Lee Marvin: Point Blank by Epstein Dwayne

Author:Epstein, Dwayne [Epstein, Dwayne]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: Schaffner Press, Inc.
Published: 2012-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

“I Ain’t Spittin’ on My Whole Life”

AMERICAN FILMS of the late 60s and early 70s emphasized themes of sexuality, violence and realism more intensely than ever before. Young filmmakers and stars of this new Hollywood were clearly rebelling against the way films had been made previously, and it became a struggle for some postwar male stars to find projects worthy of their talent. The middle-aged Lee Marvin was luckier than many of his contemporaries, making some of his best films during this period. At the time they were cast aside by “The New Hollywood” and youth-oriented audience, but in recent years technology has allowed these films to be rediscovered by a whole new generation of filmgoers.

Following his divorce from Betty in January of 1967, the actor’s attempt to simplify his personal life with bachelorhood was complicated by the presence of Michele Triola. He often vacillated between entreaties to his ex-wife, truces with Triola, and occasionally taking advantage of his newfound celebrity in ways his previous status as a feature player never could. While filming The Dirty Dozen in 1966, for example, he invited both his soon-to-be-ex-wife and his live-in girlfriend to London, but spent most of his time hanging out with his costars.

Actor and costar Bob Phillips recalled another aspect of Marvin’s use of his celebrity power: “A female reporter from New York came to the London set to interview Marvin. She was over six feet tall, and asked embarrassing questions about his marriage. Marvin told me, ‘Watch me get her.’ Later that night, I come to meet Marvin in his limo. When I opened the door, the reporter was on her knees blowing Marvin who just had an ‘I-told-you-so’ smile on his face.”

When he was home in southern California, he and Michele cohabited on his Malibu beach property not too far from where Betty lived. “He didn’t have a place to live so, what I did, I had his power of attorney, and I bought him a house in Malibu on the sand,” recalled business manager Ed Silver. “What I paid for it was seventy-two thousand, five hundred, and it was furnished! He lived there until he moved to Tucson. It was on Pacific Coast Highway. His neighbors were Lloyd Bridges and Ryan O’Neal. It was a damned good house. Burgess Meredith lived a couple of houses down. It went from the highway to the sand…”

Another means by which Marvin was able to leverage his celebrity status lay in his ability to nurture promising movie projects, a case in point being The Wild Bunch. In this instance, over the course of several months, he had been helping a friend named Roy Sickner write the screenplay, and had then passed the finished treatment on to friend and Malibu neighbor, Sam Peckinpah. Revisions on the gritty western continued for some time, however, forcing Marvin to look elsewhere.

Although offers were plentiful, the actor’s expectations were set extremely high when it came to evaluating scripts; he would only read those that he

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