Friday, May 22, 2009
I'm Lee Marvin
I'm Lee Marvin of course is cockney rhyming slang for "I'm starvin" and all his life, oddly enough, Lee Marvin himself was hungry for new experiences as an actor, as an artist and as a man. Marvin joined the USMC and was wounded in the Pacific theatre and after the war he fell into acting. John Boorman made this terrific documentary about his friend Lee, who was memorable in so many films, not least The Dirty Dozen, Point Blank and even in his final role as the villain in Gorky Park. Double click to go to YouTube and watch all five parts, or just try part 1 here.
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37 comments:
I'd like to watch that Boorman film when I get a chance.
My favorite Lee Marvin movie, and actually a favorite of my whole family was Cat Ballou. It's one of those things that I'm not sure would still be as funny now, but it a perfect piece of its era. And Lee Marvin was of course the one who made the whole thing.
I liked Lee MArvin growing up. He was a big deal then, and I liked the movies he was in. it was only after he died and I re-watched some of those movies as an adult that I appreciated what a good actor he was. Maybe not the greatest range, but what he did, he did very well. This may have been helped by the fact that he didn't have to wonder how a tough guy would handle a situation; he actually was a tough guy.
Great actor. He was also perfect in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
Adrian:
A real original. The great Robert Aldrich film "Emporer of the North," is his best performance, I think. A film which just gets better and better. Plus you get Keith Carradine's best performance. All this and trains, too.
Of course, as Seana knows, his "drunk on horseback" thing in Cat Ballou is his most memorable performance.
Yes, and also etched in my memory is his tin nose. Not that that is acting, but he wore it with panache.
Seana
Its a very good documentary. Interestingly they do some cryptic bad mouthing of Michael Apted (who directed Gorky Park) the man who made that Rome series I still havent seen.
Dana
Tough guy he was. I dont remember what campaign he fought in in the Pacific but none of them look like picnics.
Brian
Yeah, that was another good early one.
Patrick
I like Cat Ballou but I think he was better in Point Blank.
Seana
I dont remember how he lost the nose in the film. Syphilis? That might explain some of the erratic behaviour. I remember in Carl Sagan's Cosmos he talked about Tycho Brahe who had a gold nose.
Michael Apted is 7 Up, right? I love those movies, though I think they ended up being about something rather different than his rather rigid initial premise. Class only takes you so far as a theory of destiny?
Although I suppose the final verdict really isn't in in that series.
Seana
I've seen them all too. I've got to say I dont really enjoy watching them, but I do want to know whats happened to everyone especially the cabbie and the mad bloke.
I don't remember either as to why the nose, though I do remember there was kind of plot point around it which shouldn't be revealed.
I read a novel in which Tycho Brahe figured rather heavily, though it was called Kepler, and was by none other than John Banville. Having missed that whole Cosmos series, I realy didn't know a whole lot about early astronomy. Well, still don't.
Yep, there are a few people--I almost slipped and said characters, which I suppose is revealing in itself--that you really follow, although I'd say they all have their moments.
The latest Atlantic has an article about a similar project, though not film following men from Harvard for something like 72 years, trying to figure out something about human happiness. I think that again that it turns out that the people are bigger than any theory that could be made to contain them. Not surprising, but oddly comforting, even when the lives don't turn out well.
Two terrific, little-seen Apted films - Thunderheart and Always Outnumbered, the former a solid thriller and the latter an adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel.
Love Lee Marvin, he has a small part in one of my favourite films, A Bad Day at Black Rock. I remember reading a funny interview with William Smith (the actor, stuntman, and Korean War vet who played Conan's father) who was friends with Marvin and Bronson. Smith tells a funny story about he and Marvin getting their asses kicked in LA by some Hell's Angels - Marvin was a genuinely tough guy, but that's not always synonymous with a good fighter. I guess in some ways I can see parallels between him and Michael Forsythe - two guys who are just bad news, period.
Listen to the Point Blank commentary as well.
wow what a great documentary. that was a terrific bit about the no dialogue scene, I love that kind of stuff.
Seana
I tried to go onto the Atlantic but its subcribers only. Care to summarize? Any handy health tips or is it all Pema Chondron/Oprah kind of stuff?
Matt
I'll bet he was outnumbered or drunk because Marvin was seriously tall with big hands and feet and he boxed and learned UAC in the corps.
Nice get on the Apteds, I think he directed a Bond too.
Ian
Hey yeah I liked that bit as well. I liked when Boorman says that Marvin always wanted to cut dialogue and replace it with a gesture. That stuff kills me (as HC would say) I love it. Except in His Girl Friday I dont think I've ever wished a movie had more dialogue.
Adrian,
Marvin was wounded during the invasion of Saipan, which, as you expected, was a bad one.
PKL,
Thanks for reminding me about Emperor of the North. One of my favorites. He was also excellent in Gorky Park and Pocket Money.
My favourite Marvin flick might be Hell in the Pacific - Marvin opposite one of his few equals, Toshirō Mifune.
On a side note, I was reading a bio of John Wayne the other day and this thread brought to mind some interesting comparisons Wayne, who played many servicemen but never served, apparently got a lot of grief for it. On the set of 'They Were Expendable' John Ford apparently told Wayne, "Wayne can you at least try to look like you served when you salute?" Wayne was a supporter of HUAC, while Marvin was apparently a pretty open-minded fella. Glad Marvin got to work with Ford, though.
Apted did do a Bond film, Robert Carlyle was a great villain, but the film itself was crap imo.
Matt, you've happened to mention two of my favorite actors in one post--Mifune and Robert Carlyle. And I had no idea that there was a Mifune/Marvin movie, which I will definitely have to Netflix.
Adrian, I will get back to you on the Atlantic article--I'm sorry it isn't more easily available. But meanwhile, I was wondering about that Cockney rhyming slang. Somehow, I had the impression that it was more fixed, but Lee Marvin couldn't have become a code phrase in it too awfully long ago. So do the rhyming schemes constantly change or is that a rarity?
I'm kinda partial to Duck, You Sucker.
The suicide bomber/Obi Wan outfit, the great motorcycle, the bad Irish accent, the Morricone music, his enemy becoming his best buddy, etc. A great character.
But Lee Marvin's cool too.
Gimme all your bees 'n' honey, China plate. And you better not say Tom Tit about it neither. Boom.
Dana
And not bad in The Wild One
Matt
Hell in the Pacific - thats one weird film, but I think I like it. It took me two viewings a few years apart though.
Seana
Its organic like English itself, a little more conservative than the language as a whole but still able to change. Lee's been dead what twenty years but they're still going with LM = hungry which is nice.
Liam
Read the Rome story. Very good stuff! Do you know that mystery novelist who writes mysteries set in the reign of Augustus? The name escapes me, but you should definitely check them out.
HB
I still ahudder at James Coburn's accent in The Great Escape.
I wonder how Tarantino's assault on The Dirty Dozen is going to play out. I'm reading some very mixed reviews ie. 1 star versus 5 star which sounds interesting.
I don't know who that is, but would definitely be interested to know. Thanks for reading. About 80 pages of Fifty G to go. It's taking me so long bc I've just started a summer class, History of N. American Indians. It's a three week course and we have to read three 300 page books each week. Insane in the membrane.
I hope you read Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee - loved that book.
I don't know if any of them are set in the Augustan reign, but there are three pretty big mystery writers who use ancient Rome as the backdrop--Lindsay Davis, Steven Saylor and John Maddox Roberts. All respected researchers of their eras, I think.
That's interesting to know tht Cockney rhyming slang is still alive as opposed to just received. I love to see the way languages move. Just read an interesting post from Brian O'Rourke's friend Nathaniel Green's 500Words on Words blog. Great stuff on words, and latest post is about how words originally about the physical world then are redeployed to express the abstract.
Speaking of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, did anyone here read In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Mattheissen? It got published, then banned then released again, and it's all about AIM and Leonard Peltier.
Seana
Lindsay Davis is the person I'm thinking of.
I havent read that PM one, though I have read a lot of PM and funnily enough have been on a PM jag at the mo. Just finished his Africa one, S America and Antarctica. What distinguishes him from Paul Theroux (who I very much admire) is the care PM takes describing the local flora and fauna esp the birds.
I read that one and another called, I believe Indian Country. And then for some reason I stopped, even though I liked them both very much. I think it was because I was on a Native American phase, not a Peter M. phase.
I like Paul T. too, but Peter M. is nowhere near as acrid. Although (I think) his son went to UCSC,or maybe even was teaching here, because I remember one of my friends had dinner with the family once, including PM, and there was some surprising story, perhaps about the Snow Leopard. It's a long time ago now, though, and I am not just vague on the anecdote, but on who the friend could possibly have been.
But it may come back to me.
Seana
I remember listening to The Snow Leopard as an audiobook and liking it a lot, except for one bit that really got on my nerves where he showed that he didn't understand Einstein assuming incorrectly that Einstein's theory equated with relativism in morals. Still it was a very good one. They didn't SPOILER ALERT find a snow leopard.
Not sure if anyone is still reading down here, but as to the Atlantic article, which I looked at a little more thoroughly yesterday, it's kind of hard to summarize, but quite fascinating. Not so much about happiness, which I'd say pretty much remains a mystery, but about the idea of a study of happiness itself. For one thing, a study done over such a long period of time is hard to keep funded, as the foundations that give money tend to want quick answers, which obviously aren't going to happen. So at one point the study was funded by Philip Morris, who had them put on the surveys these guys took, "If you never smoked, why didn't you?" As Joshua Shenk, the author of the article says, "It was a far cry from Galileo."
It's kind of and odd hodge podge of a study, because it starts out with a group of 268 Harvard sophomores, all men, all seemingly well-adjusted. (One of them was recently revealed to be JFK, though his records remain sealed.) But much later they lump in another study of non-delinquent youth of some much more working class neighborhood, and then I think they even threw in a group of women from anothe study.
I think the main thing I gather from all this is that we really don't know if we are happy or not. There is a contrast between two men one of whom has led a successful life and one who died prematurely after falling down a stairs drunk. But there is a vagueness and disquiet about the guy who lived the 'good life' and a vibrancy to the life of the drunk, who seems to have been one of the few to actively challenge the study and think about it.
The caretaker of the study, George Vaillant, lost his father to suicide when he was 11 and seems to be seeking the answer to some questions of his own through these people. Although he is very much the scientist, there is a very literary cast to his mind, and one quite beautiful passage from one of his books says of his subjects, who he calls his Brother Karamozovs:
Their lives were too human for science, too beautiful for numbers, too sad for diagnosis and too immortal for bound journals.
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