Lee Marvin: Point Blank

by Dwayne Epstein

  CHAPTER 8

  “Lady, I Just Don’t Have the Time”

  BY 1960, THERE was no denying the fact that Lee Marvin’s career had hit an impenetrable ceiling. Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando, and Sidney Poitier were all the same age as Marvin, and had been popular leading men from the onset of their careers. Even younger stars such as Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, Paul Newman, Rock Hudson, and Steve McQueen had all surpassed Marvin in their ascendance to fame. “M Squad” publicist Peter Levinson summed up Marvin’s frustration: “He’s been around this town ten years, he got a lot of work, but he never went anywhere. Then, come the 60s, he got into TV, ‘M Squad,’ and so forth. It’s very rare that it takes a guy that long and the guy makes it. If they don’t make it in three to six years, it rarely happens.”

  Lee Marvin was well aware of this on the plane back to L.A. from Pittsburgh. His thoughts were on John Ford, the one director the actor wanted to work with more than any other. Although he would again play a secondary character, he had been looking forward to his role as the ultimate western villain, and was even more excited to work with the director who had practically invented the American western. He knew if he stood any chance at all of breaking out of the pack, it would be with the kind of role he could sink his teeth into with the aid of a master filmmaker. Just before touching down at LAX, he drunkenly confided to actor Bert Remsen that he thought Ford would take one look at his swollen and disfigured nose, and recast the part.

  After “M Squad,” it was to be a full year before he would appear in front of film audiences again, this time in the 1961 John Wayne horse opera, The Comancheros. Wayne played a Texas Ranger trying to discover the bad guys of the title who are selling rifles to the Comanches. In a ten-minute, scene-stealing turn as larger-than-life, half-scalped villain ‘Tully Crowe,’ Marvin’s sequence with John Wayne breathed the only life into the run-of-the-mill production.

  The film also holds a footnote in cinema history as being the last work of the prolific Michael Curtiz, director of all of the greatest films to come from Warner Brothers during the studio’s heyday. Wayne sat in for the ailing veteran during several days of production, but Curtiz eventually succumbed to cancer a few months after the film’s release. Another footnote of the changing times was the fact that the often-used 1936 backlot known as Tombstone Street was razed to the ground during the filming. At the time, 20th-century Fox proudly proclaimed, “It will be the site of a huge new housing development known as Century City.”

  Lee Marvin’s brief scene-stealing performance did result in his being recommended to Ford for Wayne’s and Ford’s next film. When Marvin arrived to start work on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the swelling of his nose had yet to recede, further enforcing his fears that he had confided earlier to Bert Remsen. Luckily, it was a black and white film, which would hide the discoloration, and the shooting schedule was rearranged so Marvin’s first scene would be accomplished with a bandana covering most of his face. His fears allayed, Marvin proceeded to give one of the most memorable performances of his entire career.

  The schedule was rearranged for the simple reason that the cantankerous Ford took an instant liking to Marvin. Western bad guy L.Q. Jones was visiting the set one day when he witnessed the unique way the legendary director showed his appreciation: “Ford gave Lee a piece of direction I don’t think the old man ever told anybody before or after. He told him, ‘Lee, take the stage!’ And he did! From a non-actor’s point of view it won’t mean much, but to me, to ever hear Ford say, ‘Take the stage’ was phenomenal! That’s what he did with Lee, just turned him loose. That in itself is one of the great kudos.”

  At the time the film was in production, Marvin told a reporter, “I think he’s one of the most intelligent directors I’ve ever worked with. Duke Wayne’s the star of the piece even if I have the name part. I worked with him in Comancheros too and both of my roles are corkers.” Over a decade later, his respect for Ford would not waver, as he would tell Rolling Stone: “It was a kick in the head workin’ with Ford on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I mean, shit, man, he’s the guy who made The Iron Horse—and the old bastard’ll never let you forget it, either. Of course, I caught Ford pretty late in the game. He was still just as alert as ever, if not more so, but I guess he was more physically incapacitated than I was. But he was a bright motherfucker to screw around with, and I used to have fun teasin’ him.”

  When Marvin took the stage as Ford directed, the actor obliterated any previous image of a villain in a John Ford opus. In just a handful of riveting scenes he conveyed the anger, maliciousness, and sadism of a man who symbolized all the lawlessness of the old west, and who refused to step gently aside to encroaching civilization.

  Marvin enjoyed playing the larger-than-life ‘Liberty Valance,’ which he did to the hilt, opposite iconic costars John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. When he became frustrated with his costars’ leisurely pace, he did what he often did in that situation. Woody Strode remembers such an occasion on the day he first met Marvin: “Here’s how we meet… I come to the set and John Ford told me, ‘Woody, Lee came in drunk. He’s raising hell. Will you get Lee Marvin off the set, please?’ I walked over to Lee and said, ‘Now, Lee, you know Papa Ford told me to put you off the set— will you please leave?’ Lee said, ‘To hell with those bastards. Those sons-of-bitches think they can act. I’m out-acting everybody.’ He was pissed off.”

  Strode acquiesced when Marvin wanted to go out drinking, even though Marvin knew Betty was planning a dinner party that evening. Marvin and Strode finally arrived around 11:30, drunkenly acting out scenes from Liberty Valance until 2:00 am. Marvin eventually passed out, Strode was driven to John Ford’s house, and the entire fiasco was remembered by Strode as “That’s how I met Lee Marvin.”

  It was also further proof that the fissures in the Marvin marriage were deepening. It was not the first time Lee Marvin had ruined a dinner party Betty had planned, and as one of the attendees that night, Alvy Moore recalled, “We were just sitting there bored with the whole thing; ‘Who needs this?’ Lee is doing all this stuff, and that’s when Woody said he wanted to be driven to John Ford’s house. We drove Woody there. Basically, it was the beginning of the end for Lee and Betty, and he told me so later on.”

  When the now recognized classic was released, it was lambasted by some critics who claimed that Ford had lost his touch. Many felt the film appeared artificial and that Wayne and Stewart were too old for their roles. Audiences did not agree, and understood that Ford was actually summing up the mythology of the West he himself had created, with Wayne and Stewart playing dual archetypes of the myth: the grizzled veteran cowboy and the idealistic, young, city-slicker lawyer.

  Marvin again stole every scene in which he is featured away from his famous costars. He later explained one of the methods he used to accomplish this: “I move faster on screen. Creates a sense of danger and ahh… I mean, if you’re in there, then do it and get the hell out.” As to the fear-inducing Ford, he stated the following epigram, “I can work with tough directors. I always say if you’re gonna be a bear, be a grizzly.”

  The character of ‘Liberty Valance,’ as vicious as he was, still had his defenders. “We had a dog named Liberty, too,” recalled Christopher Marvin. The actor’s son genuinely feels Liberty Valance captured much of his father’s soul, stating comically, “After dad did the movie, Duke came over to the house once and I wouldn’t shake his hand… I was being really rude. Duke got off on that. He loved it. That was one of my favorite films. I’ve got only one on video and it’s that one.”

  Although even those critics who did not care for the film lauded his performance in Liberty Valance, Lee Marvin’s frustration with the roles he was subsequently offered continued unabated. And, while he did take great pride in being able to add to his resume that he’d performed in a John Ford film, it unfortunately did not result in more work for him except on television, which he despised. Consequently, he was spending more time at home trying to be a g
ood father and husband, but with often mixed results. “I remember once, when I was about twenty-two or twenty-three, seeing him working on a bike for Christopher,” recalled Keenan Wynn’s son, Ned. “I had gone over to his house because I needed him for a reference for a job, or something. He was in the garage working on the bike, and was on his best behavior. He was supposed to be doing chores around the house while everybody was gone. We wound up getting drunk. It was largely my fault. He never set out to get drunk and really tried to do the right thing. We went inside, and he offered me a drink and said he wasn’t drinking. Watching me drink, he said, ‘Well, one drink won’t hurt.’ He had this way of monitoring drinking that was pretty strange. He’d tip the bottle, and when the vacuum was there so he couldn’t get any more liquor out, he’d go, ‘There! That’s my drink.’ It was pretty funny. He’d just go ‘glug! glug!’ and ‘bam!’

  “Within the hour, we were throwing darts at the wall and the ceiling. When Betty came home, she was livid. She had a right to be. She yelled at him and she yelled at me. He just looked at me kind of sheepishly and said, ‘I think you better leave.’ He was on probation with her. But like I said, he never set out to get drunk, and he tried to do the right thing. In fact, he said he would sign the reference form, but only after he finished the bike. He really tried to be a good dad.”

  Hanging around the house more than usual did not always bring out the best in Marvin, but did result in some sitcom-like scenarios. To blow off steam, he would often be found showing off his Bristol Ace, a British sports car. “Absolutely fantastic,” remembers neighbor George Rappaport. “It was a green one. Yeah, but they’re racing cars. A little English car and it also had little bumps all over it, like little dents. It cost him an arm and a leg. That was a pretty hot car, then. We’re all sitting in the garage looking at it and my friend Don says, ‘Gee, Lee, that looks just like a Volkswagen with acne.’ I thought Lee was going to deck him.”

  Another domestic anecdote involved his beloved Bristol and fellow movie tough guy Neville Brand. According to Alvy Moore, “I remember one time, he and Neville Brand were in his car, the Bristol. One thing Lee would have to do when you first rode in it was he’d go around the corner at about 70 mph. He’d choose the corner, and I knew I’d have to live through that. Once he did that, it was okay.

  “Apparently, Lee collected records by Leadbelly, Jelly Roll Morton, and all that. He said to Neville, ‘You gotta hear some of these records I got.’ So, they drove up in front of the house and he got out. They had been talking about how Lee runs his house: ‘I’m the boss. Whatever I say, goes.’ They get to the house and he goes to the closet. Betty said, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘I’m getting my records that I want Neville to hear.’ She said, ‘Look, I’m cleaning this house. I want both of you to get out of here until I get this place clean. I don’t want to see hide nor hair of you.’ Then Lee said, ‘Oh, okay.’ They left, and on the way Neville said, ‘Yeah, you run the place.’”

  According to his son Christopher, there were times when he and his father bonded through their mutual love of classic Blues. “A couple of times he used to wake me up when he’d come up with a raging… not a raging heater, but feeling good. He’d come home, wake me up and we’d be out in the living room. I just remember dancing behind him to his Blues records. I’d be about five or six years-old and he’d be just going in circles and I’d be right behind him. Then mom would come out and say, ‘What the…?’ Then I’d say, ‘Okay, okay.’ That I remember well.”

  Not all of Lee’s domestic time was as comical. “I remember when he didn’t drink, it wasn’t fun to be around him,” recalled Betty. “I always knew when he was going to drink. I knew that man so well, I knew by his energy when he was going to have a drink. I knew by his voice when he had one drink. I knew. It started to change. He would come in after not drinking for several days and say, ‘Hi, honey.’ I’d say to myself, ‘He’s gonna drink.’ It was an awful life, in that way. I was like the barometer. Red flags would go up. ‘Oh boy, he’s going to be drunk in the morning. I gotta get bourbon.’ I just knew.”

  Even when Betty did know, sometimes she could not predict the results. After Lee had appeared on TV’s “Wagon Train,” he made friends with its star Robert Horton, who also happened to have dated Betty before Lee. Horton and his wife Marilyn became good friends of the Marvins and invited them to one of their parties. “There might have been about a hundred people there,” recalled Horton. “People like Lew Wasserman came to the party. Somebody said, ‘When Lew Wasserman comes to the wrong side of the hill, you know you’re an important client.’ Anyway, Lee arrived with Betty. Lee was dressed very properly for the time. He had on a tweed suit with a vest, big gold chain, and a watch and a fob with a big flower in his lapel. He really looked, if I can use the word cute, he looked cute.

  “There was one of those moments when it got quiet for no particular reason. At that moment, Lee Marvin was across the room with a woman who had been a former Miss America. At the time, she was married to one of the executives at NBC. She was a beautiful woman. In this quiet moment, all of a sudden you hear Lee say, ‘I’d like to fuck you!’ This lady handled him beautifully. She in essence said, ‘That’s a very interesting proposition. Why don’t we go over here and talk about it.’ She’s not in any way offended by it. I went over to Lee, and I said, ‘Lee, maybe you’ve had enough to drink now.’ He looked at me, and he looked at me, and finally said, ‘I’m gonna tear your fucking head off.’ I said, ‘Maybe that’s true. The main thing is, though, you’ve had enough to drink.’ ‘I’ll tear your fucking head off!’ I had no aggressive response to it. Eventually, I lead him over to a window seat where he sat down with Betty, and then became very quiet. In a little while, they left and went on home. He colored the afternoon party.”

  Betty also remembered that knowing when he was going to drink was often not nearly as bad as when he did not drink at all: “I also knew when he wasn’t drinking. It was so painful—for all of us. When an alcoholic is not drinking, it is just ‘God forbid, let’s just not make noise.’ It was craziness. I remember one day, he hadn’t been drinking for several days. We went down to where we used to go a lot to have a hamburger. I remember we were driving back, and Lee stopped the car and took my hand. He said, ‘Betty, it’s been two days, eight hours, twenty-four minutes, and five seconds since I’ve had a drink, and I don’t think I can stand it.’ That’s the way it could be. This is no fooling around here. We tried everything. We tried AA. We tried detox. We tried doctors. I’m telling you, it was endless.”

  To show the lengths he was willing to go, Marvin began seeing a therapist: “His drinking was getting pretty bad,” recalled Betty. “He said to me, ‘I really need help.’ It wasn’t just that he had said, ‘Okay.’ He had tried a number of things. I was in analysis and he said, ‘Ask your doctor if he could find someone to help me.’ I said I would. My doctor recommended an analyst at UCLA. I really had very mixed feelings about it because I had enough treatment then to know it’s very hard to treat alcoholics with analysis. You cannot have drugs and treatment. You have to be pretty much there and deal with the pain. Lee would think nothing of having a couple martinis on his way. Then he would laugh. I know he wanted the help but it really wasn’t working for him, I don’t think. Lee came in one day after a session and he started laughing. He had already had a few drinks. His doctor’s first name was Charles, and Lee said to me, ‘Can you believe this Doctor so-and-so? I turned around and said, ‘Fuck you, Charlie!’ Can you imagine? That’s so in character.”

  In an interview a few years later, Marvin told his own version: “The guy never said anything. It really began to bug me, and one day I said to him, ‘What would you say if I came over there and really took a swing at you?’ That moved him! ‘Let’s discuss that,’ he said. I spent some time setting him up for it, and then I told him I couldn’t pay him for a while. For six months, I didn’t give him a nickel, ‘til I owed about $6,000. Then I told him I decided to qu
it… I let him sweat for it. Then one day I thought, ‘what-the-hell,’ and wrote out the check. Sent it off without a letter.”

  As with many actors, often, when things were at their worst domestically, work would prove to be the saving grace. “There’s a thing that happens with actors,” stated Meyer Mishkin. “They sometimes are governed not only about what they would like to do, but what a director is going to do. Well, Lee liked working with Ford.” In fact, one of the actor’s proudest moments was when Betty reported that, while visiting the set during the shooting of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, as she was watching her husband work, Ford leaned over and said to her, “He’s quite a kid, isn’t he?”

  Marvin got his chance to work again with Ford, but his involvement required some convincing. It was again a John Ford/John Wayne project, but this time the curmudgeonly Ford wanted to make an old-fashioned, rowdy comedy with serious overtones, titled Donovan’s Reef. Marvin was hesitant at first to once again take second billing, but Ford worked on him, explaining the location filming would take place in Hawaii, where the entire Marvin family could partake of the tropical paradise. Ford asked Marvin, “Don’t you want you and your family to all get brown as berries?”

  There was another factor that weighed on Marvin in making his decision. He was still not happy with where he was in his career, and did not want to constantly repeat himself. “Have I ever had a part where I didn’t get killed?” he asked rhetorically in 1962. “I die beautifully. The trouble is, how do you live? It’s not nice to look at a character and see him die. After all, every character to a degree is yourself. But there’s a great necessity for dying in this business. Why do I play these roles? You know, if you live by the gun, you die by the gun. And I hate guys who do that. They deserve to die. But maybe someday I’ll mature enough to where the audience will let me put the gun down.” Although the script was not yet complete, at least the rollicking comedy meant no guns, and that his character would survive to the final reel. Mature or not, he signed on to work again with John Wayne and John Ford.