 1972) with Paul Newman; Emperor of the North (Robert Aldrich, 1973) opposite Ernest Borgnine; as Hickey in The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer, 1973) with Fredric March and Robert Ryan; The Klansman (Terence Young, 1974) with Richard Burton; and Avalanche Express (Mark Robson, 1978), a Cold War thriller with Robert Shaw who died during production. None of these films were big box office hits.
Marvin was offered the role of Quint in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) but declined, stating "What would I tell my fishing friends who'd see me come off a hero against a dummy shark?". Marvin's last big role was in Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One (1980), a war film based on Fuller's own war experiences. His remaining films were Death Hunt (Peter R. Hunt, 1981), a Canadian action film with Charles Bronson; Gorky Park (Michael Apted, 1983) with William Hurt; and in France Canicule/Dog Day (Yves Boisset, 1984), with Miou-Miou.
For TV he did The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1985), a sequel with Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Richard Jaeckel picking up where they had left off despite being 18 years older. His final appearance was in The Delta Force (Menahem Golan, 1986) with Chuck Norris, playing a role turned down by Charles Bronson.
Marvin had married Betty Ebeling in February 1951 and together they had four children, son Christopher Lamont (1952–2013), and three daughters: Courtenay Lee (1954), Cynthia Louise (1956), and Claudia Leslie (1958–2012). Married 16 years, they divorced in 1967. A long-term romantic relationship with Michelle Triola led, after their breakup, to a highly publicised lawsuit in which Triola asked for a substantial portion of Marvin's assets. Her case failed in its main pursuit but did establish a legal precedent for the rights of unmarried cohabitors, the so-called "palimony" law.
Marvin reunited with his high school sweetheart, Pamela Feeley and they married in October 1970. She had four children with three previous marriages, they had no children together and remained married until his death in 1987. In December 1986, Marvin was hospitalised for more than two weeks because of a condition related to coccidioidomycosis (or valley fever, an infection caused by the fungus Coccidioides). Marvin died of a heart attack on 29 August 1987 in Tucson, Arizona, aged 63. He was buried with full military honours at Arlington National Cemetery.
British postcard by Photo-Roff in the Black & White Gallery, London, no. 1180. Photo: David Steen, 1980.
Sources: Jim Beaver (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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