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Lee Marvin: Roles
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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....
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In 1950, Marvin moved to Hollywood. He quickly found work in supporting roles, and from the beginning was cast in various Western films and WWII or Korean War films. As a decorated combat veteran, Marvin was a natural in war dramas, where he frequently assisted the director and other actors in realistically portraying infantry movement, arranging costumes, and even adjusting war surplus military prop firearms. His debut was in You're in the Navy Now (1951), and in 1952 he appeared in several films, including Don Siegel's Duel at Silver Creek, Hangman's Knot, and the war drama Eight Iron Men. He played Gloria Grahame's vicious boyfriend in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (1953). Marvin had a small but memorable role in The Wild One (1953) opposite Marlon Brando (Marvin's gang in the film was called "The Beetles"), followed by Seminole (1953) and Gun Fury (1953).
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Lee Marvin was one of the greatest practitioners of minimalist American screen acting. He made a memorable appearance in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat, playing a sadistic gangster who scorches Gloria Grahame's face with a pot of hot coffee, making Jimmy Cagney's grapefruit assault on Mae Clarke look like a mere chilly caress. This early, shocking role displayed a vicious side to Marvin's screen personality which continued to simmer just under the surface, and occasionally to erupt, throughout his career.
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Like most actors, Marvin played some uncredited bit parts and character roles in his first films. He eventually earned lead roles when his aggressive nature was perceived by such directors as Edward Dmytryk, Fritz Lang, and John Boorman. Marvin appeared in about 70 films between 1951 and 1986. He likely stands out among the roughneck actors due to an innate predilection toward violence, which makes any malevolent Marvin character ring true.
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Marvin is primarily known for his aggressive action roles, many directed by such stalwarts of the American cinema as John Ford, Don Siegel, Robert Aldrich, and Sam Fuller. His screen persona can be described as cold, but with the capacity for sudden, brutal heat. His pale hair, icy blue-gray eyes, and stony face, in later films craggy but no less cruel, added force to his screen image. Like other minimalist actors (Bronson, Eastwood, Norris), Marvin's characters are most frequently verbally terse and emotionally recondite. His roles are often the embodiment of an exaggerated "macho" ideal: tough men seemingly devoid of feelings or vulnerability, figures often impenetrable and remote to movie audiences.
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Marvin's last big role was in Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One (1980). His remaining films were Death Hunt (1981), Gorky Park (1983), Dog Day (1984), The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission (1985), with his final appearance being in The Delta Force (1986).
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