LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Lee Marvin: Cat Ballou
built 668 days ago
Under Stanley Kramer, Marvin delivered a warm, comic turn in 1965's Ship of Fools then appeared in a dual role as fraternal gunfighters in the charming Western spoof Cat Ballou, a performance which won him an Academy Award. His next performance, as the leader of The Dirty Dozen, made him a superstar as the film went on to become one of the year's biggest hits. Marvin's box-office stature had grown so significantly that his next picture, 1968's Sergeant Ryker, was originally a TV-movie re-released for theaters. His next regular feature, the John Boorman thriller Point Blank, was another major hit. In 1969, Marvin starred with Clint Eastwood in the musical comedy Paint Your Wagon, one of the most expensive films made to date. It too was a success, as was 1970's Monte Walsh.
Source:
Movie tough guy Lee Marvin mined his WWII experiences and turned them into pure gold in the Hollywood crucible, initially portraying flagrantly sadistic heavies in supporting roles before growing into a leading man whose inescapable violence was often heroic. He had joined the Marines with his father's permission at age 18 and participated in 21 island landings as a scout sniper in the South Pacific before a bullet severed a nerve below his spine and invalidated him out of the service. Recognizing man's capacity for evil in his own cruel wartime deeds, he recounted for the cameras what he had seen on his journey to the depths, yet in an ironic twist, it was for comedy that the Academy saw fit to reward him with a Best Actor Oscar in the Western spoof "Cat Ballou" (1965). (The British Academy Awards honored him for performances in both "Cat Ballou" and "The Assassins", the latter more in keeping with the screen persona he had developed over time).
Source:
Under Stanley Kramer, Marvin delivered a warm, comic turn in 1965's Ship of Fools, then appeared in a dual role as fraternal gunfighters in the charming Western spoof Cat Ballou, a performance which won him an Academy Award. His next performance, as the leader of The Dirty Dozen, made him a superstar as the film went on to become one of the year's biggest hits. Marvin's box-office stature had grown so significantly that his next picture, 1968's Sergeant Ryker, was originally a TV-movie re-released for theaters; his next regular feature, the John Boorman thriller Point Blank, was another major hit. In 1969 Marvin starred with Clint Eastwood in the musical comedy Paint Your Wagon, one of the most expensive films made to date; it too was a success, as was 1970's Monte Walsh. Considering retirement, he did not reappear on screen for two years, but finally returned in 1972 with Paul Newman in the caper film Pocket Money; after turning down the lead in Deliverance, Marvin then starred in Prime Cut, followed in 1973 by Emperor of the North Pole and The Iceman Cometh.
Source:
Marvin won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Actor for his comic role in the offbeat western Cat Ballou starring Jane Fonda. Following roles in The Professionals (1966) and the hugely successful The Dirty Dozen (1967), Marvin was given complete control over his next film. In Point Blank, an influential film with director John Boorman, he portrayed a hard-nosed criminal bent on revenge. In that film Marvin, who had selected Boorman himself for the director's slot, had a central role in the film's development, plot line, and staging. In 1968, Marvin ... appeared in another Boorman film, the critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful Hell in the Pacific, co-starring famed Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. He had a hit song with "Wand'rin' Star" from the western musical Paint Your Wagon (1969).
Source:
Marvin got top billing for the first time in The Killers (1964), a version of a Hemingway story that had been filmed previously in 1946. The following year he played both a frightening bad guy (with a silver prosthetic nose) and a comically drunken gunman in Cat Ballou (1965), which brought him an Oscar®, a Golden Globe and a British Academy Award, as well as honors from the National Board of Review and the Berlin Film Festival. It seemed critics had finally caught on to what many fans had known for years, that Lee Marvin was an accomplished actor and not just a stock company villain. Upon accepting his Oscar®, Marvin remarked that he should share the award with "a horse somewhere out in the valley," referring to the animal actor whose comic performance equaled his own.
Source:
A World War II veteran and former plumber, Marvin was first cast in tough guy roles, such as those he played in The Big Heat (1953) and The Killers (1964). But over his long career, his range expanded, and his humorous performance in Cat Ballou (1965) won him an Oscar. Marvin's later work included thrillers (Point Blank, 1967), musicals (Paint Your Wagon, 1969), and war stories (The Big Red One, 1980).
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Cat Ballou