EPILOGUE
The Inglorious Bastard Sons of Lee
IN THE TWENTY-FIVE plus years since his untimely death, the Lee Marvin cult has been steadily on the rise. In 1992, independent film maker Jim Jarmusch wrote in Film Comment magazine, “One actor I’m a big fan of is Lee Marvin. Just the idea of Marvin’s characters being outsiders and very violent appeals to me. Some seem to have a very strong code—even if it’s a psychotic one—that he follows rigidly.”
He then went even further, recounting a tale involving a secret organization known as “The Sons of Lee Marvin” whose members include Jarmusch, musicians Tom Waits and Nick Cave, and several others. The sole requirement for entry, other than being a fan, is to bear a physical resemblance to Marvin himself. No details were given other than the following anecdote: “Six months ago, Tom Waits was in a bar somewhere in Northern California, and the bartender said, ‘You’re Tom Waits, right? A guy over there wants to talk to you.’ Tom went over to this dark corner booth and the guy sitting there said, ‘Sit down, I want to talk to you.’ So Tom started getting a little aggressive: ‘What the fuck do you want to talk to me about? I don’t know you.’ And the guy said, ‘What is this bullshit about the Sons of Lee Marvin?’ Tom said, ‘Well, it’s a secret organization and I’m not supposed to talk about it.’ The guy said, ‘I don’t like it.’ Tom said, ‘What’s it to you?’ The guy said, ‘I’m Lee Marvin’s son’ —and he really was. He thought it was insulting, but it’s not, it’s completely out of respect for Lee Marvin.”
Lee Marvin would have been the first one surprised by the posthumous grassroots interest in his career. In the months leading up to his death his disposition had considerably soured. In his last interviews he denigrated almost all of the films he had made. His marriage to Pam had not been the storybook romance the media had claimed. A few months before his death he even attempted to throw her out of the house. She refused and remained at his bedside.
Lee Marvin’s death earned respectful obituaries, but the news of his passing was overshadowed by the death of John Huston the day before. Pam had her husband’s remains cremated and interred at Arlington National Cemetary. Betty returned from Europe shocked by the news, and held a memorial by the beach attended by several friends and all of his children.
In spite of a twenty-two-page will, as his executor, Pam incurred the usual wrangling from family members over her husband’s substantial estate. Although his biological children reportedly received twenty thousand dollars each, Pam’s children received considerably more. The debate rages on to this day as Pam and her daughter continue to be in legal dispute over the home in Tucson.
While Lee Marvin’s property may still be the object of debate, his professional legacy has grown exponentially through the years. The appreciation of his work on a more esoteric level began as early as 1968 when Marvin’s career was at its apex. The next generation of filmmakers had grown up on a steady diet of his film performances in both movie theaters and television showings.
Martin Scorsese, who is of this generation, and arguably the greatest filmmaker in America currently working, had made his directorial debut with the semi-autobiographical 1968 film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door. In one standout scene, the lead character, played by Harvey Keitel, talks about his love of bad guys in movies to his would-be girlfriend, and expounds on his personal favorite: “Lee Marvin. Now there’s a real bad guy. You see, he doesn’t just play a tough guy, he has to go all the way. He dresses in black, you know. He snarls. He breaks things. He kicks people. He bites. That’s right. He was in this movie Liberty Valance. You ever see that one? Anyway, he comes into a room in the picture. He can’t just walk into a room. He walks in. He snarls. He kicks over a few chairs and tables. He breaks a few things. And then he sits down. I mean, that’s really a bad guy… You know, Marvin just can’t do anything normal. He’s gotta… You know, if he, like, if he picks up a drink with his hands, he’s gotta look like he’s gonna squash it. Imagine what women think. To them, he’s the worst kind of bad guy. He not only kills people, he breaks furniture.”
Scorsese would also go on to redefine the use of violence and its intensity in cinema even more, especially with such films as Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980) and Goodfellas (1990). Hs first major critical success was 1973’s Mean Streets and when the street savvy characters decide to go to the movies, the viewer sees the marquee poster to Point Blank prominently displayed in the movie house lobby.
It would be almost two decades before another young filmmaker would pay homage to Marvin’s influence on screen by a director who would also redefine American film violence for an entirely new generation. Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut was the low-budget heist film Reservoir Dogs (1992), and a scene in which Michael Madsen and, again, Harvey Keitel almost come to blows, ends with Madsen stating, “I bet you’re a big Lee Marvin fan, aren’t you? Me too. I love that guy.” Also, Tarantino’s signature film, 1994’s Pulp Fiction, included two professional hit men played by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta who appear to be clearly modeled after Marvin’s and Clu Gulager’s characters in The Killers.
In 1995 a group of Generation X’ers from Southern California heard about The Sons of Lee Marvin and took it upon themselves to create the Bastard Sons of Lee (BSOL). Founder Ron ‘Liberty Valance’ Walker told the L.A. Times, “Lee’s sort of the wild man. So, maybe we live vicariously through him.”
Chris Marvin read the article and got in touch with the BSOL, receiving a warm reception. As for the more secretive Sons of Lee Marvin, they do indeed exist; however Chris proved that the aforementioned confrontation with Waits was more apocryphal than fact. Marvin, a studio drummer, knew Waits professionally, and remarked, “I hadn’t seen Tom in a few years. I asked him about the Jarmusch article and he said, ‘Aw, Chris, it’s Jim Jarmusch’s crazy nightmare. It wasn’t me!’ That kind of threw me off… I’d be honored though, to hang out with them.” The real son of Lee Marvin keeps his father’s legacy alive without the aid of Jarmusch and Company. Christopher cultivates his own cacti grafted from the cuttings of his father’s original plants.
Director Joe Dante, known for the popular 1984 film Gremlins and a true purveyor of “Baby Boomer” pop culture, directed the 1998 film Small Soldiers. The fantasy plot involved action figure dolls doing battle with their more peace loving counterparts. The lead action figure, named Chip Hazard, bore more than a passing resemblance to Marvin. Lending his voice to the character was Tommy Lee Jones, an actor whose resemblance to Marvin is more than coincidental. For good measure, Dante hired the likes of Ernest Borgnine, Jim Brown, Clint Walker, and George Kennedy to provide the voices of the other action figures. “They were using us for name value. They were getting everybody they could from The Dirty Dozen,” stated Walker. “I think the toy soldiers were a great deal.”
In the original 1967 classic, singer/actor Trini Lopez had made an abrupt exit from the film after demanding more money from Aldrich. Ironically, when Small Soldiers went into production, Clint Walker recounted, “Trini Lopez was there, but again, I guess they couldn’t make the deal. He never did anything, so I don’t know.” It did not spoil the reunion, as he added, “I think everybody enjoyed seeing everybody. It was good. I enjoyed seeing the fellas.”
Like Bogart’s legacy before him, the Marvin cult continues to lives on. The Big Red One was reassembled to great acclaim at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. The popular 2009 Tarantino film Inglorious Basterds borrowed more than a little from The Dirty Dozen and is the most financially successful film of Tarantino’s career. MTV also offered an unexpected tribute to Lee Marvin in 2009. The network polled young filmmakers for “Our Greatest Movie Badasses,” and of the top ten, only two were not part of a recent production. The Wild Bunch’s Pike Bishop (co-created by Marvin) was #7 while Point Blank’s Walker took the #5 spot. Quite an honor considering the participants were infants when Lee Marvin died.
Film historian John Farr gave the actor’s lasting impact a ra
llying cry in the following 2010 Huffington Post entry: “With precious few exceptions, all I see is a lot of boys in Hollywood these days, both real and aging. Since Lee Marvin’s been gone so long, there’s a whole new generation of young adults out there who likely don’t even know who he was. Let’s change that.” Let us indeed.
AFTERWORD
My Father
When Dwayne asked me if I would be interested in writing a brief piece to be included in his biography about my father, Lee Marvin, I was at first reluctant, since I had turned down many such invitations before. But, after reading the book, it brought back many loving memories of my father…
He could be very stern at times, and yet very sensitive and tender, kissing me on the lips, with “How goes the battle?” and delivering one-liners to explain himself.
When I was a boy, around the age of ten, I used to take long walks on the beach with my father, collecting beach glass. It was a serious pursuit - looking for the perfectly smooth, well-rounded pieces of Milk-of-Magnesia blue or Coca-Cola green, and, if we were lucky, an occasional piece of Japanese glass buoy. I still follow this tradition, walking the beach every day, searching for beach glass to make my mosaic artwork. I go with my Australian Shepherd, Liberty, named after my father’s dog, a Puli breed.
Around that time he gave me a Swiss Army knife, which he tied to a notched leather band, so I could easily retrieve it from my back pocket. I lost it playing in the park with my pals. I was very upset and not sure how my father would react, but Dad laughed and said, “Just like a kid.”
We loved listening to music together. He taught me to appreciate the likes of Leadbelly, Blind Lemon Jefferson and other blues artists of an earlier time. On the other hand he appreciated my music of the sixties—Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck, and English Blues.
He loved the desert. In my twenties, when I used to visit him in Arizona, we would take long walks and he would explain how the different types of cactus cohabited with each other. I learned to appreciate his love of these plants. Now I spend time with him every day in my own garden full of many varieties of cacti.
It makes me sad he died so young at age sixty-three and I, thirty-four at the time, thought I knew it all, and did not appreciate all he had to offer. Now that I am more mature at sixty, I would like to have lengthy, in-depth conversations with him.
Toward the end, my sisters and I drove down to see him in the hospital after surgery. He said, “Come here.” When I leaned over him in his hospital bed, he whispered, “Get out of here while you still can.” He hated hospitals and did not want me to see him in such a frail condition. He died not long after.
Aside from being a great actor, my father was very complex. He was independent, kind, funny, generous, and could spot a phony a mile away. Hopefully, I have inherited some of these qualities.
I miss him.
Christopher L. Marvin
November, 2012
The oldest child and only son of Lee and Betty Marvin, Christopher Marvin is a professional drummer who has toured and recorded with many notable musicians, and played on Tom Waits’ acclaimed 1999 album, Mule Variations. A mosaic artist who works exclusively with beach glass, he lives in Santa Barbara.
Important Dates in the Life of Lee Marvin
SEPTEMBER 2, 1896: Mother Courtenay Washington Davidge born in Virginia.
DECEMBER 19, 1896: Father Lamont ‘Monte’ Waltham Marvin born in Elmira, NY.
SEPTEMBER 3, 1921: Parents marry.
JULY 18, 1922: Brother Robert Davidge Marvin born in Washington, D.C.
FEBRUARY 19, 1924: Lee Marvin born in New York City.
SEPTEMBER 25, 1926: New York Times article announces murder of Ross Marvin.
1929-1940: Is enrolled and expelled from several public and private schools along the eastern seaboard.
SEPTEMBER, 1940-JuNE, 1942: Enrolled in Lakeland Florida’s St. Leo Academy. Drops out before senior year to join the Marines.
AUGUST 12, 1942: Joins the U.S. Marine Corp.
JUNE 18, 1944: Wounded in action during the battle of Saipan.
JULY 24, 1945: Officially discharged from the USMC.
JUNE, 1947: Makes professional acting debut in Woodstock’s Maverick Theater production of “Roadside.”
1947-1951: Appears in summer stock, Off-Broadway, military training films, short subjects and live TV while also taking classes at the American Theater Wing under the G.I. Bill as of April, 1948.
FEBRUARY 10, 1951: “Billy Budd” opens, marking Lee Marvin’s sole appearance on Broadway.
1951: Leaves New York for California, having met agent Meyer
Mishkin while filming bit part in You’re in the Navy Now (February, 23); Seen as extra in Teresa (April 5).
1952: Appears in Diplomatic Courier (June 13), We’re Not Married (July 11), Duel at Silver Creek (August 1), Hangman’s Knot (November 15), and is third billed in Eight Iron Men (December, 30).
FEBRUARY 2, 1952: Marries Betty Ebeling in Las Vegas.
NOVEMBER 22, 1952: First child and only son Christopher Lamont born.
1953: Appears in Down Among the Sheltering Palms (March 1),
Seminole (March 15), The Glory Brigade (May 20), The Stranger Wore a Gun (July 30),
The Big Heat (October 14), Gun Fury (November 11), and The Wild One (December 30).
1954: Appears in Gorilla at Large (May), The Caine Mutiny (June 24) and The Raid (August 4).
MAY 7, 1954: Daughter Courtenay Lee born.
1955: Appears in Bad Day at Black Rock (January 7), Violent Saturday (April), Not as a Stranger (June 28), A Life in the Balance (July 1),
Pete Kelly’s Blues (July 31), I Died a Thousand Times (November 9) and Shack Out on 101 (December 4); Befriends costar Keenan Wynn.
1956: Appears in Seven Men From Now (August 4), Pillars of the Sky (October 12), Attack! (October 17), and The Rack (November 2).
JUNE 8, 1956: Daughter Cynthia Louise born; Makes final stage appearance in La Jolla Playhouse production of “Bus Stop” (June 26-July 8).
1957: Appears in Raintree County (December 20).
September, 1957: “M Squad” premieres on NBC.
1958: Appears in Missouri Traveler (January 21).
March 8, 1958: Daughter Claudia Leslie born.
JUNE, 1960: Last episode of “M Squad” airs.
1960: Endorses Kennedy for president and appears on star-studded TV special (July 10).
1961: Stars in TV’s “People Need People” (October 10) and receives Emmy-nomination; Appears in The Comancheros (October 30).
1962: Helps to stage amateur production of “People Need People” at San Quentin (March); Appears in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (April 22).
1963: Hosts and narrates short-lived syndicated TV series “Lawbreakers”; Appears in Donovan’s Reef (June 12).
MARCH 23, 1963: Mother Courtenay dies suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage.
1964: Appears in first made-for-TV movie The Killers, but network considers it too violent in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. Universal successfully releases it in theaters (July 7).
OCTOBER, 1964: Begins relationship with Michele Triola.
1965: Appears in Cat Ballou (June 24) and Ship of Fools (July 29).
1966, APRIL 18TH: Wins Best Actor Oscar for Cat Ballou.
1966: Appears in The Professionals (November 2).
JANUARY, 1967: Divorced from Betty Marvin.
MARCH 21, 1967: Hosts and narrates WWII-era documentary “Our Time In Hell” for ABC and defers salary to Marine charity.
1967: Appears in The Dirty Dozen (June 15) and Point Blank (August 30); Appears briefly in documentary Tonight, Let All Make in London (September 26) from set of The Dirty Dozen; Is named number one male box-office star in U.S. by Motion Picture Herald magazine (December).
1968: Television drama Sgt. Ryker released in theaters (February 1); Appears in Hell in the Pacific (December 18).
1969: Earns first million dollar paycheck and Golden Globe nomina
tion for Paint Your Wagon (October 15); Single “Wanderin Star” reaches number one spot in U.K. music charts, outselling The Beatles.
APRIL, 1969: Receives honorary doctorate of fine arts from St. Leo.
1970: Has liaison with Jeanne Moreau; Appears in Monte Walsh (October 7) Ends relationship with girlfriend when she legally changes name to Michele Triola Marvin.
OCTOBER 10, 1970: Marries former Woodstock girlfriend Pamela Feeley in Las Vegas.
APRIL 6, 1971: Father dies in Florida after slipping into a coma.
1972: Appears in Pocket Money (February 1) and Prime Cut (June 28).
MARCH 11, 1973: Frequent costar Robert Ryan dies of cancer at age 63 in New York City.
1973: Appears in Emperor of the North (May 23) and The Iceman Cometh (November 10).
1974: Appears in Spikes’ Gang (May 1) and The Klansman (November 13).
1975: Moves to Tucson, Arizona.
1976: Appears in The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday (June 23) and Shout at the Devil (November 24); Two separate episodes of “The Virginian” spliced together, one with Marvin and another with Charles Bronson released to theaters as The Meanest Men in the West (March).
1978: August 9, costar Robert Shaw succumbs to cancer before Avalanche Express is complete.
JANUARY-APRIL 1979: Unsuccessfully sued by Michele Triola for palimony.
1979: Appears in Avalanche Express (October 19); Appears in Dutch documentary Samuel Fuller and The Big Red One.
1980: Appears in The Big Red One (July 18).
1981: Appears in Death Hunt (May 22).
1982: Daughter Cynthia marries Edward Michaels
1983: Matthew Michaels, Lee Marvin’s grandson is born.
Is honored at France’s Deauville Film Festival (August)
Director Robert Aldrich dies in L.A. at age 65 of kidney failure, Dec.5th.
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