Lee Marvin: Playing Out His Career

It is difficult to comment on the last fifteen years of Lee Marvin's career.  One of my favorite actors, I found it difficult if not impossible to watch many of his later films.  A few that I did, more from curiosity, proved to be painful.  But there are a handful that contained some of best characterizations and performances.

His box-office appeal had faltered after Paint Your Wagon (1969) and a trio of borderline films – Monte Walsh (1970), Pocket Money (1972), and Prime Cut (1972); Marvin's good performances could not overcome weak story lines. Yet, in 1973, he found himself in two films which could be said to represent his personal heights as an actor. Not coincidentally, Emperor of the North (1973) and The Iceman Cometh (1973) were helmed by two strong directors: Robert Aldrich and John Frankenheimer respectively.

Emperor of the North was a gutsy look at hobos riding the rails in the Northwest United States during the Great Depression. Marvin played A#1, king of the train-riding hobos who squared off with Shack (Ernest Borgnine), the brutish train conductor. For films like Eight Iron Men (1952) and Hell in the Pacific (1968), Marvin called on his personal war experiences to draw himself into the roles. For Point Blank (1967) and Liberty Valance (1962), his screen image he utilized to great effect. Emperor called for something else: a distillation of Lee Marvin individualism, that is, a character played viscerally.

Critics missed the point, for instance, when they viewed the film as contrived and pointless and which "glorified the bum and the freeloader." Marvin injected an air of nobility into a man who had nothing left but his own sense of self, nothing left but to be the king of the "bos." It was neither a pretty nor an arty film, yet Emperor contained interesting characterizations, great action sequences, and much humor (especially in the relationship between Marvin and Keith Carradine).

Then, in the truest sense of role reversal, Marvin was chosen to play the lead in the American Film Theater's presentation of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. Iceman was part of an experimental, two-year program to film some of the greatest of 20th century plays.

Iceman boasted one of the American Film Theater's best casts, a formidable cross-section of American acting: Robert Ryan, in one of his last roles, nearly stole the film from Marvin; Fredric March capped his fine career as the bar owner Harry Hope; a youthful Jeff Bridges; and several steady character actors like Bradford Dillman, Sorrell Booke, Moses Gunn, and Clifton James.

The choice of Marvin as Hickey was, initially, a controversial one. Jason Robards, Jr. basically owned the stage role, but Marvin acquitted himself quite well. One critic wrote that Marvin was born to play Hickey:

He had a perfect understanding of the man and the perfect equipment to     deal with it. Marvin is wonderful. I have seen James Barton, the first Hickey, and Jason Robards (along with others) and Marvin goes past them – so powerfully that he makes the crux of the play clearer than I have ever found it before, on stage or on page.

High praise, indeed. It is unfortunate that so few have seen Marvin at the top of his game.

Marvin's next five films are barely interesting or watchable. The Spikes Gang (1974), The Klansman (1974), Shout at the Devil (1976), The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (1976), and Avalanche Express (1979) added nothing to Marvin's, or anyone else's, reputation.

The Klansman might be the most noteworthy, if only for the bile and derision aimed at Terence Young's production. Marvin, paired with Richard Burton, probably increased business at the local barrooms on location (the most notorious episode was their 17-martini lunch), but neither actor could save this dismal film where "everything falls flat, the music is vapid, and the editing disjointed."  The third actor is O.J. Simpson, who acquits himself here as well.

During this vapid period, Marvin became celebrated in another arena: the Courts. His affair with Michelle Triola ended in 1970 when he married Pamela Feeley. According to Triola's testimony in 1979 at the Marvin v. Marvin trial (Triola had her name legally changed to "Marvin" when they had been living together in the late sixties) before Judge Arthur Marshall at Los Angeles County Court, she gave up her career to attend to the actor and was subsequently seeking half of Marvin's earnings from the time they had lived together.

Her testimony also included comments about Marvin's drinking and the abortions she claimed to have had. Arraigned against her were a man who claimed to have had an affair with her while she was living with Marvin and a woman who denied going with her to an abortionist. After months of testimony, Judge Marshall awarded Triola $104,000 for rehabilitation purposes, but denied that she'd proven breach of contract--in 1981 an appellate court denied the payment on those very grounds. She had begun the action in 1972.

When asked by a Penthouse interviewer if he thought he should have to pay Triola, Marvin summed up his views on the case and its outcome:

Well, the judge awarded her some 'get back on your feet' money. I think he was just scolding me. He was saying, 'Look, you've got to be a big boy and take responsibility.' But you know, when Michelle and I broke up, I had agreed that, if she'd stay out of my life, I'd give her a certain amount of dough. And the judge ended up awarding her less than I'd been willing to give her! Poor Mitchelson [Triola's lawyer]. He's left saying, 'But I can't make my fee out of what she got!'...This has all been a tremendous blow to [him]. He lost on every count of the law.Despite the financial outcome for Triola, "palimony" suits were familiar sights on the front pages of tabloids throughout the 1980s. While the palimony case did not revive his career, the quality of Marvin's last five films markedly improved. The Big Red One (1980), based on director Samuel Fuller's World War II experiences, was the best of the lot. Marvin was perfect as the platoon sergeant.

The film began with a prologue on the last day of World War I, then we follow Marvin's group (including Mark Hamill and Robert Carradine) from North Africa to Sicily to the Normandy beaches and into the heart of Europe. At the age of fifty-six, Marvin appeared at times ten years older, a symptom of his resumed drinking problem, and with each new film in the 1980s, he became increasingly drawn in the face until he almost looked deathly pale in The Delta Force (1986).

One other significant performance should be noted, the large-scale suspense thriller Gorky Park (1983), filmed in Finland. Marvin returned to the type of role that established him early in his career, the sadistic heavy. William Hurt was the lead as a Moscow detective trying to unravel several grisly murders. Marvin plays an American named Osburne who makes no bones about what he is, a bad guy and instigator, with great presence, an older, wiser, but just as malevolent Vince Stone type (his sadistic punk characterization in The Big Heat).

Marvin's last movie was 1986's The Delta Force with Chuck Norris, a film which shamelessly exploited the 1985 TWA hostage situation at the Beirut airport. Most of the heavy action sequences were left to Chuck Norris. Marvin commented that "My only provocation to work is if I like the people I'd be working with, the story or the location." He liked producer Menahem Golan's proposal: "The script arrived, and it was just like he told me it would be. He didn't lie to me, which is unusual for producers."

Marvin had colon surgery in December, 1986. A non-malignant tumor was removed. But his health deteriorated and he died at the Tucson Medical Center of a heart attack on August 29, 1987, at the age of sixty-three.

Epilogue

Lee Marvin was the greatest villain of the fifties, best witnessed by roles in the cult classics The Big Heat, The Wild One, Shack Out on 101, Violent Saturday, and Bad Day at Black Rock. However, his identification as a movie "heavy" has caused an underestimation of his acting talents. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Marvin established himself as a constant presence on television during Television's Golden Era, starring in his own successful series for three years, guest starring in other shows like Route 66, The Twilight Zone, and The Untouchables, and leading a cast in hour and two-hour specials.