HANGIN’ TOUGH
MARION MCMULLEN LOOKS AT SOME OF THE HOLLYWOOD LEGENDS WHO BROUGHT MEAN TO THE SCREEN
LEE Marvin sang I Was Born Under A Wand’rin’ Star but the movie tough guy was actually born 100 years ago in New York City.
Lamont Waltman Marvin Jnr made his appearance into the world on February 19, 1924, and served as a marine during the Second World War and was awarded a Purple Heart after being injured in action.
He was working as a trainee plumber repairing a broken toilet at a New York community theatre when he was asked if he could help out at rehearsals.
It was the start of a career that saw him playing the tough guy in films like The Dirty Dozen, Point Blank and The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance.
He also won an Oscar for playing the dual roles of washed-up drunk and former gunslinger Kid Shelleen and hit man Stawn in off-beat comedy Western Cat Ballou alongside Jane Fonda in
1965.
He said: “I told the audience when I went up to accept the award ‘I think half of this belongs to some horse in the Valley’. The house came down. I was totally serious. That drunken horse really helped me.”
Paint Your Wagon in 1969 saw him working with Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg and his rendition of Wand’rin’ Star saw him awarded a gold record for sales. His co-star Jean described his singing as “rain gurgling down a rusty pipe”.
Eastwood, who made his name playing screen tough guys in spaghetti westerns and the Dirty Harry movies, also got to sing I Talk To The Trees in the movie. He later joked that Frank Sinatra had nothing to worry about.
Lee Van Cleef was one of the great movie tough guys who appeared spaghetti westerns like For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly alongside Eastwood.
He was originally working as an accountant when an acting job came along and once explained: “I look mean without even trying. Audiences just naturally hate me on screen. I could play a role in a tuxedo and people would think I was rotten.”
James Cagney was only 5ft 5ins tall, but he was a convincing tough guy on screen making his name in gangster films in the 1930s and 1940s like White Heat and The Public Enemy. His first job though was dressed as a female dancer in a chorus line. He said: “With me, a career was the simple matter of putting groceries on the table”.
He swore he never said,
“You dirty rat”
in any of his many movies but he did utter the famous line “Top of the world, Ma” in White Heat. There were rumours the Mafia planned to kill him by dropping one of the heavy film lights on him when he was president of the Screen Actors Guild and they were trying to get a foothold in the movie industry. It is said fellow actor George Raft stepped in to stop the hit going ahead.
Raft also made his name playing tough gangsters on the big screen first appearing as a coin-tossing henchman in 1932 movie Scarface. He even sent up his image in comedy film classic Some Like It Hot appearing as mobster Spats Colombo alongside Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.
Raft knew reallife gangsters like Bugsy Siegel – they were boyhood friends – and he was banned from entering Britain in the 1960s because of alleged Mafia connections.
He once declared: “I must have gone through $10 million during my career. Part of the loot went for gambling, part for horses and part for women ... the rest I spent foolishly.”
Edward G Robinson was born Emanuel Goldenberg and ditched plans to become a lawyer or a rabbi when he caught the acting bug appearing in films Little Caesar and Key Largo.
He said: “Some people have youth, some have beauty. I have menace.”
He was different in real life from his big screen image. He loved collecting art and hated guns so much that he had to tape his eyelids opens so he would not flinch when he fired his gun during the production of 1931 movie Little Caesar.
As for Lee Marvin, he played both villains and anti-heroes during his long career.
But whatever the role, he was always the tough guy no one wanted to mess with.
“As soon as people see my face on a movie screen, they know two things – first, I’m not going to get the girl, and second, I’ll get a cheap funeral before the picture is over,” he said.