Lee Marvin

[ChiO]

I don't have the "required permissions".

Oh, well.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Chio, I am looking in to it. You should be able to see the announcement, but I haven't yet unlocked the Q & A thread.
I've sent you a PM.

So sorry for the trouble.
Christy

[Sue Sue Applegate]

The Q & A thread to post questions for author Dwayne Epstein is now unlocked! Please let me know if you experience any problems.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

As a coda to our wonderful visit with author Dwayne Epstein, I wanted to post a review of LEE MARVIN: POINT BLANK that I wrote which has been published in Noir City, the quarterly publication of the Film Noir Foundation.

LEE MARVIN: POINT BLANK Review


With a cast of thousands reminiscent of a Cecil B. De Mille epic or the current screen version of Les Miserables, Lee Marvin's vast external landscape included continents, captains, and a coterie of the famous, the infamous, and the unsung heroes. Marvin's life was lived large on the world stage. His time on earth has been chronicled by news reporters, biographers, two wives, and now Dwayne Epstein courageously updates the Marvin file with his archive of interviews and research in Point Blank, published by Schaffner Press.

Marvin, born in 1924 in New York, was known as a hard-drinking, hard-living, but talented actor who often operated by his own personal ethic of right and wrong. In May of 1942, he wrote to his parents of his decision to join the Marines because "it is the best place for someone that wants to fight and raise hell," and raising hell was as natural to Marvin as wrestling a live marlin on a turbulent sea. Epstein reveals Marvin started his first mission at the age of 4 when he ran away from home and "had disappeared for two days before he was finally discovered hiding on a train bound for Baltimore," but the first of these escapades did not prove to be the last.

The quicksilver nature of life as a Marine formed Marvin's own opinion about his personal experiences after he received a Purple Heart after the Battle of Saipan. He concluded that "it's everyman for himself...The most useless word in the world is h-e-l-p." Through poignant letters Marvin wrote to his parents during World War II, Epstein captures the nature of Marvin's commitment to his Marine buddies, his feelings about his service to his country, and the nature of his own evolving response to the personal devastation that war can evince.

After the war, Lee suffered from nightmares and would be classified by today's standards as a sufferer of PTSD, but in 1946 after a year of peculiar decompression from his war experiences, he became a plumber's assistant in Woodstock, New York, and was so gratified by his experiences at solving problems for his clients in the plumbing business, he maintained his union card long after his cinematic rise to fame. But revealing archival material from Epstein's collection indicates it was at a party that included local Maverick Theatre members in Woodstock, New York, where Lee was recognized as perfect casting for a loudmouth Texan, and claimed that after his first cue on opening night that the acting bug grabbed him "just like that!" After years of self-doubt, night terrors from the war, and the daily struggle of earning a living, Marvin found his calling. Epstein's interviews with Marvin's friends and co-workers provide detailed comments and in-depth revelations about his early struggles and eventual success, and highlight the facts as well as unveil the fiction of some of Marvin's own tales of bravado and braggadocio. Readers also discover exactly how Marvin felt about Michelle Triola, who sued Marvin in the infamous "palimony" case of the early 1970s, which added a new litigation term to the prosecution of civil cases involving unmarried couples.

The maligning villain in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the pragmatically brutish sergeant in The Big Red One, the wayward gunslinger who just wanted to be someone's hero in Cat Ballou, the wistful Ben Rumson in Paint Your Wagon, and Walker, the iconic, romanticized fatalist of Point Blank in 1967 Los Angeles are all characters drawn from Marvin's panoply of performances as Epstein explains Marvin's motivation while leading the reader through a maze of Marvin's personal experiences and hands-on involvement in pre-production for several of his films. Integral to the revelations are the author's myriad interviews with Marvin's family members, friends, and contemporaries in the film industry like Angie Dickinson that reveal much more about Marvin that was left unsaid by his first wife, Betty Marvin, in her wonderful autobiography, Tales of a Hollywood Housewife, and his last wife Pamela Marvin's biography of her late husband, Lee: A Romance, a quasi-love poem to Marvin's heroic nature. In Point Blank, Epstein fills in the gaps and readers discover Marvin had a desperate need to creatively express his rage, and the momentum of his career helped him connect and reveal that rage through his onscreen characters.

Bullseye.

For more information about the Film Noir Foundation, follow the link: http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/home.html

[movieman1957]

Keep up the good work. How about we interview you now that you are published?

[MissGoddess]

Great work, Christy!

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Thank you, Miss G. and Mr. M.!

[JackFavell]

That's a great review, Christy! I'm so glad you posted it. I've been dying to hear your thoughts on this book. I loved your description of the childhood escape Marvin performed! Congratulations!

What I enjoyed most about the book was Lee's own take on violence and his need to express it. Epstein really delved into Marvin's own words in order to get a clearer picture of the man. Marvin was exceptionally good at expressing himself, not just through acting but through words, which seems surprising if you've only seen his films and haven't seen his interviews. He comes across not only as a man of quicksilver action, but also as a man of incredibly deep thought, especially about the dark side of man's nature. The descriptions of things he witnessed during the war really stay with you and help you to understand Marvin's problems.

The other personality that really came across to me in the book was his first wife Betty. I thought she was a pip, who really understood Marvin in a way that I don't think either of his other companions did.

It was an excellent book, I hope more members will read it. And again, Christy, congratulations! Well done!

[sandykaypax]

Christy, I really enjoyed reading your review. Well done!

I need to read this bio!

Sandy K

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Thank you for the kind words, Jackie and Sandy.

I totally agree with your comments about Marvin, Jackie. The dark side of his nature was what he struggled with on a daily basis, but he also had that "quicksilver" call to action that did cause him to reflect in a deep totality. He obviously had a personal barometer that would alert him to insincerity, and had no qualms about revealing his distaste. But self-medicating with alcohol and PTSD create volatility, and to me, that was the quality that he constantly evoked on the big screen.

Reviewing Dwayne Epstein's research and how much information he amassed while on his odyssey of discovery about Lee Marvin even though he had never met him, makes it all the more entertaining for me as a reader.

[GaryCooper]

[GaryCooper]