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This Has My Favorite Lee Marvin Performance

posted 2 years ago by ecarle (14979)
6 replies | jump to latest

For a few years in the late 60s, Lee Marvin was a very big star.

It had taken him a long time to get there. Rather like Walter Matthau around the same time, Marvin had to toil in the fifties as a supporting actor (neither Marvin nor Matthau were traditionally handsome men), and then -- just like Matthau -- Marvin started "stealing movies" away from their stars in the EARLY sixties. (For Matthau it was Lonely Are the Brave with Kirk Douglas, Charade with Cary Grant, and Mirage with Greg Peck; for Lee Marvin it was three John Wayne movies in a row, but especially "Liberty Valance.")

Lee Marvin also had to do something surprising to achieve stardom: get some gray and white in his hair. While Marvin always had a great, deep voice, his face was rather hard and could look simian, ape-like at times. Look at Marvin with black hair in The Big Heat. Great voice, great physique...scary face.

In 1964, with his new crop of gray-white hair, Lee Marvin got the lead in the TV movie moved to theaters, "The Killers." He's great in the role, for director Don Siegel(Dirty Harry) and facing off against -- Ronald Reagan! -- as a crime boss.

I'd say Lee Marvin left the supporting ranks with The Killers, but it took one more year -- 1965 -- for him to reach full stardom. In the prestige drama "Ship of Fools," Marvin was paired with Vivien Leigh! And for "Cat Ballou," Marvin won the Best Actor Oscar and stardom was assured.

But it turned out to be a rather short stardom. If we start with The Killers, we get this run:

The Killers
Ship of Fools
The Professionals
The Dirty Dozen
Point Blank
Hell in the Pacific
Paint Your Wagon

That's 1964 through 1969...roughly the "hit span" of the Beatles in the same years come to think of it.

Paint Your Wagon was a gigantic musical that had Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood singing. The songs and production are pretty good, really, and Marvin was very well paid -- but this ended up being one of those movies that sort of kills a big star career. And Marvin had turned down the lead in "The Wild Bunch" to do it.

In the 70's, Lee Marvin lost traction pretty fast. He'd gotten stardom at middle age, now he was getting old. He made good movies that didn't do too well(Monte Walsh), he did movies nobody saw (The Spikes Gang). He made on awful career killer of a movie with Richard Burton(The Klansman.) He made a couple of lousy cheapjack movies for American International. And he turned down Quint in Jaws!

1972's "Prime Cut," pitting Marvin against Gene Hackman as a couple of Irish gangsters on the high plains, felt like it SHOULD have been big, but Hackman looked like "the new up and comer" and Marvin seemed a bit "heading out."

I reference the shakiness of Marvin's career in the 70's(which further declined in the 80's until his early death at 63 in 1986) if only to highlight how MAJOR a star Marvin was in the late sixties. He was Top Ten, and definitely a "man's man" and macho guy. As the psycho Mr. Blonde(Michael Madsen) says in Reservoir Dogs: "I'll bet you like Lee Marvin movies. That's cool, I like Lee Marvin movies too."

1967 was Marvin's peak year: with the big hit The Dirty Dozen in the summer and the soon to be cult classic Point Blank at Christmas. There can be no doubt that he was the leader of one of the biggest "men on a mission" movies in The Dirty Dozen, and made some sort of "abstract male anti-hero history" as the killer on a mission in Point Blank. He was THE star of those movies.

One year earlier in 1966, Marvin had to share the star power with a more established star: Burt Lancaster. The Professionals. It was a little bit like what would happen on Prime Cut. Now, MARVIN was the "up and comer," and Lancaster was the established, slightly fading star.

No matter. Lancaster and Marvin made a GREAT buddy team, playing men of middle age who had shared glory and tragedy together as Americans in the Mexican revolution, with a constant vibe of mutual self-respect, professionalism, and that kind of manly "love" that movies of this sort used to put across without snickering.

But the thing of it is this. Unlike The Dirty Dozen and Point Blank, where Lee Marvin was THE star of the movie, here, where he has to share the movie with another star...I think this is the best character Lee Marvin ever played and the best performance he ever gave.

Indeed, as The Professionals opens (with its exciting Maurice Jarre fandango), Lee Marvin is the first face on screen and the first credit name on screen. (This surprised me even then). As each of the four leads appeared on screen at different locations with their names, Lancaster "graciously" allowed himself to go last ...which was like a curtain call "last but not least." And whereas Marvin was shown demonstrating a "modern" machine, gun, Lancaster's "professionalism" was shown to be in bed, with a woman before her husband burst in and Lancaster took off in his long joins.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

This great opening allowed Lee Marvin to "control" the story rather from the start. He is the first star and name we see, and then he alone(without Lancaster) anchors the "briefing" scene in which rich old man Ralph Bellamy orally reviews each team members credentials(Marvin as leader, Robert Ryan as horse expert, Woody Strode as tracker) and then lays out the mission.

Lee Marvin owns this scene. As Bellamy carries his ton of exposition, writer-director Richard Brooks keeps cutting to Marvin, quietly assessing the reality of the offer , thinking about the danger of the mission, perhaps considering the honesty of his potential employer.

Marvin gets a couple of great moments here with Bellamy:

Bellamy: (Point to an old newspaper photo): Your hair was darker then.
Marvin: (Deadpan with just a bit of humor): My heart was lighter then.

Bellamy (pointing to black actor Woody Strode): Do you have any objections to working with a Negro?
Marvin: (Deadpan, but obviously a bit annoyed by the question and Strode's embarrassment, changes the subject) ...What's the job, Mr. Grant?

Both exchanges are important. In the first, we are getting a "clue" that this white-haired man with no expression once HAD passion and WAS engaged -- the mystery will be in finding out what happened(and its very sad; without him being there to save her, his revolutionary wife was tortured to death while others did nothing.)

As for the bit about "the Negro," The Professionals was made in a time of burgeoning Civil Rights, but it did not assume that a black character could move forward without at least SOME bigotry towards him . Bellamy has it, Marvin does not -- Marvin's interest lies in purely in the professionalism of those hired.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And this: this could be the most handsome Lee Marvin ever looked in a film. He was 42 when he made The Professionals, he had aged out of his youthful black-haired ugliness and this was some years before his face turned into a rawboned, wrinkly, and slightly sagging countenance (he retained that great voice and his "Lee Marvin persona" to the end, but his face rather went bad too soon.)

So in this opening expository scene -- "newly minted star" Lee Marvin proves he has earned his stardom. He's cool. He's thoughtful. He's a natural leader of men. He projects competency and he shows hints of both emotion(from long ago memories) and humor(about Bellamy's bullying bombast.)

And then the story has Marvin do something interesting. He pitches a fourth man for the team -- an explosives expert, and an old friend. It seems that Marvin has learned(with the acceptable coincidence of the movies) that the old friend is in jail over a $700 debt (Lancaster, who was bedding that wife to get the money) and that Bellamy can hire him and thus bail him out.

The expository scene ends with an emphasis on Lancaster(not in the scene) as the three other professionals line up to look at the old newspaper photo and young Lancaster alongside Marvin in it. Writer-director Brooks is saying: "Here he is, the star of this movie you've all been waiting for: Burt Lancaster.)

But even lined up alongside two other good actors(Robert Ryan and Woody Strode) to look at that photo...Lee Marvin dominates the shot. Burt Lancaster may be the NEXT big star we are about to see; but we have just spent time with the FIRST big star.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Cut to: Marvin meeting up with Lancaster, outdoors. Burt is still in his long johns and shackled. Marvin offers him a sip of whiskey and sets to paying off the jailer so Lancaster can be freed. These are two old friends with a shared history and The Professionals always tells me this: once upon a time, it PAID off to have middle aged men as your leads, because they could project a "character's history" -- a past. In this case, a shared past of such glory and tragedy that nobody else could interfere with the friendship. I've always felt that you simply couldn't make The Professionals with Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg in the leads ...at any age, actually.

Lancaster warmly thanks Marvin for bailing him out. "Again, thanks" Lancaster says with meaning.

And then this:

Lancaster: You could have wired the money yesterday.
Marvin: I didn't HAVE the money yesterday.
Lancaster: (After a moment's "professional" consideration) What's the job?
Marvin: Oh, nothing much. You won't lose your pants, your life maybe...but what's that?
Lancaster: (Laughs) Hardly anything at all.

Friendship. Cameraderie. A willingness to face death with a smile.

The movie is launched.

Again...Lee Marvin has to share this one with Burt Lancaster, but it allows Marvin to show elements of empathy and friendship and regret that his next two roles -- the rough leader of The Dirty Dozen and the ciper-like killer of Point Blank -- simply aren't allowed to have (oh, Marvin's Army boss in The Dirty Dozen cares about the convicts under his command and backs them, but simply isn't the hero or the professional that Rico Fardan is.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I always love to watch The Professionals. I always love to watch Lee Marvin command the opening expository scenes without Burt Lancaster there, and then I love to watch Lee Marvin and Burt Lancaster give us a textbook case of friendship and professionalism. I love Marvin's stylish "Rough Riders" hat and the rather too modern gray cardigan sweater that he wears early on (to protect against desert cold).

Lee Marvin looks good, plays a good man, and essays total cool and competence in The Professionals. He may have been the main star of some of his other movies, but this is my favorite role of his.

PS. Burt Lancaster had top billing in the print ads...and even though Lee Marvin gets the opening scenes to himself...Burt "gets his star billing revenge" later in the movie when he rides off alone to hold Jack Palance, Chicquita, and a bunch of bandits at bay for about 20 minutes all by himself. Backfire: we are only more relieved when Lancaster goes back to Lee Marvin and Marvin comes back into the movie. We missed Marvin.

[–] marktayloruk (2502) a year ago

Was Bellamy bigoted or concerned that Marvin was? I found the film highly entertaining until the too sentimental and unconvincing ending.

[–] TinaKimo (888) a year ago

I would say, both. Love this movie.