Noted British director Michael Apted was excited to work with Marvin in the handful of scenes in which the actor was scheduled to appear. Unfortunately, when Marvin and his wife got off the plane to the Helsinki locale, he had to be rushed to the hospital. “What I remember most vividly was that we rehearsed in hospital,” recalled Apted. “Bill [Hurt] and I went into intensive care where he was in a bed. Had kind of tubes on it. We were rehearsing in hospital, which I must say, is a first and only time I’ve ever had to do that… Lee had such a huge commitment to doing it, and he wanted to do it well. He was prepared for the kind of indignity of having to be in hospital and rehearsing at the same time.”
After Marvin was released, this commitment did not waver, and he rose to the challenge of playing the slickly dressed sable merchant who parries continually with Hurt’s ‘Renko.’ Wearing expensive tailor-made suits, and immaculately groomed, he was almost exactly as Cruz-Smith had described him: “Into the alcove stepped a man, middle-aged, tall, lean and so dark that at first Arkady believed he might be an Arab. Straight white hair and black eyes, a long nose and an almost feminine mouth made an extraordinary combination, equine and handsome. On the hand carrying his towel he wore a gold signet ring. Arkady saw now that his skin was leathery, tanned rather than dark, tanned everywhere… He regarded Arkady without curiosity. Even his eyebrows seemed groomed. His Russian was excellent, as Arkady had known, but the tapes had missed the quality of animal assurance.” Not since Vince Stone in 1952’s The Big Heat had Marvin portrayed such a character, the major difference being that this individual, ‘Osborne,’ was much older and infinitely smarter. The scene, as quoted from the book, in which ‘Osborne’ and ‘Renko’ first confront each other in a public sauna, was depicted in the film, and according to Apted, “I remember him laying his towel on the bed and that great scene when he was dressing afterwards. He had an immaculate sense of timing so everything came together; the dialogue and the points. See, I remember that was one of his best days on it. He really enjoyed that.”
The filmmakers had their hands full trying to recreate Soviet Russia in the Helsinki location, as well as dealing with the conflicts within the cast. Hurt grappled with the character and the cast but, surprisingly, found a comrade in Marvin. “Marvin was incredibly supportive of him,” stated Apted, “much more so than the English actors around him. He [Marvin] really understood what Bill was going through, how difficult it was to do a role of this size and this responsibility. Lee was very generous with Bill and very supportive of him. For me, [he was] a real kind of good, solid rock, a good friend to have around. Although we didn’t share much history together… we got along very well. He was just very supportive for me and for Bill.” The other cast members recognized him for the cinematic legend he had become and treated him like royalty. As to his equally legendary drinking, “His reputation preceded him, being quite a heavy drinker,” stated Apted. “I think what he did was have one night a week when he would drink on a Saturday night. Otherwise, he seemed to be totally off that sort of stuff; totally focused on what he was doing.”
Released in December, 1983, the movie was not the box office hit the filmmakers had hoped for. It is unfortunate, as the film has merit despite its noticeable flaws. Apted felt the failure was cultural, stating, “I don’t think Western audiences became interested in Russia until Gorbachev came around. There’s a lot of interest in the film in Europe but it did very poorly here, which is disappointing. The very thing that interested me about it didn’t interest an American audience. I loved that I was going into a new environment, to something I’d never been to before. Creating a new world very much as I had done in a film I had done a bit earlier, Coal Miner’s Daughter…” One of the film’s few fans was Lee Marvin, who took the time to write Apted and tell him how pleased he was with the finished film. The actor had good reason to be pleased, as he had never before appeared in so elegantly sinister a role on screen and, sadly, never would again.
The Marvin brood had a reunion of sorts when the actor’s daughter Cynthia married in 1982. Marvin readily admitted over the years that he had never really been much of a father, and on occasion could be out and out cruel. When Betty had informed Lee that daughter Courtenay was dealing with issues concerning her sexuality, he managed to hurt his children’s feelings with the statement, “Great, she could be the son I always wanted.” He and Pam attended the California wedding and the actor was on his best behavior. When he asked Betty privately if he was expected to pay for the affair, she said, “Well, I think that’s your privilege, dear.”
On the heels of Gorky Park, he agreed to make his first foreign film, a poorly executed European film entitled Dog Day in which he played an aged American criminal on the lam from a botched bank robbery, hiding out in the French farmhouse of an extremely dysfunctional family. “I’d always wanted to work in France and this was a French production with a good script,” rationalized Marvin. He also considered dubbing his own dialogue in French but ultimately felt he was not up to the challenge. The film had potential in the way it commented on the American folklore of gangsters and criminals which may have been what attracted Marvin to the project; but the execution bordered on the sleazy and pornographic.
The sole benefit for the actor was to be back in France for the Deauville Film Festival to which he was invited as Guest of Honor. “I enjoyed that,” Marvin told the L.A. Times. “They’re such cinema fans in France. They told me stuff about myself I’d forgotten years ago. Best of all, Henry Hathaway was there. He came up behind me as I was talking to some journalists. ‘Still talking instead of listening,’ he said. Then we went off and had an evening together. He’s the man who put me in pictures, remember.”
Dog Day did not receive much of a reception when it was released in 1984, and quickly found its way on to the dollar rental shelf of video stores. Public appearances for Marvin consisted mostly of the occasional talk show in which he joked about his career, or regular appearances on one of Bob Hope’s specials. It was quick and fairly easy work for him but on one such occasion, Meyer Mishkin accompanied his client along with Pam Marvin.
Mishkin remembers the taping of the show vividly because of a telling incident: “Lucille Ball was on the show,” recalled the agent in 1994. “She comes off and sees me. We hug, then kiss, she says hello to Lee and his wife and then walks away. As she’s taking a few steps away, she turns around, comes back. I think she saw something on Lee’s wife’s face that was negative. She comes back and she said almost directly to Lee’s wife about me, ‘And he’s the best,’ and walks off… Angie [Dickinson] comes off and stops and kisses me on the cheek, so forth and so on. Lee, when I look at him, Lee’s going and making a face. Something must have happened there that Lee caught from his wife’s face about me. I don’t know but Lucy caught it… See, over the years I’ve learned that when an actor is represented by you, and he gets married, within six months, he leaves you… He [Lee] wouldn’t do it. I mean if it did come up, he wouldn’t do it… I talk with Pam now about once a week. Very friendly now. Very friendly.”
Through marriages, affairs, career highs and lows, and more than three decades of every possible scenario, with the sole exception of the brief sabbatical during “M Squad,” Mishkin and Marvin had been through it all, together. Agents are not often given their due in the film industry, and often there is good reason for this. One of the rare times they were acknowledged took place at a tribute dinner held at the Beverly Hills Hilton in 1981. Many stars attended to make jokes at their agents’ expense, but the most surprising of all was Lee Marvin. He took to the podium to state: “He was my friend always, and then my agent. I have never discussed any of my work with anybody —my family, the elevator operator, nobody. I discuss it with Meyer. Including my personal problems. If there’s a fee involved, I’m not concerned about it. I like Meyer.”
Professionally, the downward spiral continued for Marvin. His son Christopher was present when he was considering his next project. “I went to visit him, and we’re s
itting in his kitchen. He had this nice counter in the middle of the kitchen you could, like, lean against it, eat crackers and sardines, and just talk across the thing. I saw the script and said, ‘What’s this?’ He said, ‘Aww, some goddamned sequel to The Dirty Dozen. Listen to this line from this. Isn’t this shit or what?’ I said, ‘Yeah dad, you don’t have to do that shit.’ I called him a month later, and he said; ‘I gotta leave.’ I said, ‘Where you going?’ He said, ‘I gotta do this thing.’ When he told me, I teased him with, ‘You asshole!’ He said, ‘Yeah, shit, I know I told you I wasn’t going to do it.’ I said, ‘Well, enjoy it, man.’ I mean it was just pure hell. He said he needed the kick, man. That’s how it works.”
The 1985 TV-movie, The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission had the original cast members Richard Jaeckel and Ernest Borgnine returning with Marvin in a sequel to the original movie with a host of young actors as a new dozen. The story in the sequel takes place only months after the first film, but Marvin looked ancient compared to his earlier rugged appearance in 1967. The ratings were strong enough however to rate several more sequels featuring Telly Savalas, and even a short-lived TV series.
Aside from a Marine Corps. training film, Lee Marvin’s cinematic swan song was the 1986 Chuck Norris action opus Delta Force. Based loosely on real events, Marvin played ‘Colonel Nick Alexander,’ the leader of an antiterrorist group with Norris as the star player who wipes out an entire Arab terrorist organization single-handedly. The Israeli-produced film boasted a cast of Martin Balsam, Joey Bishop, Robert Forster, Lainie Kazan, George Kennedy, Hanna Schygulla, Susan Strasberg, Bo Svenson, Shelley Winters, and Robert Vaughn. “I got a call from the producers,” Marvin explained at the time of the film’s release, “they told me the story in about fifteen minutes. I said, ‘Sounds good to me,’ my agent met with them, and twenty minutes later, the deal was made. No sweat. Four weeks later I was off to Israel; ten weeks later it was shot and done and I was back in Tucson. No bull. Just BANG.”
After a recent TV viewing of the film, Meyer Mishkin wistfully recalled, “Lee looked so bad. The booze and the smoking… I had said to him, ‘Why do you want to…’ He said, ‘I gotta get out of the house.’ I think he got fifty thousand dollars. He just wanted out of the house…. If you look at Delta Force, you’ll see an aging, aging man. It was almost as if he was saying, again, ‘I’m a Marine. I dare you to kill me.’” Robert Vaughn, who played Marvin’s superior in the film, remembered, “He was very pleasant but he was fragile; getting up very slowly, getting down very slowly. He was not in good health.”
Despite Marvin’s frail appearance, Vaughn is quick to point out, “I just thought he was a classic case of movie star appeal. There was just nobody else like him. The X Factor, sex appeal, whatever you want to call it, Lee was Lee, and he was a tremendous force on screen.” Tragically, that tremendous force was wasted in the live-action Chuck Norris cartoon. The action film that Marvin had so brilliantly pioneered in his ascent to screen prominence was now crumbling around him in a sensationalized exploitation of American jingoism shown through a display of superior firepower. In promoting the film, he fully understood the difference between real events and what the film depicted, stating, “Go see Delta Force. The bad guy gets it. If we can satisfy the public with the visual action of getting even and still utilize diplomacy, we’ve solved the problem, haven’t we? In the movies you get even; in life diplomacy is best.”
Back in Tucson, the aging soldier filled his days with work on his house, catching up on his reading, raising and nurturing the giant saguaro cacti indigenous to the region, and the occasional foray into oil painting. He also welcomed and entertained old friends such as Mitch Ryan. “I would often go down there and watch old movies,” recalled Ryan. “He had a great collection. We would watch old Bogart movies. We would pick one or he’d find one that he’d get… I remember one time we watched Boorman’s movie about King Arthur, Excalibur. And Casablanca we watched, one time.”
Asked if they ever watched Marvin’s old films together, Ryan responded, “No, we never did. We watched Monte Walsh together once and he was a little upset at the cut. But he said, ‘It’s all right. What the fuck. The guys gotta do what they do.’ He was kind of amazing about that. He said it was kind of a shame. He didn’t spend any time grinding it out, or anything.”
Another factor as he got older that Marvin had to confront was the loss of his oldest and closest friends. He had attended the funeral of Robert Aldrich in 1983, and spoke briefly at Sam Peckinpah’s memorial the following year. He chose his words carefully, quoting the Bible passage, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.”
Hardest of all to deal with, however, was the death of his old friend, Keenan Wynn. The two had not been in much contact since their wild days in Malibu, but when Marvin received word of Wynn’s inoperable pancreatic cancer, he made a special trip to see his seventy-year-old comrade. “Lee went in there by himself for a while,” stated Ned Wynn. “I don’t know what was said because I wasn’t there. My dad told me later. He said he loved Lee, and Lee told my father that he loved him. It was probably very tearful. Keep in mind, my father was really dying. There was no kidding about it from the doctors. They didn’t dangle any false hope to hang on to. They gave him six months, but he hung in for eight. Anyway, Lee came out and talked a little bit about Arizona. He loved it out there…”
Lee Marvin’s own health began to rapidly deteriorate. He was hospitalized in December, 1986 for intestinal surgery after complaining of abdominal pain. Doctors at Tucson Medical Center discovered that his colon was inflamed but there were no signs of a feared malignancy. He continued to smoke despite crippling coughing jags. He was supposed to be on oxygen but it did little to curtail his behavior. “Christopher used to drive over there to see him and felt very strongly that at the end he really didn’t care about living,” recalled his first wife, Betty Marvin. “It was interesting. He’d still take off the oxygen mask and smoke.”
Other health issues ensued following his intestinal operation. According to Ralph O’Hara, “He got hepatitis from the blood. That’s why he couldn’t recover from the operation. They put a colostomy bag on him and he walked around with coveralls.”
O’Hara kept a vigil from his home in Santa Monica and recalled, “I could tell he was losing it because he was bedridden. I kept saying, ‘Hang in there, you son-of-a-bitch. Don’t you dare fall down. C’mon, fight it!’ He’d say, ‘I’m all right. I’ll be up tomorrow.’ I’d say, ‘Get up today! You stupid fuck, get up!’ I felt he was going to die. I started crying on the phone when I talked to him. I told him I couldn’t hack it, because my other friend had just died while on the phone as I was talking to him. Here I was talking to Lee now, and I had the same feeling. Lee was not going to survive this. I could tell by his voice. He didn’t sound well at all.”
Marvin was back in the hospital again in mid-August following another coughing attack that this time seriously hampered his breathing. His son Chris remembers visiting his father: “When I first went in and saw him, the skin was draped over him like a skeleton and he was just skin and bones. I saw a tube in his nose, in his mouth, in his ear, in his asshole, in his dick. There he was and it was like ‘Am I a human being?’ I looked at these young doctors and I was so mad at them…”
Pamela Marvin steadfastly and dutifully remained by her husband’s bedside during the difficult hospital stay. Mitch Ryan was there visiting on August 29 and saw the condition his friend was in. “He was very uncomfortable and very… he had a look on his face like, ‘What the fuck, you know? If you live like I do, this is probably the way you end up.’ I read that into his face. I don’t know if it was that … he did make some kind of derogatory comment about all the fucking machines that were tied up to him. It was sort of like, ‘Look at this. What the fuck is this?’ or ‘How about this?’”
The Ryans left later that day but heard what had transpired. “I wasn’t there at the time he had this
breathing attack. He couldn’t breathe… It’s why he went to the hospital; emphysema, or something. The windpipe has closed down due to inflammation. So, he went to a hospital and they gave him huge, massive shots of steroids to relax the throat so he could start breathing. What it did was perforate his liver and his kidneys. As they found out later, you don’t give alcoholics steroids because it’s very dangerous. The doctors somehow didn’t know that. They figured we got to get him breathing so we’ll take the chance or something. Anyway, he closed up again and when they tried to put tubes down his throat he wouldn’t let them. He fought it so violently he had a heart attack…”
Lee Marvin, the last of the wintry heroes, passed away at Tucson Medical Center at the premature age of sixty-three, with Pam at his bedside. As he had once inferred to Mitch Ryan, he did indeed suffer the consequences of living life on his own terms. He also spent that lifetime committed to expressing a simple truth. As his Great Uncle Ross Marvin learned tragically, and his father tried unsuccessfully to forget, man’s capacity for inhumanity is boundless.
Towards the end, it was expressed with Marvin’s signature dark humor, sardonically providing a mission statement to his entire cinematic career. In playing Death Hunt’s weathered Canadian Mountie, leading a posse through the frozen north, Marvin’s character has begrudgingly been taking orders from a much younger “by-the-book” officer. In a nighttime scene around a campfire, one of the posse teases the young greenhorn incessantly, until he finally loses his temper and strikes back in primal anger. Watching the proceedings and peering over his coffee cup, the wizened Marvin smiles conspiratorially and growls, “Look who just got uncivilized.”
EPILOGUE
As Depression-era hobo “A-No. 1” in 1973’s Emperor of the North, the Marvin persona was on full display: tough, unsentimental, prone to indescribable violence if provoked, and willing to mentor a young prodigy with such wisdom as, “You could be a meateater, kid. And I mean people, not their garbage”
Lee Marvin: Point Blank Page 26