Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin (February 19, 1924 in New York, United States - August 29, 1987 in Tucson, Arizona) was an American television and film actor. Remembered for the serious tone of his voice (deep bass), his gray hair and his height (1.88m). Winner of the Oscar for Best Actor in 1965 for his double role in the film The Explosive Ingenue .
Biography
Her father was an advertising executive and her mother a fashion editor. The young Marvin was very unruly, so that he was expelled from all the schools in which his parents enrolled him, for being considered incorrigible. His parents finally took him to Florida to do his school studies at a specialized institution, but that didn't work out either.
Marvin then enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, coinciding with the start of World War II. In the Battle of Saipan in June 1944, he was wounded in the lower back, which caused serious damage to the sciatic nerve. As a result, he was declared unfit for service and sent on discharge to the United States. There he began working as a plumber in Woodstock, in the state of New York. On one occasion he was carrying out a repair at the municipal theater, when he was asked to replace an absent actor in a rehearsal. This experience awakened in him an enormous enthusiasm for acting. He moved to New York, and studied and acted in small roles, in minor theaters.
After a while he made his Broadway debut. After this new experience, she dedicated herself to television, a medium in which she was playing numerous secondary roles of little importance. It was then that he decided to move to Hollywood, where he managed to act in increasingly relevant films, embodying serious characters, highly structured with a dark bias but always in the line of tough and charismatic leaders, who, not being protagonists, prevailed in the plots..
Early career credits include: a brief role in the comedy We're Not Married! (with Marilyn Monroe, Ginger Rogers and Zsa Zsa Gabor), The Bribeds (with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame) and The Tree of Life, where Lee Marvin rubbed shoulders with Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
In the 1960s he became known as the lead in the TV series Ballinger of Chicago, which ran for 117 episodes and his roles grew in importance. Thus, his performances became more frequent and relevant, which earned him recognition from the public and, already in the 1970s, also from critics.
In the 1968 film Hell in the Pacific he aptly plays a castaway who harasses another Japanese castaway (Toshiro Mifune) on an island during World War II. In 1969, directed by director Joshua Logan, Marvin starred alongside a young Clint Eastwood in The Legend of the Nameless City, in which he demonstrated a skill in which he had not been seen before: the song. His interpretation of the theme Wandering Star accompanied by Roger Wagner's chorus, is undoubtedly the most outstanding, with his peculiar low-end voice, which Jean Seberg described as &# 34;rain gurgling down a rusty pipe".
Famous are his performances in the films The Dirty Twelve (with John Cassavetes, Charles Bronson, Donald Sutherland...), The Professionals (with Robert Ryan, Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale) and A Point Blank, which host Marvin's best performances.
In 1965, he received an unexpected Oscar for Best Leading Actor for The Explosive Ingenue, alongside Jane Fonda; a Western musical comedy, in which he plays two characters, a drunken gunslinger and his criminal brother. This award placed him among the most sought after actors in Hollywood. Marvin specialized preferably in action movies. In the last period of his life, he continued to act in films that were very different in terms of their quality and their success at the box office. However, he was already an established movie star.
He was first married in 1951 to Betty Ebeling. The marriage had a son and three daughters. After 16 years, he divorced. In 1970 he married for the second time with Pamela Feeley.
He died suddenly of a heart attack in Tucson, Arizona, at age 63, aggravated by his alcoholism and chronic smoking. On his tombstone in the Arlington County Military Cemetery, Virginia, reads: Lee Marvin. Private First Class of the United States Marine Corps. World War II».
Filmography
| Year | Movie | Character | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | You're in the Navy Now | Radiophonist (not accredited) | Henry Hathaway |
| 1951 | Teresa | Soldier (not accredited) | Fred Zinnemann |
| 1952 | Hong Kong | Guest at the hotel (not accredited) | Lewis R. Foster |
| 1952 | Diplomatic Courier | Military police in Trieste (not accredited) | Henry Hathaway |
| 1952 | We're Not Married! ("We're not married") | Pinky (not accredited) | Edmund Goulding |
| 1952 | The Duel at Silver Creek ("Duelo en Silver Creek") | Tinhorn Burgess | Don Siegel |
| 1952 | Hangman's Knot ("Rolph Bainter") | Rolph Bainter | Roy Huggins |
| 1952 | Eight Iron Men | Sergeant Joe Mooney | Edward Dmytryk |
| 1953 | Seminole ("Tradition in Fort King") | Sergeant Magruder | Budd Boetticher |
| 1953 | Down Among the Sheltering Pamls | Soldier Snively (not accredited) | Edmund Goulding |
| 1953 | The Glory Brigade | Cabo Bowman | Robert D. Webb |
| 1953 | The Stranger Wore a Gun ("The stranger was armed") | Dan Kurth | André De Toth |
| 1953 | The Big Heat ("The Bribery") | Vince Stone | Fritz Lang |
| 1953 | Gun Fury ("Revenge fever") | Blinky | Raoul Walsh |
| 1953 | The Wild One ("Salvaje") | Chinese | Laslo Benedek |
| 1954 | Gorilla at Large ("The Killer Gorilla") | Shaughnessy, the police | Harmon Jones |
| 1954 | The Caine Mutiny ("The Caine Mill") | Meatball | Edward Dmytryk |
| 1954 | The Raid ("Rebel fugitives") | Lieutenant Keating | Hugo Fregonese |
| 1955 | Bad Day at Black Rock ("Conspiracy of Silence") | Hector David | John Sturges |
| 1955 | Violent Saturday ("Tragic Saturday") | Dill, the bank thief | Richard Fleischer |
| 1955 | Not as a Stranger ("You won't be a stranger") | Brundage | Stanley Kramer |
| 1955] | A Life in the Balance | The killer | Harry Horner, Rafael Portillo |
| 1955 | Pete Kelly's Blues ("Pete Kelly's blues") | Al Gannaway | Jack Webb |
| 1955 | I Died a Thousand Times ("I have died thousands of times") | Babe Kossuck | Stuart Heisler |
| 1955 | Shack Out on 101 | Slob / Mr. Gregory | Edward Dein |
| 1956 | Seven Men from Now ("After the lead of the murderers") | Bill Masters | Budd Boetticher |
| 1956 | Attack | Lieutenant Colonel Clyde Bartlett | Robert Aldrich |
| 1956 | Pillars of the Sky ("The Columns of Heaven") | Sergeant Lloyd Carracart | George Marshall |
| 1956 | The Rack ("Traitor to your homeland") | Captain John R. Miller | Arnold Laven |
| 1957 | Raintree County ("The Tree of Life") | Orville "Flash" Perkins | Edward Dmytryk |
| 1958 | The Missouri Traveler ("The Missouri Traveler") | Tobias Brown | Jerry Hopper |
| 1961 | The Comancheros ("The Midwife") | Tully Crow | Michael Curtiz, John Wayne |
| 1962 | The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance ("The Man Who Killed Liberty Valance") | Liberty Valance | John Ford |
| 1963 | Donovan's Reef ("The Irish Tavern") | Thomas Aloysius "Boats" Gilhooley | John Ford |
| 1964 | The Killers ("Hampa Code") | Charlie Strom | Donald Siegel |
| 1965 | Cat Ballou ("The Explosive Naive") | Kid Shelleen / Tim Strawn | Elliot Silverstein |
| 1965 | Ship of Fools ("The Boat of the Crazy") | Bill Tenny | Stanley Kramer |
| 1966 | The Professionals ("Professionals") | Henry "Rico" Fardan | Richard Brooks |
| 1967 | The Dirty Dozen ("Twelve of the foot") | Major Reisman | Robert Aldrich |
| 1967 | Point Blank ("A quemarropa") | Walker | John Boorman |
| 1968 | Sergeant Ryker (Sarge Ryker) | Sergeant Ryker | Buzz Kulik |
| 1968 | Hell in the Pacific ("Inferno in the Pacific") | American pilot | John Boorman |
| 1969 | Paint Your Wagon ("The City Legend without Name") | Ben Rumson | Joshua Logan |
| 1970 | Monte Walsh ("Monty Walsh") | Monte Walsh | William A. Fraker |
| 1972 | Pocket Money ("The Undesirable") | Leonard | Stuart Rosenberg |
| 1972 | Prime Cut (Living flesh) | Nick Devlin | Michael Ritchie |
| 1973 | Emperor of the North ("The Emperor of the North") | A. Number 1 | Robert Aldrich |
| 1973 | The Iceman Cometh ("The Ice Dealer") | Hickey | John Frankenheimer |
| 1974 | The Spikes Gang ("Three outlaws and a gunman") | Harry Spikes | Richard Fleischer |
| 1974 | Klansman ("The Man of the Clan") | Sheriff Track Bascomb | Terence Young |
| 1976 | Shout at the Devil ("Scream the Devil") | Colonel Flynn O'Flynn | Peter R. Hunt |
| 1976 | The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday ("Hold boots, silk stockings") | Sam Longwood | Don Taylor |
| 1979 | Avalanche Express ("The Spy Train") | Colonel Harry Wargrave | Mark Robson, Mount Hellman |
| 1980 | The Big Red One ("Red One, Clash Division") | The sergeant | Samuel Fuller |
| 1981 | Death Hunt ("Savage Hunt") | Sergeant Edgar Millen | Peter R. Hunt |
| 1983 | Gorky Park | Jack Osborne | Michael Apted |
| 1984 | Dog Day ("Canicule") ("Dog Day") | Jimmy Cobb | Yves Boisset |
| 1985 | The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission ("Twelve of the foothills: the next mission") | Major John Reisman | Andrew V. McLaglen |
| 1986 | The Delta Force | Colonel Nick Alexander | Menahem Golan |
Awards and distinctions
- Oscar Awards
| Year | Category | Movie | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1966 | Best Actor | The naive explosive | Winner |