Western film historian Neil Summers worked on the film, and was also impressed. “Lee Marvin was not a tough guy acting like a tough guy. Lee Marvin was a tough guy. He didn’t take any garbage off of directors, fellow players, big guys like Jack Palance, or anything. He was well respected and people trod easy around him. He was a hell of a guy.” Summers also noted Fraker’s ingenuity on the Tucson location. “Lee’s drinking was legendary, but it didn’t necessarily inhibit his work. There was one shot they had been trying to get for weeks. The director wanted to get a sunset shot, but because of Lee’s work habits, keeping him around that late to get a sunset shot usually didn’t work… So, they gave him a 3:00 a.m. call to get him out there for a sunrise shot, which would be used as a sunset shot. I remember that vividly because we all had to get up at 3:00 in the morning.”
Jack Palance, Marvin’s frequent costar, recalled, “I remember one time we were in some restaurant and waiting at the bar for a table. A producer walked in with his family and saw me. Lee was on the other side and wasn’t able to be seen right away. The producer fellow wanted to talk to me and walked up to greet me. When I leaned out of the way to introduce Lee, the producer had a look of horror on his face. He turned to his wife and said, ‘It’s Lee Marvin! Get the children out of here!’”
The cast and crew were very aware that the project they were working on was special in more ways than one. They joked and jibed each other in their bonding but, as Ryan recalled, “One thing that Lee and some of the stuntmen said was that this was the end of an era of big money, studio westerns. Everybody said to me, ‘You’re lucky, kid. This is probably the last one of these that’s gonna be done. You got out here just in time.’ That kind of thing was said a lot.”
Much of the camaraderie continued throughout the filming, but changed in the presence of Jeanne Moreau. “Then came Jeanne Moreau,” recalled Ryan with a chuckle. “How could I forget Jeanne Moreau? She was great. He was a little… I don’t know exactly, but I got the feeling he [Marvin] was a little nervous about Jeanne Moreau.” Asked about the couple’s chemistry, Ryan stated, “Oh yes, and it was very quiet. It wasn’t obvious. It was obvious on the screen, but it was… I mean the whole thing was weird. Well, he told me once later, ‘Hey, she wants me to live in Paris. How can I go live in Paris?’ I don’t know how much bullshit that was or whatever. Obviously, there was something going on and they were quite fond of each other. There were a lot of things going on. I didn’t see any of it, and they were very discreet.” Neither one would comment publicly on their relationship, but Moreau did say, “He says more in less words, sometimes in no words at all, than any other American actor I’ve ever met.”
Unsure of its appeal, nervous producers had trimmed the film by almost fifteen minutes when Monte Walsh premiered in late 1970. The Hollywood Reporter’s Larry Cohen took note of the editing and wrote, “The decision to cut the film is unfortunate, for the picture I saw was one of the best American films of the year; a strong contender for numerous end-of-the-year awards in virtually every category, a candidate for critical praise, and a major box-office possibility… In its longer running time, Monte Walsh is a classic which stands up with the best of recent American films; it would be a shame to have to accept less.” The film fared better in Europe than in the youth-oriented American film market, which was greatly disappointing to Marvin.
It is indeed unfortunate, because the middle-aged Marvin was touching and poignant in his scenes with Moreau, and he showed a level of intimacy audiences had never witnessed before from the macho actor. His performance is wonderfully nuanced throughout, such as in the scene when a huckster offers the unemployed Walsh a job in a wild west show, to which he nobly responds, “I ain’t spittin’ on my whole life.” It was a philosophy that resonated with historical novelist James Michener, who mentions the film in his novel Centennial as being a modern classic that only true believers in the old west could genuinely appreciate.
Marvin’s on-set romance with his costar may have been what prompted the strange phone call to Paul Wasserman when the actor called to tell him he was flying to Las Vegas to get married. The stunned publicist asked if it was Michele Triola or Jeanne Moreau. “Neither,” said Marvin. “It’s Pam Feeley, from Woodstock.” Apparently, according to the official press release, after a promotional tour of Walsh in New York with Moreau, Marvin had driven to Woodstock to visit his ailing father where he then met with his former girlfriend from his summer stock days. Their reunion prompted the call to Wasserman a week later with his news. What is often left out is that, prior to this event, the forty-six-year-old actor had attempted another reconciliation with Betty Marvin, who had rebuffed him. Marvin and his new bride moved into his Malibu home and proceeded to make every effort at a new life.
Following his marriage to Pam, Marvin made the lackluster Pocket Money with Paul Newman, in which the two actors played bumbling modern day cattle brokers. Marvin was enamored with the script fashioned by Terence Malick, saying at the time the film was in production, “It’s kind of a comedy of a couple of con men who really think they know how to operate and they just end up on their feet walking back… It’s dumb, dumb stuff but thought-out dumb.” Marvin did give an engaging performance as a man not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, but when the film flopped, he publicly blamed the failure on Newman, whose company helped make the badly received comedy.
The author of the autobiographical novel Jim Kane on which it was based, did not care for the film either, but for a different reason. “They didn’t get it,” writer JPS Brown said of the filmmakers. “They made every Mexican in Pocket Money a low down person. In fact, they wanted to do it in Mexico so they had to show the Mexican censors the script. They went to Mexico City to meet with the censors and showed them the script. The censors refused them permission to do it in Mexico [after reading the script]. With that, I had cattle and property in Mexico. I had a bunch of cattle ready to come out and they took away my visa. The Mexican consulate was in Nogales, then. She called me up and told me she had to take away my visa. I couldn’t go back to Mexico until I straightened it up. She told me she would help and send five copies of my book Jim Kane to the censors so they could see I hadn’t made Mexicans look bad, that I was friendly and respectful of the Mexican cattle people that I worked with. Well, I couldn’t get my cattle out for six months… So, when the censors read the book, they let me have my visa back.” Neither Marvin, Newman, nor anyone else connected with the movie was ever aware of the author’s film-induced travails.
The failure of Pocket Money was hardly at the forefront of Marvin’s thoughts in early April of 1971. Over the years, he had kept intermittent contact with his father who had retired in 1965. A few years after the death of Courtenay, Monte had literally married the widow next door. He had also taken up genealogy, attempting to piece together the Marvin family tree, at his son Robert’s urging. The effort also included extensive clippings covering his son’s acting career. Mostly, he simply drank, and at age seventy-four, he lapsed into a coma while visiting friends in Florida.
In a tragic echo of Monte’s own childhood, Lee rushed to see his father when it was already too late. Years later the actor recounted, “When the Chief died… I went down to Florida… He was in a coma… I came over and kissed him on the head and said, ‘That’s it, Chief. I’ll see you down the line?’ And then I got on a plane and guess what was playing?—I Never Sang for My Father. People hated it, man, but I loved it. It got it all out there. …Gene Hackman and Melvyn Douglas… Melvyn Douglas is amazing. What a great actor. One of the greatest of all time. I remember that after the movie, people were saying how depressing it was, and I started an argument with them. I was holding forth, man, to the whole plane. It was great. I got it out. Like that… I felt, you know, cleansed of it… I think I understand my father more everyday. On some days I can almost…”
Marvin went back to work filming Prime Cut in Canada, which he had agreed to make during Pocket Money. The project was a bizarre
action film with Marvin as a Chicago mob enforcer grappling with Kansas meat packer and white slaver Gene Hackman, who was fresh off his success from The French Connection. The film also starred Hackman’s real-life French Connection counterpart Eddie Egan, as well as Gregory Walcott, Angel Tompkins, William Morey, and, making her film debut, a young Texan actress named Sissy Spacek.
Walcott recalled a telling incident early on during the film: “Lee invited Gene and me to drive out with him on location about forty miles out of the city. Lee was in a very talkative mood that morning and kept up a continual commentary all the way to the location. Gene mainly listened. He seemed a little amazed at Lee’s uncanny ability to chatter using his ‘shorthand’ method of speaking. Gene had just received rave reviews of his performance in the film I Never Sang For My Father. Lee said, ‘I haven’t had a chance to see that film with you and Melvyn Douglas. What’s it called? I Never Sucked My Father’s Cock?.’
“Then the topic segued to his own father. He told how they had a bitter relationship and it had been years since he had seen him. Then he went on to add that on his [Lee’s] birthday a couple of years prior, he got word that his father had died. ‘Wouldn’t you know that the bastard had to die on my birthday, and spoil it for me.’ I looked at Gene, and by now he was wondering if he should take his costar serious. His shock approach seemed to be one of his favorite ways of dealing with people. As the weeks progressed on the film, I began to wonder if the shock method was not a way to cover his insecurities. With all of his two-fisted bravado, I could not help but sense some insecurity in Lee Marvin.”
Lee Marvin feuded with director Michael Ritchie during production, balking at the romance between his character and Spacek. “Actually, I thought Lee was protective of her in that thing,” stated Walcott. “I know in the original script, he was supposed to make love to the girl, the child. Lee didn’t go for that. Lee nixed the idea… I think it was Lee that had that changed. Once again, I want to stress, that as wild as he could be, maybe deep inside there was a moral streak in him that came out.” Marvin himself commented, “I’ve made some mistakes I wish I hadn’t. One of them was workin’ with Michael Ritchie on Prime Cut. Oh, I hate that sonofabitch. He likes to use amateurs, because he can totally dominate them.” The offbeat film has its supporters and does indeed have some wonderful moments in it, such as the juxtaposition of the agrarian splendor of the prairie landscape against Marvin’s high-powered weaponry, but the overall effect was far from successful.
His surprise marriage to Pam, the death of his father, and his uncharacteristic feud with Ritchie, all pointed to an apparent mid-life crisis. Marvin dealt with his demons best when creatively challenged, and the challenge came in his next two films. As he had managed to do in previous years, 1973’s Emperor of the North and The Iceman Cometh gave film audiences two distinctly different performances in a single year in which to revel in Lee Marvin’s versatility.
The genesis of Emperor began with veteran screenwriter Christopher Knopf’s research into the late 19th and early 20th century legend of Leon R. Livingston. Knopf became fascinated with this man who called himself ‘A No.1,’ who claimed to have tramped the countryside from the age of eleven, and had self-published several books recounting his hobo adventures. Livingston had learned the ropes from Jack London, who had the hobo name “Sailor Jack” and later, “Cigaret.” London also wrote about these adventures in his book The Road, with an emphasis on the social injustices perpetrated on the country’s downtrodden, and the attempt to organize “Kelly’s Army of 1894” to revolt against the status quo.
Knopf chose to update London’s tale to the more familiar 1930s’ Depression and make the social injustice more symbolic than polemic. These changes still allowed Knopf’s screenplay to include London’s graphic depiction of a tramp’s mistreatment at the hands of the railroad employees. The project went through several directors, including Martin Ritt and Sam Peckinpah, before Robert Aldrich was locked in. The folksy image of the beloved hobo was obliterated in director Robert Aldrich’s violent fable of the individual battling the establishment. Aldrich assembled his Dirty Dozen cast and crew, which included Ernest Borgnine as the sadistic conductor “Shack” who symbolized the unyielding establishment; newcomer Keith Carradine as “Cigaret,” the fickle, and unreliable youth tramp; and as the symbol of rugged individualism, Lee Marvin as ‘A No.1,’ Knopf fashioned a story in which Marvin bets he can ride Borgnine’s train with Carradine alternately allying himself throughout with whomever seemed to be winning at the time.
Given that Marvin had always claimed to have ridden the rails as a child in the Depression, casting him in the lead proved a stroke of genius. “I met Lee Marvin in Bob [Aldrich’s] office on the Fox lot before filming began on location,” recalled Knopf. “There was that squint in his eyes and the so familiar baritone voice as he held court, dissecting his role. ‘The guy’s a philosopher, a disciple of Kant’s metaphysics and ethics, right?’ ‘Right,’ I nodded. ‘Bullshit.’ The man was already in character.”
As he had done in 1955’s Kiss Me Deadly and 1967’s The Dirty Dozen, Aldrich pushed the limits of screen violence more than ever before, and he had a very willing partner in Lee Marvin. Marvin held Aldrich in rare esteem. “Bob has a knack of gettin’ a kind of cast together that does the show beyond the script, even though the script may be strong in itself. That’s happening on this one, I think,” he stated. “In the whole show, Ernie Borgnine and I have about two lines to each other. It’s plus attracts minus, and that’s that.”
A climactic fight scene aboard a moving freight train between the two titans remains one of the most intense of its kind. “We were on the damned thing for a week,” recalled cinematographer Joe Biroc. “That was hell. We stayed on the train, and it was tough. We shot part of it from the boxcar. Some of the scenes were shot with the train not moving and a couple of our guys wiggled the cars. See, I never had a challenge in my life. I just called it a day’s work… Anything is hard if you don’t know what you’re doing. We always found the easy way to do the hard thing.”
The colloquialism-laden dialogue, the ‘king-of-the-hill’ storyline, veteran cast, impressive photography of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, and the use of vintage trains, all conspired to make a film that was again overlooked in its time, only to find an appreciative audience decades later. At the time, Lee Marvin simply felt, “I get a special kick playing rebels over establishment types. I’ve always been a bum, so I’m being paid to act out my fantasies.”
He was not only able to act out his fantasies; as a major film star he would have the opportunity to challenge his acting ability as never before with his next role. In director John Frankenheimer’s film version of Eugene O’Neill’s classic The Iceman Cometh, Marvin played ‘Hickey,’ an early 20th century salesman who forces the denizens of a skid row bar to confront their pipe dreams. The film version of O’Neill’s marathon-length play was the most anticipated offering of the experimental American Film Theater [AFT]. The belief was that audiences who could not get to Broadway or other theatrical venues, whether geographically or financially, might still be willing to see great plays on a limited subscription basis. Frankenheimer had his pick of any actor to play ‘Hickey,’ and narrowed it down to Marvin, Marlon Brando, or Gene Hackman. Of Marvin he said, “He has that wonderful face. That tortured face, and he looked like a salesman. He told stories so well, in life and he was such a good actor. I loved working with him. Of all, of the three, I think, secretly, I really hoped to be able to do it with Lee… It was a really wonderful experience. For me, he was perfect for it.”
Publicist Paul Wasserman remembers encountering Marvin: “I saw him someplace, and he gave me the shooting script of The Iceman Cometh, and said he’d probably be doing it. I remember it like Tolstoy: long, long, long. I said to him, ‘Are you up for O’Neill?’ He said, ‘I was doing O’Neill when I was in my diapers.’ Meaning his Woodstock days.” There were certainly thematic connections Marvin could draw to Hickey,
such as his father’s salesman background, his own drinking problem, and the fact that the character of Hickey’s relationship with his wife resonated with his own history with women. Marvin knew Hickey well, but the intimidating words of a master playwright in conjunction with the stellar cast of Robert Ryan, Fredric March, Moses Gunn, Bradford Dillman—all of whom were much more familiar with the material than he—would be daunting to say the least.
Also in the cast was a young Jeff Bridges, who had at first been reluctant to sign on. As he recently confided, “Yeah, it was at a stage in my career where I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an actor. I mean I had made a few films and all, but I still wasn’t completely sold on the idea. In fact, when I was offered Iceman I didn’t want to do it. The last film I had made was The Last American Hero. That film’s director Lamont Johnson told me I had better do it, and he was right.”
Once he did sign on, “I found it wouldn’t be done like other films. On most other films you’re lucky if you get a few weeks’ rehearsal and then you shoot for, like, eight weeks. On this film, we rehearsed for eight weeks and then shot it straight through in two weeks. It was done more like a play. It was an incredible experience. It was some time ago, so my memory is not that great, but I’ll always remember how it was working with these seasoned professionals. These guys, all of them, March, Ryan, Marvin, they all still got a little nervous before they worked, and they were all so committed.”
Bridges also recalled learning a valuable lesson from Marvin during the film: “In acting there are certain unspoken rules. One of them is that when the camera moves in for a close-up, you have to be subtle in your performance because your face is going to be forty feet high on the screen. Marvin said, ‘That’s when I play it big.’ and he did! See, I learned from him that you have to learn the rules, but once you do, you can do what you want to them to make them work for your performance.”
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