The Full Biography
Lee Marvin. Actor. A Marine who brought Saipan into the frame and then, to everyone’s surprise, won an Oscar for falling off a horse.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is white hair and a walk that looks like a threat already decided. The year might be 1967, in Point Blank, a man named Walker crossing Los Angeles as if the city owed him a debt. Or it is 1965, in Cat Ballou, a drunk gunfighter whose horse is as soused as he is. What the still cannot show is Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. of New York, a sciatic nerve cut on Saipan, and a California lawsuit that put a new word — palimony — into the language.
He was born on February 19, 1924, in New York City. His father, Lamont Waltman Marvin, worked in advertising. His mother, Courtenay Washington Davidge, came from a Virginia line that liked its names long. The boy was restless in school. In August 1942 he left it and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific, I Company, 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines. On June 18, 1944, in the assault on Mount Tapochau during the Battle of Saipan, machine-gun fire severed his sciatic nerve; a sniper hit him in the foot. Most of the company were casualties. He took a Purple Heart and a medical discharge as a private first class in 1945, out of Philadelphia. The wound was real. It sat in the hip and the buttock and the nerve. He did not make a speech about it. He walked as if the ground might still be mined.
The door was not a studio test. After the war he stumbled into a community-theater job upstate, in the Woodstock country, and used the G.I. Bill at the American Theatre Wing. Hollywood hired the face first: tall, prematurely gray, a voice like gravel in a tin cup. Bit parts, then heavies. The Big Heat (1953), Fritz Lang, the henchman who throws scalding coffee in Gloria Grahame’s face. The Wild One (1953), a biker opposite Brando. Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), with Spencer Tracy. Television made him a weekly fact: M Squad (1957–1960), a Chicago detective who did not waste charm. John Ford used him as Liberty Valance in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), the villain the picture requires so that Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne have something to be measured against.
The Killers (1964) made him a lead. Then Cat Ballou (1965) made him a joke he was willing to be. He played a drunken hired gun and the gun’s respectable twin. Jane Fonda was the title outlaw. The Academy Award for Best Actor went to the man who had spent fifteen years as the threat in the corner. The Professionals (1966). The Dirty Dozen (1967), Robert Aldrich, a major who trains convicts for a suicide job in France — the war picture that used his real weather without asking him to decorate it. The same year, John Boorman’s Point Blank: Walker, Alcatraz, a double-cross, Los Angeles architecture as a weapon. Cinephiles name that one first. The Oscar night cannot contain it. The horse gag cannot eat it.
Acting is not an important job in the scheme of things. Plumbing is.Lee Marvin
That is the turn, and it is easy to miss because the public remembers the heavy. After Cat Ballou he could have become a professional drunk for hire. He became, instead, a leading man who still looked like the worst man in the room. Paint Your Wagon (1969) asked him to sing. He did. “Wand’rin’ Star” went to number one in Britain, a fact that still startles people who only know the coffee and the .45. He kept taking parts that needed a man who had already been shot at. He did not pretend the work was a calling. He treated it as a trade with better hours than a lot of trades.
The apprenticeship was longer than the Oscar night admits. You’re in the Navy Now (1951) is a bit. Diplomatic Courier and Eight Iron Men are more bits. Then Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953): Vince Stone, the coffee, Gloria Grahame’s face, a cruelty that does not need a speech. The same year, The Wild One, a biker opposite Brando who already owned the myth. The Caine Mutiny (1954) put him in the engine room as “Meatball,” a nickname the Navy would have recognized. John Sturges used him in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) against Spencer Tracy, a desert town that wanted the one-armed stranger gone. Pete Kelly’s Blues. Violent Saturday. Robert Aldrich’s Attack (1956) let him play a cowardly captain in a war picture that did not flatter the brass. By the time M Squad made him a weekly Chicago detective, 1957 to 1960, the face was already a fact in living rooms that did not yet know the horse gag.
John Ford hired the menace. The Comancheros (1961) is a paycheck with John Wayne. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) is the part the western required so that Stewart’s lawyer and Wayne’s rancher had something to be measured against. Liberty Valance is not a cartoon. He is the reason the town needs a myth. Donovan’s Reef (1963) let Ford use him as a brawler in the South Pacific, closer to the water Marvin had already seen as a Marine. Don Siegel’s The Killers (1964), a television picture that went theatrical, made him a lead: a hit man who wants to know why the mark did not run. Angie Dickinson, Clu Gulager, a Reagan in a villain’s suit. The heavy had become the center of the frame without asking the frame to like him.
Then the surprise. Cat Ballou (1965), Elliot Silverstein, Jane Fonda as the title outlaw, Marvin as Kid Shelleen and as the gun’s respectable twin, a horse that leans as hard as its rider. The Academy Award for Best Actor went to a man the town had spent fifteen years casting as the threat in the corner. The same awards season, Ship of Fools for Stanley Kramer. Then the run that is the real monument: Richard Brooks’s The Professionals (1966), four hired men into Mexico; Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen (1967), Major Reisman training convicts for a suicide château in France, a war picture that used Marvin’s weather without asking him to decorate it; John Boorman’s Point Blank the same year, Walker walking out of Alcatraz and across Los Angeles as if the architecture owed him a debt. Cinephiles name the Boorman first. Holiday weekends still play the Aldrich. The Oscar night cannot contain either.
He did not stop at the three pictures the obituaries lead with. Hell in the Pacific (1968) stranded him on an island with Toshiro Mifune and almost no English, a two-man war that is closer to Saipan than a studio wanted to admit. Joshua Logan’s Paint Your Wagon (1969) asked the gravel voice to carry Lerner and Loewe; “Wand’rin’ Star” went to No. 1 in Britain and stayed there for weeks, a fact disc jockeys still use as a dare. Monte Walsh (1970) is a fading cowboy who knows the century has moved. Pocket Money (1972) put him opposite Paul Newman in a shaggy cattle picture. Prime Cut the same year, Kansas City muscle and a Chicago slaughterhouse. Aldrich again: Emperor of the North (1973), a hobo and a conductor on a Depression train, Marvin against Ernest Borgnine. John Frankenheimer’s film of The Iceman Cometh (1973) gave him Hickey, O’Neill’s salesman of death, a stage weight the action posters never advertised. The Spikes Gang. The Klansman. Shout at the Devil (1976) with Roger Moore. Not all of them are good. All of them are a man who still showed up when the part needed a body that had already been shot at. Avalanche Express (1979) is a Cold War wreck he finished after Robert Shaw died in the middle of production. He did not pretend it was Point Blank. He cashed the check and went back to Tucson.
Six things most people never knew
- His name was Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. Lee is the reduction. The Marine file still has the long one.
- The Saipan wound cut the sciatic nerve. June 18, 1944, Mount Tapochau. Purple Heart. Medical discharge, PFC, 1945. He did not cartoon it.
- He found acting in a community theater after the war. Woodstock country, then the American Theatre Wing on the G.I. Bill. Not a child star. A man looking for a job that would hold.
- M Squad made him a weekly face before the Oscar. 1957–1960. A detective series. The movies still have not erased those Monday nights.
- “Wand’rin’ Star” was a British number one. Paint Your Wagon, 1969. The tough guy sang. The chart did not care about the coffee scene.
- Palimony entered the language through his house. Michelle Triola sued. Marvin v. Marvin (1976, trial 1979) changed how California thought about unmarried partners. He did not write a large check. The word stayed.
He married Betty Ebeling in 1951. They had four children: Christopher, Courtenay, Cynthia, and Claudia. The marriage ended in 1967. He lived for years with Michelle Triola, who took his surname without a license. When they parted she sued for a share of his earnings. The California Supreme Court said unmarried partners could contract; the trial court gave her a rehabilitation sum and then took it back on appeal. He married Pamela Feeley, a friend from the Woodstock years, in 1970. She was with him at the end. The children have had to share a father who is a war story, a joke on a horse, and a legal citation. All three are real. None is the whole man.
The later years
Tucson became the house — a desert address far from the Palimony headlines and the Bel Air weather. Pamela Feeley, the Woodstock friend he had married in 1970, kept that Arizona kitchen while the call sheets still came. He fished. He drank. He took a part when the part was a man. The children from the first marriage — Christopher, Courtenay, Cynthia, Claudia — had a father who was a war story, a joke on a horse, and a legal citation. He smoked. He drank. The sciatic nerve from Mount Tapochau never became a speech, but it sat in the walk. He took parts when the part was a man, not a waxwork of 1967. Samuel Fuller’s The Big Red One (1980) gave him a sergeant in a war picture that wanted North Africa, Sicily, Omaha Beach, and Czechoslovakia without the old studio shine. Fuller had been a rifleman. Marvin had been a Marine. The weather finally matched. Peter Bogdanovich, among others, had already named Point Blank as a grammar. Fuller gave the grammar a unit and a war.
Death Hunt (1981) put him in the Yukon opposite Charles Bronson, a mountie and a trapper, snow and a paycheck. Gorky Park (1983), from Martin Cruz Smith, made him a New York businessman in a Moscow murder, a supporting turn that still had the old threat. Yves Boisset’s Canicule — released as Dog Day in 1984 — stranded him in a French village with a bag of money and no friends. Then The Delta Force (1986), Menahem Golan, Chuck Norris, a terrorist hijacking and a last hard face on a one-sheet. It is not Point Blank. It is a man of sixty-two still willing to be the colonel on a poster. He did not issue a farewell. He took the job.
In December 1986 the body failed in public ways: a hospitalization, the kind of bulletin that tells a town the gravel voice is mortal. He went home to Tucson. On August 29, 1987, a heart attack killed him there. He was sixty-three. The Marines buried him at Arlington National Cemetery, full honors, Section 7-A, among the officers and the riflemen, not among the billing. The headstone is a rank, a war, and a date. Pamela was the widow. The four children from Betty Ebeling remained. The palimony word stayed in the dictionary. Cat Ballou stayed in the clip reels. Walker still crosses Los Angeles after midnight as if the city owes him a room. The grave does not mention the horse. It mentions the Corps.
After he was gone
Pamela and the children remain. Point Blank still teaches directors what a walk across a city can mean. The Dirty Dozen still plays on holiday weekends. The Oscar for Cat Ballou is still the surprise in the file. Palimony is still in the dictionary. Arlington is still the last address.
He came out of New York, took a machine-gun burst on Saipan, learned the trade in a small theater, scared a generation as Liberty Valance, then won a statue for a drunk and a horse. If you only remember the heavy, you have the first fifteen years. If you remember Walker, the Purple Heart, and the grave at Arlington, you have him.
Portrait: NBC Television · Public domain (TV publicity photo, no notice) · via Wikimedia Commons