Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin (1924 – 1987) appeared in roughly 70 films between 1951 and 1986, and is best known for his breakout performance in the TV series M Squad, and for his starring roles in the Hollywood blockbusters Hell in the Pacific, The Dirty Dozen, and the Western comedy Cat Ballou, for which he won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1965. Before that, he had been a frontline WWII combat leatherneck.
Lee Marvin was born in New York City, and from an early age, became a problem child who went on to become a problematic teenage delinquent. He liked hunting and drinking, often both at the same time and kept getting expelled from various schools for trespasses ranging from smoking to throwing other students out of second-story windows.
When WWII broke out, Marvin dropped out of high school to enlist in the Marine Corps, and stormed beaches throughout the Pacific for a few years. His courage was counterbalanced by orneriness and defiance of authority, so he kept yo-yoing through the ranks, getting promoted to corporal before getting busted back down to private for misconduct. He was gravely injured in the Battle of Saipan, first by Japanese machine-gun fire, then by a Japanese sniper who shot his foot.
It took him a year to recover, and by the time he was discharged, he was a calmer young man. He drifted for a while, before he was talked into a theatrical role, and he took to acting like a fish to water. He moved to Hollywood in 1950, where his combat experience made him a sought-after war consultant, and lent authenticity to his acting. Throughout his career, he excelled in roughneck roles because he had been an actual roughneck and a fighting leatherneck in real life, with a mean streak that made his malevolent and tough-guy characters ring true.
