Lee Marvin: Point Blank

by Dwayne Epstein

  Fredric March had come out of retirement to play ‘Harry Hope,’ the owner of Harry Hope’s Last Chance Saloon, and was in frail health. Robert Ryan’s wife had passed away not long before the film began, and Ryan himself was battling cancer. The presence of such veteran and legendary actors in their element and at the end of their lives deeply affected Marvin.

  Robert Ryan’s son Cheyney was present during the lengthy rehearsals, and remembers one early incident: “Marvin came in literally carrying an entire case of beer under his arm. We’re talking about probably seven or eight in the morning. He proceeded to start to drink it. One thing that happened, and Frankenheimer got very, very upset… They were rehearsing it, but the whole time, Lee Marvin was just drinking. He was getting very, very drunk, and I was actually the only person there for him to talk to… he got into a thing about what a big star he was. It was really unpleasant… He said, ‘Your father’s not a big star, anymore. I’m a big star. He used to be a big star and now I’m the big star.’ This went on and on and on. I thought the guy was kind of un-centered, to tell you the truth. My father didn’t talk like that. I think it was important for him to be successful, but he would never talk about who was a big star and who was not.”

  Frankenheimer also recalled the incident, and felt, “Lee just couldn’t handle it, because he had been working with a stand-in for Fredric March up until that time. Suddenly, to have the real Fredric March there, Lee just said to me afterwards, ‘I just couldn’t deal with it in front of him. I just couldn’t.’ So, he got drunk… The next day, I went in, and I really had it out with him. I said, ‘Lee, if you do it again, I’m just going to walk off this picture, and I’m going to pull everybody off with me because there’s no way you’re going to take us down with you. No way.’ He said, ‘I won’t. I won’t touch anything while we do this movie.’” After the initial embarrassment, Frankenheimer stated, “Lee Marvin was sometimes not called for a week and a half, but he was there every day. He was almost an assistant director, trying to quiet people down while I worked with other actors on a scene.”

  When it came time to film ‘Hickey’s’ lengthy final monologue in which he unveils all the events of his life leading up to a shocking confession, Marvin gave all concerned a reason to pause. “We went over the points we wanted to make, the beats,” recalled Frankenheimer. “I kind of did it in about six different takes. Six different setups so that he’d have, ‘Go to here, cut,’ then, ‘go to here…’ you know? So, it really worked out very well… I don’t know what he did to prepare. I just know he knew his lines. We talked it over. I don’t get into the preparation an actor does, especially if he’s a trained, wonderful actor like Lee Marvin. That’s what he’s going to do… I merely created an atmosphere there where we were ready for him. Cameras were ready. Everything was ready. We worked it out and, boom—he nailed it.”

  Veterans Fredric March and Robert Ryan received the lion’s share of deserved praise for their swan song performances, but Marvin more than held his own as the affable yet ultimately tragic ‘Hickey.’ After Iceman’s short subscription run, legal problems with AFT’s eventual bankruptcy kept the film from being viewed for decades. Frankenheimer and others helped the film eventually get a new lease on life and, like Emperor of the North, it has since found new audiences with the recent DVD release.

  While other postwar actors at the same time had careers that devolved into self-parody—such as Charlton Heston’s disaster epics, or Marlon Brando’s excessive paychecks—Lee Marvin continued to challenge himself and his audience’s expectations. It was important to him to maintain a high quality of excellence in his projects despite their initial financial disappointment. Like Monte Walsh, Lee Marvin had no intention of spitting on his own life.

  PART FOUR

  THE REAR ECHELON

  Costarring in Delta Force (1986) with Chuck Norris, Marvin played Col. Nick Alexander, head of an elite antiterrorist group in his swan song film appearance.

  CHAPTER 12

  The White Eye

  WHEN LEE MARVIN’S personal life was in turmoil in the 1960s, he made some of his best films. Inversely, in the mid to late ‘70s, whereas his personal life had become fairly stable, his career appeared to take a nose dive. Part of the problem might have been due to the fact that his ex-wife had ceased to be involved as much in his life, which removed her from the decision making process. Another reason was that Lee Marvin never sought to become a hyphen, as in “actor-director” or “actor-producer.” He looked over the scripts that were offered to him strictly as an actor for hire, which in itself required having to wear several hats. “It’s getting very difficult to be an actor because you have to be an attorney, an agent, and a judge of scripts all at the same time,” he said.

  In choosing his projects, that certain quality he looked for was, as he put it, “the white eye,” his term for that intangible yet resolute sense of the inescapability of imminent danger, or death. He had been the first actor to bring that feeling to American films on a consistent basis, resulting in his involvement in both popular and cult films. However, the unprecedented success of 1975’s Jaws created the new phenomenon of the blockbuster, which proved to be the beginning of the end for the experimentation in America’s cinema of the early 70s, thus closing the door on the kind of films Marvin preferred. The first in a series of well-intentioned misfires for Marvin was Spikes’ Gang. It was a western saga in which career outlaw ‘Harry Spikes’ (Marvin) ‘recruits’ three young drifters (Gary Grimes, Charlie Martin Smith and future Oscar winning director Ron Howard) into the world of bank robbery. Director Richard Fleischer, having worked with Marvin years before in Violent Saturday, found the key to talking Marvin into playing the role: “I could see his eyes widen a bit when I explained why I thought it was an allegory… that he was really the devil. He and these boys’ stories were about the loss of innocence. There was a mystical quality about him because he shows up in all the right places at the right time. His job was to lead the innocent astray. He was Satan, and Lee ate it up… If you look for it in the picture, you see that there is a mysterious quality; why he shows up, and leads the boys astray, and introduces them to a life of crime.”

  For the role, Marvin grew his hair out, put on a few extra pounds for the first time in his career, and sported an elongated mustache that gave him a walrus-like appearance. While in production, he described ‘Harry Spikes’ as a likable devil. “‘Spikes’ is not only a bank robber but also something of a philosopher, always ready with some little pearl of wisdom when he has an attentive audience such as his young trio of followers… You can’t tell if ‘Spikes’ is a good bad man or a bad good man, and you are inclined to place him somewhere in between, always ahead of the game, when he is not one step ahead of the law.”

  Unfortunately, the end result looked like a TV-movie and came and went just as quickly. “As they say, it never opened,” recalled Fleischer. “It didn’t get any kind of reception. I really don’t know what Lee thought, because by the time the screening was over, he was gone. He was dodging people. I never did talk to him about the picture. I never saw him again. He became very much like the mysterious stranger, ‘Harry Spikes.’”

  While it is axiomatic that no filmmaker sets out to make a bad film, Marvin’s follow-up to Spike’s Gang remains arguably the worst film the actor would ever be involved in. The Klansman was based on a novel by noted author William Bradford Huie, to be directed by the legendary maverick Sam Fuller, who also drafted the script. This pedigree resulted in a cast of Marvin, Richard Burton, Lola Falana, Linda Evans, Cameron Mitchell, and, making his film debut, Buffalo Bills running back O.J. Simpson.

  The film had potential in its tale of Marvin as a sheriff in a southern town rife with bigotry and racial tension, that was ready to explode. “It’s dangerous, for the same reasons antiwar pictures are dangerous,” Marvin said as to why he had agreed to make the film. “It’s a dangerous financial thing to go into, because they’re usually money losers. It’s anti
-bigotry, and to show that aspect, you have to present the ultimate in bigotry. I was afraid that nobody else would make the film. I was afraid that it would it end up being a third-class product, and I thought the subject important enough so people should look at it squarely.”

  Unfortunately, the Northern California location of Oroville became a paparazzi feeding frenzy concerning Marvin’s and Burton’s marathon drinking bouts. Marvin proudly stated later, “I’ll either drink the town dry or I won’t touch a drop. When I’m in the mood, I’ll take hold of any kind of bottle and drain it. Just as long as it’s got a hole in it. But I can go for days with none at all.” Those days of “none at all” were rare on The Klansman, but nothing compared to Burton, who was surly to the locals, drunk more often than Marvin, and caused the swift appearance of Elizabeth Taylor when she heard her husband had bought a local waitress an expensive bauble. She also was present during Burton’s alcohol-induced hospitalization. The internationally famous couple divorced not long after the film wrapped.

  The film also briefly reunited Marvin with his good friend Millard Kaufman, who had been nominated for an Oscar two decades earlier for his screenplay of Bad Day at Black Rock. Marvin’s drinking almost ended the reunion shortly after it started, when he invited Kaufman to his hotel for an early morning drink, but Kaufman got word that his son was sick. “I said to Lee, ‘I have to go back, I’m sorry.’ He asked what was the matter, and I told him. He said, ‘Don’t be a goddamned Jewish mother.’ I said, ‘Fuck you.’ I started at him, and he came at me. Now this guy, who’s as big as a horse, his driver, came between us and that was it. Of course, the next time I saw him we both ignored it.”

  Future film historian John Gloske was working as an extra on the set, and remembered seeing Burton and Marvin regularly consume tumblers filled with straight vodka and ice. Intended moments of levity were also tainted by the mood of the proceedings, as Gloske recalled: “There was a film Lee Marvin and Cameron Mitchell did called Gorilla At Large and Cameron Mitchell’s name I guess was second or third billed. Marvin’s name on the poster was really small. In the Klansman scene in a train station, Burton rips down a poster. Well, a friend of mine, with Lee Marvin’s permission and everybody—except for Cameron Mitchell—put a poster of Gorilla At Large behind that. He ripped it down and there’s Gorilla At Large. Cameron Mitchell thought The Klansman was going to give him a big break. He thought it was going to put him back where he was. He got a little upset. Everybody was laughing at him. He wasn’t laughing at it.”

  The elements of tabloid fodder certainly contributed to the film’s failure, but problems began long before filming had commenced. According to Sam Fuller, “I was going to direct it. Business is business and [James Bond director] Terence Young, who told me he didn’t care about America’s social problems, was assigned to it, changed my script and the movie! It was nothing like what I had written or would have directed. The results made me sick to my stomach.”

  Millard Kaufman, credited alongside Sam Fuller, was co-writing the script. His opinion of Marvin had not wavered, however, and he felt the problem lay elsewhere: “Yeah, Lee was very good. As a matter of fact, everybody in the picture outside of Lee was terrible. They were awful. The curious thing in this was [producer] Bill Schiffrin, who didn’t know what the hell he was doing. Later, when the picture fell on its ass, [Schiffrin] wrote a piece in a local paper where it’s quoted as saying that it was all my fault. He said he really wanted Sammy Fuller in this piece, completely lying about the fact that he had Sammy Fuller, and fired him.”

  Marvin himself quickly soured on the whole disaster, calling the film “The Clownsman” and stating, “It’s a load of bull. They didn’t pay me for my last week, so I don’t see why I should try to boost it.” The well-intentioned film was justifiably jeered and laughed at during previews, in spite of Marvin’s impressive performance as a sheriff trying to keep the peace. He told a friend jokingly after an embarrassing preview of the film, “Can you tell I did that one for the money?”

  Released in 1974, The Klansman would be the last time audiences would see Lee Marvin on screen for two years. For the first time in his career, he took a lengthy vacation from film work. The lack of good scripts made it easy for him to take time off, or as he said at the time, “The thing I look for now is how I really feel, beyond other people’s opinions. I’ve never done something for money, not just the money. And, sure, that makes me sound a total phony.”

  Marvin’s long-time business manager, Ed Silver, had wisely advised the actor on his investments in order that he could afford to move anywhere he wished. “I was always proud of what I did with Lee,” stated Silver. “The first thing I did for him, when I started taking over his affairs, I had a little investment money and I bought a little apartment house in Las Vegas. When I sold it, a few years later, I made a profit of $12,000. That may not seem like a lot but it seemed like a lot then…”

  “I had very close relations with Lee and I watched his funds very closely,” Silver continued. “There were several cases of big money people really being taken advantage of by the business manager… The business management business was very unique at that time. There were just maybe five or six major firms of guys that were the go-to people… One of my principles in my own operation, when I used to go to work, this is the truth, I used to go to work and say, ‘Well, what can I do for Lee, today?’ He was my mainstream client. In my mind, I went through that.”

  On occasion, the actor would whimsically indulge in such investments as speculative oil drilling in the Dakotas, or a working gold mine in Nevada. Strangers would approach him in a bar, offering stock tips, whereupon Marvin would pass the information on to Silver, who made sure the actor could afford to lose the investment if necessary. His film work allowed Marvin to indulge in the occasional financial wildcatting and prospecting forays, and as added security, Silver’s shrewd purchase of a southern California apartment complex kept his client solvent.

  At the end of the day, if Lee and Pam Marvin had wanted to pack up and purchase a twenty-acre property in Tucson, they were in the rare financial position to do so; and they did just that. At first the San Fernando Valley was considered, but ultimately, he and Pam decided on a clean break from California’s smog and Malibu’s dampness for health reasons. The Tucson property was large enough to accommodate the four children from Pam’s three previous marriages and the occasional visits from Lee’s four children, most of whom were old enough to be on their own.

  At fifty years old, he and Pam chose to leave his wild Malibu lifestyle in hopes of putting his past behind him. Friends had noticed a difference in Marvin since marrying Pam, and the slower paced lifestyle of Tucson helped accommodate that change. “Well, to tell you the truth, Lee changed,” said Keenan’s Wynn’s son, Tracy. “ When he met his wife Pam, she put him on the straight and narrow. People like Keenan got phased out of his life. See, when they [Lee & Keenan] were together, they were just like little kids. They really were. When Lee would drink, he’d get very tough. He was a very mean drunk. Keenan was the opposite. He’d get very melancholy. Lee went the other way. He could get obnoxious and cantankerous but he was able to back it up. Keenan used to say about Lee, ‘Don’t let the gray hair fool you.’ Yeah, Lee was a very tough character.”

  Marvin cut down on his drinking but, according to longtime buddy Ralph O’Hara, who lived with the couple periodically, his personal security was still a priority ingrained from the military. “It’s a thing you continually do. It’s from not being deprogrammed from the military. You still have to secure the perimeter,” claimed O’Hara. “Lee had a machete he carried underneath the seat of his pickup truck. He went around Tucson in shorts, a shirt, and a big floppy hat, same as I. At times, he didn’t strap the 9 mm gun. He’d put it into that little ditty bag, and I had it in my holster on my hip. Not just me. There’s an awful lot of people who walk around Tucson with a gun on their hip. It’s legal.”

  On occasion, old friends would visit, and
celebrations were required. Keenan Wynn’s son Tracy had become a successful writer and was present when he and his father were in Tucson to shoot a TV-movie, and met up with Marvin for the last time: “We were at the Holiday Inn or something like that. Lee had fallen off the wagon and we were eating dinner in some restaurant. Lee was getting kind of loud, and some older guy started to complain. Lee responded, but Keenan put his hand on his shoulder. I’m paraphrasing, but I remember asking my dad why did he buy that guy a bottle of wine. He said something like, ‘That’s just something you do for those kind of guys.’ I later learned that he [the complaining customer] was a retired Mafia Don.”

  Lee’s children were less welcome at the new house, however, according to Lee’s ex-wife Betty. “I’m going to be very candid about this: Lee’s widow, Pam, did not invite or want the children in the house… I certainly can not describe their relationship. I only hear from my kids, so maybe there’s a prejudice there. They used to have to call and she would say, ‘You can stay for one day.’ He was in Tucson, Arizona. The kids were really hurt by that.”

  America’s bicentennial year of 1976 also saw the return of Lee Marvin in two films. American International Pictures (AIP) wanted to establish itself beyond the low-budget teenage drive-in fodder it was known for, and signed Lee Marvin for two comparatively high budget pictures. The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday was a return to the farcical comedy style of Cat Ballou, but with a much raunchier attitude, and not nearly as many true laughs. Marvin is the ridiculously named frontiersman ‘Sam Longwood’ who, along with his partners, half-breed ‘Joe Knox’ (Oliver Reed) and ‘Billy’ (Strother Martin), travels to Colorado to get back the money swindled out of them by their former partner and now respectable businessman, ‘Jack Colby’ (Robert Culp). Along the way, Knox kidnaps a wagonload of prostitutes in his own plan of vengeance on the white man by personally infecting the race with VD. The smallest of the prostitutes (Kay Lenz), having developed a crush on the legendary scout Sam Longwood, stays on with the trio, even after her coworkers have been freed. Such was the level of humor in the bawdy, slapstick comedy set against the backdrop of the 1908 presidential election of William Howard Taft.