Playboy Interview: Lee Marvin

When Lee Marvin loped to the stage of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in April 1966 to accept an Oscar for his tour-de-force performance in "Cat Ballou," his granitic features creased into a rare smile. After 19 years and 40 memorable roles in forgettable films as a belligerent bully--the screen's definitive villain--he had finally proved himself as an actor and made the big time as a good guy. The vehicle for his transformation was a low-budget lampoon of the Hollywood horse opera in which he enacted the roles of two brothers--the sinister, black-garbed professional killer Tim Strawn, who replaced with a silver proboscis a nose bitten off in a street fight, and the drunken gun fighter Kid Shelleen, whose unrequited letch for the lissome young leader of an outlaw band, Cat Ballou (Jane Fonda), overcomes his affair with the bottle long enough for a showdown shoot-out with his bad half.

In the wake of his critical and commercial triumph in "Cat Ballou," for which he was paid a fee of $87,000--minuscule by movie standards--Marvin's asking price escalated to more than $1,000,000 a film and Motion Picture Herald, an influential trade journal, named him the screen's second-ranking box-office attraction, just behind Julie Andrews. The public's overwhelming response to the nasty characters Marvin subsequently portrayed in "The Dirty Dozen," "The Professionals" and "Point Blank" has dramatically underscored the renaissance of the Bogart-type antihero as a viable movie commodity and the replacement of Hollywood's pretty-boy matinee idols with such homely-handsome sex stars as Steve McQueen, James Coburn and George C. Scott, a maverick breed of which Marvin is indisputably the best of show.

Born in New York City of Brahmin bloodlines dating back to pre-Revolutionary Colonists, Marvin was a precocious rebel. He ran away from home at the ripe age of four and returned only to be sent away--this time to a succession of exclusive Eastern boarding schools, from many of which he was expelled for such infractions as throwing a roommate from a second-floor window and illicit cigarette smoking with three female classmates at a progressive coed school. This checkered educational career came to an abrupt--if predictable--end when he dropped out of high school in Florida and joined the Marines in 1942. After spending an inordinate amount of time in the stockade, he finally saw the action he craved--more than he bargained for, in fact. Storming ashore on 21 beachheads from Kwajalein to Saipan, he earned a Purple Heart and a 100-percent disability pension for a Japanese bullet that severed his sciatic nerve and hospitalized him for 13 months.

Marvin, discharged in 1946 at the age of 22, drifted aimlessly through a score of civilian jobs, until his work as a plumber's apprentice--digging septic tanks near the family home in Woodstock, New York--took him to the premises of a local summer-stock playhouse. As a lark, he asked for and won an acting job, and forthwith abandoned sewage for the stage. After scuffling from one show to another in small roles, he finally debuted on Broadway in "Billy Budd." Next came a marathon procession of promising featured roles in more than 200 television dramas; they led, finally, to a movie bit part that prompted him to pull up stakes and move to the West Coast. Soon he played the widely acclaimed part of a psychopathic multiple murderer in an early episode of "Dragnet"--a harbinger of roles to come. Within a few years, Marvin was a veritable merchant of menace--terrorizing old ladies, cuffing blind kids, tormenting cripples, shooting, stabbing, strangling, bludgeoning and battering almost every leading man in Hollywood, and inspiring critic Bosley Crowther to comment, with an editorial frisson: "He is rapidly becoming the number-one sadist of the screen."

Though this dubious reputation kept him profitably employed, it was also a stereotype, and Marvin began to chafe at his typecasting as the hairy brute. For a while--from 1957 to 1960--he was able to break out of the mold, as a tough but sympathetic police lieutenant in the popular television series "M Squad"; but the money and fame failed to compensate for the weekly grind he grew to detest or for his deepening artistic ennui. Soon he was on the bottle, and soon thereafter he was divorced by his wife of 14 years and mother of his four, children; he started drinking doubles and occasionally brawling in bars; and he went back to playing heavies.

But the phenomenal success of "Cat Ballou" dramatically changed both Marvin's professional stature and his private life. Though he still found himself cast in hard-boiled and violent roles, Hollywood began to recognize his dimension as an actor and to accord him a wider range of parts. He has since alternated his portrayals of cold killers with sensitive and evocative performances such as the one he gave as a washed-up baseball player in "Ship of Fools." The metamorphosis is completed in his current release, "Hell in the Pacific," a two-character film in which Marvin plays the role of a Marine pilot marooned on a remote South Pacific island during World War Two with a Japanese naval officer (Toshiro Mifune). The picture, in the production of which he actively collaborated, clearly conveys an implicit message about the futility of war and the need for people of divergent philosophies and nationalities to live together in peace and understanding--a far cry from Marvin's past roles as a dispenser of death. "The old lion," commented one reviewer privately after seeing an advance screening, "is beginning to evidence disconcertingly lamblike tendencies"--as well as an acting depth that ensures a long future at the top of his profession.

To probe the professional and personal complexities of this paradoxical star, Playboy interviewer Richard Warren Lewis visited Marvin at his Malibu Beach home, which he shares openly with a female friend. Despite Marvin's reputation as a taciturn and hostile nemesis of journalists, Lewis reports that he found him both, cooperative and responsive: "In fact, he was almost docile--a marked contrast to his public image as the skull-crushing heavy. His long, baleful face was gaunt and heavily lined, showing the effects of the 25 pounds he'd lost filming 'Hell in the Pacific' on location; and constant exposure to the tropical sun had bleached his prematurely white hair and long shaggy sideburns with swirls of blond. As we started talking on the sun deck over strong bloody marys, Marvin set aside the script for his next movie--the $18,000,000 production of 'Paint Your Wagon'--and lit up the first of an uninterrupted chain of filter-tipped cigarettes."

The interview commenced shortly after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, and the climate of violence in America--particularly as it related to the mounting violence on movie screens--was on the minds of everyone in Hollywood. It seemed appropriate to begin the interview by asking Marvin--whose history of violent roles is unique in films--to articulate his views on this subject.

[Q] Playboy: As you know, because many aroused citizens hold the movies and television partially accountable for the reported increase in violence in the streets, the networks and film studios have begun to reappraise their attitudes toward mayhem on the screen. Do you see any connection between celluloid violence and real violence?

[A] Marvin: Only in the sense that if the violence in a film is theatrically realistic, it's more of a deterrent to the audience committing violence themselves. Better on the screen than off. If you make it realistic enough, it becomes so revolting that no viewer would want any part of it. But most violence on the screen looks so easy and so harmless that it's like an invitation to try it. I say make it so brutal that a man thinks twice before he does anything like that. A classic example is All Quiet on the Western Front. Lew Ayres jumps into a shell hole with a Frenchman and knifes him. He's stuck there for the rest of the night with this guy dying. He'll be killed if he tries to get out. In the morning, the Frenchman is still looking at him, but he's dead. Ayres spends the rest of the picture in captured France trying to find the dead man's wife and apologize to her for his brutality. A statement was certainly made there, and it was made through violence.

[A] In a typical John Wayne fight in a barroom, on the other hand, tables and bottles go along with mirrors and bartenders, and you end up with that little trickle of blood down your cheek and you're both pals and wasn't it a hell of a wonderful fight. That's fooling around with violence. It's phony; it's almost a caricature--as opposed to a fight like the one in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, when Tim Holt and Bogart walk into the bar and Holt gets hit in the mouth, with a bottle by Barton MacLane and all he can do is hang onto MacLane's leg for the rest of the fight. That scene conveyed a sense of real pain and hurt. Or take the fight between Ernest Borgnine and Montgomery Clift in From Here to Eternity. You don't even see them; you just see their feet behind a barrel--and you hear. One man gets up and one man's dead. You know how mean that fight was, even though you never even saw it.

[Q] Playboy: In the wake of the recent political assassinations, many social commentators have begun to insist that our nation is sick. Do you think violent films have contributed to that sickness?

[A] Marvin: The mood of sickness is in the audience; the film maker is only reflecting the climate of society. You don't make films to change a nation; you make films to be historically true to their time. That's what makes them current and commercial. If the audience responds to it, baby, you know where the sickness is. Criminal violence always attracts a crowd, though people are afraid to admit it. The bigger the crowd, the more the shoving; the more the shoving, the more irate the viewer becomes-till eventually he's part of the riot. The current cycle of crime films is a vicarious way to participate in the current crime wave without committing a crime yourself. That feeling is latent within each of us. Everybody wants to get even with somebody.

[Q] Playboy: But hasn't that always been the case? Why should it be emerging now?

[A] Marvin: Because of the wave of riots, the distrust, the various assassinations and the lack of socially acceptable answers to them. So you go see it on film.

[Q] Playboy: Many actors, directors and producers have pledged themselves to refuse to write, direct, act or participate in any way in the creation of an entertainment that celebrates senseless brutality and death. Do you plan to join them?

[A] Marvin: I don't take pledges; I quit drinking every morning and I start again every evening. I wonder how long they'll stay on the wagon. Don't get me wrong, though; I've always been against senseless violence myself. When I incorporate violence in my performances, I make sure there's a point to it. If I were playing a heavy, say a cowboy bad guy, I would commit some senseless crime so that I'd have to be destroyed in the third or fourth reel. Holding up the stagecoach, for example, and shooting the old lady because she turned her back on me. So I'm against pointless violence, too. Apropos the current debate, I found myself involved in a conversation the other night about Sirhan Sirhan. Some older woman said that they ought to take him out and shoot him. I just looked at her and smiled. She was the one who talked about peace and nonviolence. But when it hits her, baby, she's ready to kill.

[Q] Playboy: For several months, there has been heated debate over how far Federal gun-control legislation should go. How do you feel about registration of firearms and restriction of mail-order gun sales?

[A] Marvin: If you register a gun, does that stop it from shooting? Sirhan's gun was registered. Anyway, the act of killing, or the desire to, has nothing to do with the weapon. If you want to kill a man, you're going to kill him, whether it's with a car or a baseball bat.

[Q] Playboy: Yet, if you can make guns less available to minors, mental defectives and ex-convicts, might that not save a few lives? Isn't it worth a try?

[A] Marvin: Who's qualified, unless they give a guy a card, to say that someone is mentally defective? Nuts aren't card carriers. Adolescents can acquire weapons simply by stealing. And nothing is unavailable to an ex-con; he knows where to go if he wants a gun. There's no way of stopping weapons from getting into the hands of professionals. You can make all the rules you want to about guns. Then just watch the bootleg start. Any gun merchant would love to see them outlawed; that'll make his $55 gun worth $300.

[Q] Playboy: And therefore less purchasable by larger numbers of people.

[A] Marvin: Yeah, but look at Prohibition. Any time you limit anything of this nature, you'll drive it underground, where it becomes chic. Whatever gun law they pass isn't going to affect the use of guns. People either want them or they don't want them. People who shouldn't be playing around with guns are the ones who want them. The hunters, the sportsmen, the trophy shooters--they already have theirs.

[Q] Playboy: There are those who also question the legitimacy of hunting, because they believe it breeds a basic disrespect for life--human as well as animal--that contributes to the climate of violence we've been discussing. How would you answer them?

[A] Marvin: Sure, hunting is part of the violence in our nature; but if anything, it's a safety valve that lets us blow off this steam in a harmless, healthy way. Any guy who resents a hunter shooting birds or those sweet brown-eyed deer actually resents what he would like to do--kill somebody himself. He's covering it up by protecting the animal. He can't accept this urge to kill; he can't relate to it. So he takes the supposed innocence of animals or birds and relates to that.

[A] I took my father down to Mexico one time and we got into a lot of sailfish. I fish very hard, but he doesn't fish at all. The guys on the boat were knocking the fish in the head and killing them. He said, "How can they kill a beautiful thing like that?" I said, "Chief, these guys live off them. They sell these fish for money." My father said, "Why don't you just give them the money yourself?" I said, "No, there's a process that they must go through." The mystique goes from the mind to the hand to the line to the hook to the strike to the death. It's as old as the Bible. The men in the Bible functioned as family heads and feeders. They were catching or doing something that fed others. They were fulfilling their life obligation--the breadwinner role, which most males are born to. In modern times, because the stock market goes up or down, you can lie back and earn your bread without really doing the basic, physical thing of living. But it's still a very gratifying sensation to be able to bring home the bacon.

[Q] Playboy: Surely that's not the only reason you fish-to play the breadwinner role.

[A] Marvin: No. It also gives me a sense of pride when I land a big fish. When I'm hooked into something that I can feel, there's a tremendous sense of competition-him or me. I like the contest and I like the noise that goes along with it--the whir of the line going off and the whip of the rod. When a 130-poundtest line is falling into its own grooves on the reel, it sounds like .22s going off--really a high crack. It's a great sound, a dangerous sound. And once you've landed a big one, there's the killing. Once I helped beat a marlin to death with a club. He was wrecking the boat, so I lit into him and didn't stop till he was dead. It was pure instinct; once you start responding to a stimulus like that, you have no control over your reactions.

[Q] Playboy: Are you saying that blood lust is good?

[A] Marvin: Yes, totally. Fishing gets rid of the blood lust at sea, so I don't have to take it ashore with me. It's the same sensation as getting into a riot: When you really start going and the adrenaline is pumping, the next thing you know you're swinging the club or throwing bricks, whichever side you're on. It's a sense of accomplishing something now, immediately. You usually don't find that across a conference-room table or in your daily life. You just go with it till the fish peter out, or till there's no more windows to break or no more cops to hit. Then suddenly comes the sag. That night when you fall asleep, baby, you really sleep, because you've gone your cycle. You go into a big school of fish and you kill them and there's blood flying all over and the guys are laughing and killing. It's a real blood bath. There's a sense of being cleansed when it's over, because you can eat the kill. When you kill a man, though, the feeling isn't there, because you can't eat him; we weren't made for killing men.

[Q] Playboy: Does your attraction to big-game hunting and deep-sea fishing, as well as to motorcycling, have anything to do with a need to prove your masculinity to the world-or to yourself?

[A] Marvin: Well, at the time I started cycling, I did take it as a kind of challenge to prove myself. There was a lot of talk like, "Does that guy have any balls?" and people would say, "Jesus, did you see him hit that hill?" Today I don't think that really has anything to do with balls, but at that period of my life I thought it did. I've always been attracted to things that have an element of risk. And cycling is a beautiful feeling; you and the bike become a single unit. You ride with other people, but they're all doing it alone. The sound of the pipes obliterates the sound of the world around you; all there is is the throbbing and slamming of those pistons around your legs. Bike riding is all you--your right hand and your left foot. There's an immediacy to the machine that you don't find in cars. When you snap your wrist, it responds immediately; every movement of your hand works in relation to the way your body is riding. You always have to be an inch over your head if you're riding the bike right. To measure that inch is very difficult. If you get a foot over your head, you're going to be in trouble.

[Q] Playboy: Did you ever miscalculate that foot?

[A] Marvin: I came too close once too often. On my last ride, I remember, some friends of mine brought some bikes and my leathers and my boots up to my place and said, "Let's go out for a ride." I hadn't ridden for about a year. It was like a challenge. I had a very good ride from the mountains in Wrightwood on down to the dry takes and the Mojave Desert behind the San Gabriel mountains, along some good arroyos, boulder launches and river bottoms. I was driving a really loose machine and I was cranking on good. I got higher and higher, until I realized I was going too high. It was like the flight of I carus. I didn't want to melt my wax or burn my feathers, so I came down. I went off a cliff--a 40-foot drop. You do that at 65 miles an hour, you've got to be in trouble. But I lucked out. I bounced off boulders coming off the jump and hit a boulder that set me up for another boulder. I had no control of myself, like a ping-pong ball in a gravel driveway. Skill had nothing to do with it. I was just in the right place at the right instant, and I walked away without a scratch. The rest of the guys I was riding with weren't so lucky. That was the end of it. I had gone too fast, I'd overextended myself. I've never been on a bike since.

[A] I guess I also gave up cycling for the same reason I stopped hunting and got rid of all my guns a couple of years ago: I know where my cock is at last, so I don't need to prove my masculinity anymore, and I don't need a rifle that'll knock down a varmint at so many yards. When I spent my spare time hunting, I'd squeeze a trigger with a three-and-a-half- to seven-pound pull, sending the striker forward to hit the percussion cap. This ignites the kinetic charge of gunpowder and sends the missile out of the bore, twisting with absolute accuracy. When you discover that feeling within yourself sexually, then you don't need a rifle anymore.

[Q] Playboy: Have you discovered that feeling sexually?

[A] Marvin: I don't think I've ever really discovered it fully, but I keep discovering it by degrees. I'm still like a kid at his first dance. I don't know why it gives me pleasure to hit something in the distance with a weapon; and I don't want to know why. I just want to swing with it and accept it or let it roll and forget it, not analyze it to death. It's the same with women. This urge to discover that feeling of sexual mastery started a long time ago, and it's not completed yet. When I'm 65 and I'm balling some 15-year-old chick, I'll probably say, "Eureka!" I often wonder about the twilight of my life, when sexual urges supposedly die out. A lot of people agree with the statistics based on 10,000 doctors' findings. But there's always one old guy running around, just loving it--the guy who disproves the statistics. Cassius Clay's grandfather once held off a whole group of people with a cannon in his barnyard at age 92. He'd just taken some 15-year-old girl for a wife. They thought that was just criminal. So he loaded up and fired. I love it.

[Q] Playboy: If you haven't yet discovered that special feeling you're looking for, do you find your sex life unfulfilling?

[A] Marvin: I use the sexual outlet as an alleviation of a need or a feeling, so that I can get on with what I'm really about. Like you would top a horse off in the morning, run him out for a couple of hundred yards, let him get rid of that barn. Then he'll settle down and be a good horse the rest of the day. In another sense, sex is acting out the feeling that "Tomorrow I might be dead." The classic form is the woman on her back, exposed. It goes back to the Stone Age. The man is on his face; he can't see what's going on behind him. That's when the other guy sneaks up on him and stabs him in the back. Hence, the rapid withdrawal of the man after the orgasm. If not, he might be caught. Whereas the woman is just spread apart. Nobody's going to kill her. They're going to take her, but they're not going to kill her. They're going to kill the male. The guy knows that if he trips out, he is totally exposed. Heredity says, "Look out!" I might look around suddenly, even though there's nobody behind me.

[Q] Playboy: Do you experience this feeling of insecurity with strangers in unfamiliar surroundings, or did you have the same hang-up with your wife in your own home?

[A] Marvin: I had bigger problems than that to worry about in my marriage.

[Q] Playboy: Like what?

[A] Marvin: I was caught up in the society in which I lived. Like me, all my friends were married and had children. There was the P. T. A. and the holes in the street and better police protection for the parks. It seemed like the right thing to be part of that suburban feeling. It was getting home in time for dinner; eating was more important to me in those days. Changing the kids and the formula in the bottle.

[Q] Playboy: Did you feel confined?

[A] Marvin: And emasculated. The big adventure in my mind at that time was over-the possibility of the North Pole or the South Pole or the Australian bush safari; the horizon was taken away from me by being married. To me, marriage symbolized the end of the road. I was still a dreamer, but I saw myself marking time until I fell into the ditch. Now that I'm alone, more or less, I don't have to think about that anymore. I can be more concerned with myself and my own feelings again. But I'm 44 now; I hope by the time I'm 45, the urgency of self-discovery will become less intense, that I'll become less important to myself, in the sense of the quandary of thinking it all out. Maybe I'll know a little bit more by then, so I don't have to sit on the porch and waste time thinking about it.

[Q] Playboy: Do you still think about the breakup of your marriage?

[A] Marvin: Less than I did a year ago and more than I will a year from now. I'm sorry it didn't work. It was complete mental incompatibility. We simply could not communicate in the same house. Even if we'd been able to, I'm not sure I was in favor of shaping my life to any marriage. I had little spokes going off in different directions in my head. I don't think I'm really the type that would fit into what we consider the ideal marriage. When I love, I love; when I hate, I hate. I'm guilty of both sins. To love somebody might be just as selfish as hating her; you might limit her in what she can do. People gestate and grow at different rates.

[Q] Playboy: Are you finding more emotional fulfillment as a single man?

[A] Marvin: Sometimes yes, sometimes no; the adjustment back to a bachelor existence after 14 years of marriage isn't easy. It's like suddenly being moved from one country to another or from one society to another. There are many problems, mainly the one of confronting your sense of failure in responsibility to the offspring of that relationship-no matter how much you may be boosting them or your ex-wife financially or verbally. Especially in the kind of puritanical society in which we live, this produces all kinds of conflicts that eat at you night after night. I'm not sure that I've ever been really single since my divorce.

[Q] Playboy: Aside from these emotional considerations, do you feel any bitterness about the terms of your divorce settlement?

[A] Marvin: No, the terms of my divorce were extremely just. I found the courts to be overly fair, almost detrimental to the woman. When a guy's been balling a chick, his responsibility toward her should be up to him. I knew what I had to do and I did it. I made my ex-wife financially secure, as she had been in the past, thereby allowing her the freedom to seek other interests in life, rather than having to root for a living while she was looking for something to replace what had left her. When a guy says, "I got fucked," obviously he must have been fucking his broad, not making love to her. It's chic to say, "I gave her everything I had." Everything but what she needed, right? You can't fuck around with somebody's brains and come away free. Otherwise, you're just in a cat house--which can be fun, of course.

[Q] Playboy: Do you want to elaborate?

[A] Marvin: In whorehouses, I used to find an honesty that I never understood before. You pay for your happiness or your pleasure; and in a properly conducted house of ill repute, they make it very pleasurable, indeed. There is no sadness involved. There is no going beyond reality, beyond what life is really all about. You know why you're there and so does the hooker. You say, "I'm here for a week, baby; see that I'm happy." A week later, you can cry and kiss her and love her and then leave and get on the plane. There is no initial commitment, only a commitment on your exit. You walk away with something that you didn't walk in with. Which reminds me of a time I was sitting in a bar in Mexico and this girl walked in. For some reason, I looked at her. The mood was right. My violins were going. My candle was lit and there it was. Two Mexicans noticed me looking at her and told me in Spanish, "Mariposas de amor"--which literally means "butterflies of love." I thought to myself, "Jesus, what a straight statement for them to make." They noticed that something had fluttered inside me. It was only later that I found out they meant that she had the crabs. But it was worth it, because she was an incredible beauty. Mostly, though, I visited whorehouses, the majority of them in rural areas. Hook shops were never big in cities, because of the cops and the pay-off. In the boondocks, everybody would turn his head. The girls were very countrified and offered a simple barnyard philosophy, which can be very humorous. Whatever time I spent there was all a giggle. Everybody was laughing. Not at each other, but at themselves. Charming women. Everything was right out front.

[Q] Playboy: Also right out front is your current living arrangement. How do the rewards of marriage contrast with the pleasures of cohabitation?

[A] Marvin: Marriage is an obligation in which you must consider the other person. Whatever happens in cohabitation, you're still free. You demand your freedom and you also allow her freedom. But it's also much more of a game in cohabitation than in marriage.

[Q] Playboy: How do you mean?

[A] Marvin: If you're living with another person, often you have to entice, entice, entice, in order to keep her; that can become a hang-up. But on the plus side, the anticipation in driving home to your girlfriend cannot be compared with driving home to your wife. One is a mystery and the other is ipso facto. It depends on the individual's needs.

[Q] Playboy: What are your own needs in a relationship?

[A] Marvin: At its best, a complete mesmerization. But not to the point of lovesick glances over candlelight and wine. Wine'll turn anybody on. Get juiced enough and you'd roll around with a buffalo and think she's beautiful. At least I could.

[Q] Playboy: Have you met any women with whom you could achieve that "complete mesmerization"?

[A] Marvin: Not often and not completely. Too many women don't realize that they are women, and that disturbs me. They really have basically one purpose in life, according to the old system, which I seem to believe in more as the years go by: the whole role of being a woman--the mother image, the nurse, the softness, the pinkness, the tender loving care, the food, the cleanliness, the limiting of really rotten thoughts. A home has to be an oasis for marriage to mean anything. And in many cases, I find that they're not really that anymore.

[A] Man is no longer allowed the privileges of being a man; that's why you see the blurring of masculine and feminine roles in our society. We exist in a very warlike, destructive stage in this century. But the victor is not allowed the spoils: the meat of the defeated, their possessions, the decimation of their towns, the raping and the pillaging of their women. When we win a war or a battle, we have none of the traditional rewards. When we get home, we're all bad mouthed. This kind of situation gives the woman a leverage she never had before. She feels stronger because of our pussyfooting conduct. She can tell us that it's wrong to go over there and kill those poor people, and all we say is, "Aw, Jeez, sweetheart." We don't do anything about it; so, naturally, she takes on more of the masculine position in life. Nobody's there to knock her down.

[Q] Playboy: Why should there be?

[A] Marvin: That's the whole point. There shouldn't; but today the man is fighting against something--against communism, against depersonalization, against the loss of his masculinity--not for something. The shift of roles has a lot to do with man's pent-up anger and frustration about the way the world is going, against conformity to what a man is becoming, against the lack of an outlet for whatever it is he wants out of life.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think today's clothing styles--more decorative for men, more trousered for women--are an expression of this blurring of sexual roles?

[A] Marvin: Yeah, and not just clothes, but jewelry for men. Some guys go out in the street and buy off-the-rack jewelry and throw it around their necks and say, "I'm free!" Fine, but that's not for me. A lot of people give me beads. I look at them and they're pretty. I put them on and look in the mirror and I don't quite understand why I have them on. So I take them off. Beads don't help me; they fall in my soup. Who needs the aggravation? And if some faggot digs me because I'm wearing beads, well, there we are, aren't we? The next thing you know, I'm in the parking lot with six of his friends kicking me in the head and him yelling, "You broke my beads!" That's not really one of my greatest anxieties--but I'm sure you get what I mean.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think that homosexuality is becoming more prevalent as traditional male-female roles continue to blur?

[A] Marvin: I certainly see it very heavily on the stage and in films. In fact, I deal in it most heavily. But it's so well disguised that only the ultimate of dissectors would know what I was doing. Let me put it this way: You get up daily and you go to work and do whatever your job is, right? But what does the actor do? He goes into his dressing room and he disrobes and he puts on make-up. Then he puts on a costume and goes out into an area that has a curtain. What normal man would do that?

[Q] Playboy: Could you ever impersonate a homosexual on screen?

[A] Marvin: It would be easy for me to play a homosexual. Now that I know where I stand, I can indulge myself in such things without any fear. Every kid doubts his masculinity at one time or another; I got over those fears when I was younger. But a lot of people don't, and it's a real tragedy. You can take pride in fucking a broad, but there's no pride for homosexuals. No way. And the way the law treats them is really sick. If I were a homosexual and I saw a cop, I'd shudder. The motivation that makes a man get into the vice squad has got to be one of devious intent. He becomes more of a cunt than a female could ever be. His line is: "Look at that perverted son of a bitch!" After acquiring firsthand evidence, which he gets in a men's room, he then arrests the homosexual. He's sicker than the guy he arrested. There's no chance for a happy homosexual--presumably, there are such individuals--who's just pursuing his own individual sexual outlet, 'cause here comes the fuzz. You know they're really going to get him. It makes me feel that I better behave myself, because, who knows, someday I might be in that situation.

[Q] Playboy: You're kidding.

[A] Marvin: Not at all. We're all on the periphery of homosexual relationships, whether it's shooting the bull with the guys or whatever. If two guys are working on an idea, that could be deemed a homosexual relationship. They're both having a common thought. Who knows where the sexual twist starts and where it ends? My God, a guy might get a kick out of watching another guy open a can of beer. Are they going to lock him up for that? Theoretically, I could become a target in one of those male-male games that go on in a bar or wherever. A vice cop might zero in on me and my retaliation might be one of going out of control.

[Q] Playboy: Are you in favor of lifting legal prohibitions on homosexual and other so-called abnormal sexual practices between consenting adults, as many civil libertarians have urged?

[A] Marvin: What transpires between two adults is definitely their own business. If a girl likes to have Coca-Cola bottles shoved in her ear, that's up to her. The guy who's doing it says, "Leave me alone, I'm having fun." Who's to deny him that, as long as she doesn't scream murder? A third party, like a police officer, has no real reason to become involved--unless he's a voyeur. All voyeurs are essentially deviates. You eliminate the third party and there's no problem, no deviation. So someone digs whips. That's up to him. Or her. Two's company, three's a crowd. Too many of the archaic laws we're saddled with go back to the days of witch burning. I dare say the reason they burned the girl at the stake was that she wouldn't go down on the parson. So he says, "OK, you cunt, I'll get you." And he does. He burns her. Fortunately, he had a gold-edged book on his arm, so that makes it legal. These same puritanical elements are responsible for all these incredible sex laws that are still on the books. It's the same kind of attitude that makes it impossible to imagine our parents having an affair. We've had various and sundry relationships with the opposite sex, yet we still cannot get through that barrier of imagining Mommy and Daddy balling. The New Morality may help change all that, but for now, it's still nothing more than a wind waiting for a storm; go too far and it'll all turn back into exactly what it was 30, 40, 50 years ago.

[Q] Playboy: But in movies, at least, the winds of sexual change have reached gale proportions, and previously taboo themes are being treated with candor and integrity. How do you account for this drastic change from the repressive atmosphere of only a few years ago?

[A] Marvin: Well, ever since World War Two, there's been a trend, slow at first, toward dealing with reality instead of fantasy. You see it not only in sex but everywhere. Look at what's happened to the old "happily ever after" ending. Even children in kindergarten don't believe that anymore. How can you kiss a frog and turn him into a prince? The kids say "Bullshit!" because they're a much faster generation; their maturation level is coming at an earlier age than it used to be. Some people still like happy endings in movies like Gigi and My Fair Lady, but they know they're seeing a fairy tale. If you represent a story as reality and then give them a fairy-tale ending, though, they're not going to swallow it. If it's a hard-type show, mirroring life the way it exists today, they realize it's not going to be resolved simply by a kiss or a reunion--because life goes on, regardless of whether boy gets girl or the bad guys get knocked down. Most people today are concerned with real life; if you don't give it to them on the screen, they're not going to watch.

[Q] Playboy: The screen's new realism is graphically reflected in your own career. The Grecian-profiled matinee idols of 20 years ago have been replaced by sex stars with uneven faces and rugged images. Why do you think your kind of looks and style have come into fashion?

[A] Marvin: People today have a more worldly point of view than they did when they were stuck on the farm or the block they lived on in the city. The larger-than-life image of the Arrow Shirt hero just doesn't cut it anymore for an audience that's been around. The big breakthrough was the believable masculinity of guys like Tracy and Bogart.

[Q] Playboy: Various columnists have labeled you "The Bogart of the Sixties," and the evolution of your respective careers has often been compared. Do you see any parallels?

[A] Marvin: When I hear our names linked, I feel almost a little embarrassed. Bogart was somebody and I'm somebody else. The only real parallel is that he started out pretty much as I did, playing bad guys and heels. As audiences warmed to him, he metamorphosed into a good-bad guy and finally became all good. The same thing seems to be happening to me--God forbid.

[Q] Playboy: Like you, Bogart had anything but a good-guy image off screen. You seem to be the heir, in fact, of his reputation for two-fisted drinking and brawling. Is that a valid parallel?

[A] Marvin: Well, I don't think I'll ever be in the same league with him on screen or off, but I certainly admired him as much personally as I did professionally. His pleasures were as simple as a truck driver's. Like me, he enjoyed getting a little juiced with his cronies once in a while and telling funny stories and sneaking out of the house. He was the total opposite of the standard leading man of the Thirties, who would jump in his Rolls-Royce and buzz off to his country estate and drink champagne from slippers and eat caviar for breakfast. Excesses like that have almost completely left the film community; the actor of today is much more a man of the streets, and I think that's all to the good.

[Q] Playboy: One thing that hasn't changed about Hollywood stars--particularly sex stars such as yourself--is the adulation they receive from their fans. Does this ever make you uncomfortable?

[A] Marvin: Well, my mail has certainly become more pungent in recent years. Not long ago, for example, a letter arrived from West Berlin. It was from a girl who wrote that she was an ardent admirer and, to prove it, she enclosed a photograph of herself sitting on a couch in her living room. She was suggestively dressed. She ended by saying, "Please answer this letter." What am I going to say, "Yeah, baby, I'll give you a call"? So no answer. About a month later, another letter arrived--with another picture. It's the same room, the same couch, the same girl. But now she's wearing a little less clothing. This went on for three or four letters. It reached the point where she was completely nude and her legs were spread. That broad obviously was horny even before she ever heard of me. I just became the target. There's also a dame in Georgia who writes me that she's seen The Dirty Dozen 45 times. She asks for bus fare to Hollywood, not even plane or train fare; the Greyhound is Ok for her. She needs $29.65; she's still waiting for it. There are a lot of "I'm coming to Hollywood and I want to be a star and I know you'll see that I get right to the top" letters. I take them and give them to my attorney; most of them I don't even read. I have a tough enough time with my ego without indulging myself in that kind of thing.

[Q] Playboy: Many Hollywood actors complain that such public interest in their private lives--expressed not only in fan letters but through autograph hunters and popular insistence that stars live in a goldfish bowl-is a violation of their privacy. Do you feel the same way?

[A] Marvin: Sure. Particularly now that I have enough bread to protect my privacy, I've become more appreciative of it and more bugged when it's violated. In the past, success was more my need. Therefore, I was just a pawn in the hands of my audience. I'd do anything they wanted me to, just to fulfill their expectations of me. One of the things that drove me to become an actor was that I was insecure; I thought laughs and applause would give me the security I was looking for. But as I grew older and wised up and began to enjoy some of the benefits of success, I became less concerned with how the public responds to me collectively than with their private, individual response, which I can get better sitting at a bar talking with a stranger than I can sitting in an audience watching one of my own movies. But now that I've become well known, I can't do that so much anymore, and I miss it, because the people I like best are those I don't know and who don't know me.

[Q] Playboy: Why? Do you think they wouldn't like you if they got to know you?

[A] Marvin: Why should they? I can't stand myself. If I could, I'd play the same guy in all my roles. I don't even like my own company; I've got nothing new to tell myself. Nor do I like the company o£ other actors; if I don't like myself, how could I like them? Since I can't go out in public as much as I used to, I do most of my socializing with the working stiffs on the set during a movie--the stunt men, the gaffers, the propmen. These behind-the-scenes guys keep me straight. They're working men; from their attitudes and the discussions I have with them, I get a sense of what I must do with my current role or my next one. It keeps me on their level--the level of the public. So I shoot the bull with them, hoist a few drinks, share some laughs instead of going into my dressing room and picking up the phone and calling Paris while I drink the chilled champagne. It keeps me from becoming a "star."

[Q] Playboy: Some Hollywood observers find it odd that an actor who gets $1,000,000 per picture--plus a percentage of the profits--would rather sit around the lot drinking beer with stagehands than associate with the Beautiful People.

[A] Marvin: You don't like people because they're beautiful or they've got money or don't have money but because they're straight and honest and you feel at ease with them. Money is all a transient thing, anyway. After a certain amount of income, money ceases to have any meaning. Once I settle whatever my expenses are for the year, all the dollars above that just become a bunch of zeros. They don't make you any happier or better as a human being.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you're worth as much as you get?

[A] Marvin: If I had a five-dollar pistol and a guy offered me ten dollars for it, I'd be a fool not to sell it to him, right? If they're willing to pay me $1,000,000 a picture, baby, I'll take it.

[Q] Playboy: You've been rewarded not only with wealth, of course, but with critical acclaim--and an Academy Award for Cat Ballou. Do you think you earned it?

[A] Marvin: Well, it's like I told the audience when I went up to accept the award: "I think half of this belongs to some horse in the Valley." Then the house came down. I was totally serious. That drunken horse really helped me. What was I supposed to say--"I'd like to thank my mommy and daddy"?

[Q] Playboy: How do you react to the speculation around Hollywood that you may collect a second Oscar for your latest film, Hell in the Pacific?

[A] Marvin: Well, I tried to deliver the most realistic performance I could. It's a story of survival in the South Pacific during World War Two--not what berry to pick or what root to gnaw on but the psyche of survival, which is what really keeps you alive, aside from water and food. The plot concerns the confrontation between an American Marine fighter pilot and a Japanese naval officer who have been marooned on a deserted Pacific island. They're men at war who have to learn to live with each other in order to survive, despite the barriers of race, ideology and language.

[Q] Playboy: Did you find these same barriers between yourself and your co-star, Toshiro Mifune?

[A] Marvin: Mifune and I had a tremendous time together, even though it was difficult to communicate verbally. You ought to hear Toshiro's English. All he knows is about six words: "very good," "cocksucker" and "son of a bitch." I've idolized him for years. This guy hypnotizes you with his genius. Those eyes! The battered samurai warrior standing alone, not wanting help. But it's his fear that attracts me, or at least that I understand in him. He dives into things with such complete abandonment that it shocks the Occidental audience; but just when he really gets going, he's nagged by self-doubt; that's what makes him great. Personally, of course, he's just like me--a dummy, except he happens to be good. He's over his head in all areas.

[Q] Playboy: You, too?

[A] Marvin: Of course, or else I wouldn't be where I am. I'd be another vaudeville act playing one-nighters. The stardom that Mifune and I have, and that of a number of other people, is a constant situation of being over your head and just fighting for your life while you're doing it. Hell in the Pacific is a perfect example of what I mean. When we went down to the Pacific to begin shooting, we had no script at all-just an idea. We waddled around in the mud and taro roots for a month before it began to take shape. And you wouldn't believe the technical problems involved in taking a film crew to Palau in the South Pacific. It was like going off on location with a thousand virgins. You know how virgins are: They're very touchy and they're trying to hang onto something that nobody else has. They were all homebody types--lawn mowers and badminton players. Put a little pressure on them and watch those balls of theirs turn into a vagina. I'm used to pressures and duress, so I don't pay any attention to it myself, but they fell apart completely. They held the picture up six weeks because it rained. I couldn't stand that. I told them: If it's raining, so what? Shoot anyway. But they had to wait for a sunny day; when it never came, we finally shot in the rain anyway--and it was beautiful. I say if the wind blows--use it. If there's an earthquake--shoot it. It's theatrical realism.

[Q] Playboy: It was reported that the movie's financial backers threatened to wrap up the film prematurely because of the slow progress of the shooting. Is that true?

[A] Marvin: Yeah, they were going to pull the string on us and leave the film without a suitable ending. I said, "Don't." The money men said, "What kind of a guarantee can you give us that it'll be finished soon?" I said, "I can't give you any guarantee, but I know a beautiful ending is there. It will be an emotional feeling that you can't really write down, because this is a movie and not a novel." I must have convinced them, because we stayed and finally finished--but not before we scared the shit out of them.

[Q] Playboy: How was the ending finally resolved?

[A] Marvin: There's no stereotyped ending. The audience won't be able to stand it. They'll wonder: "Well, who's going to kill who?" Our answer is, "When you grow up, baby, you don't have to kill." As it turns out, I provoke an argument with Mifune. That sounds difficult, because he only speaks Japanese, right? But I call him a prick and he responds with a very strong question mark. And then I just walk away from him; nobody gets killed. It might bomb out, but what the hell. At least I can say I did what I thought was right. A cop-out ending would have been the easiest thing to do; just blow both guys up and you don't have to answer anything. That's total irresponsibility. I was too involved in the production to let it end that way. I just couldn't hang it up at night and go home. I know a lot of actors who can and do; I've seen their pictures and I've forgotten their names.

[Q] Playboy: Did this involvement in Hell in the Pacific remind you of the time you spent in that same area as a combat Marine during World War Two?

[A] Marvin: Not in the way I expected. When we hit Saipan originally, the population was around 100,000, including civilians. The cane fields looked like Hawaii. Now it's a garbage dump. The aftermath of war is nothing, and we proved it on those islands. They left everything, all the trophies of the last War. They didn't clean it up at all. The armor is there--and the bones. Tanks are still lying all over the joint. Fallen Zeros stuck right in the earth. The second largest source of income in Micronesia is still scrap metal. There's one beautiful beach maybe 150 yards long. Right at the tide line--this is inside a barrier reef, so it's just lapping water--is a blade sticking out from a Zero propeller with a couple of bullet holes in it. You look and the feeling you want is not there. Here it is, 25 years later, and I'm walking around on Saipan again. Who can threaten me? Nobody. I had already thought out the memories of the nights and the sounds and the killing before I went back. I was waiting for it to hit and it didn't. And I said, "Gee, maybe I've grown up." You see a jawbone or a skull and you say, "Yeah, but that was a long time ago." The urgency was in that man's living, not in his death. For some funny reason, I think I even figured out death out there this time around. I'm no longer afraid of it; I'm just afraid of that one last fleeting moment. How I'm going to die I don't know, but I know I'm willing to die.

[Q] Playboy: Was there any time during combat when you thought that last moment had come?

[A] Marvin: Yeah. I was wounded in a fire fight in 1944. I was with I Company of the 24th Marines, Fourth Division. We were caught in an ambush, three or four miles inland, in an area known as Death Valley. I was out on the point with a buddy when suddenly we started seeing fire on the right flank. We were getting an awful lot of machine-gun fire from point-blank range. My buddy pointed to a palm tree about ten feet away and then suddenly he got nailed--right through the lung. It was pink blood; you know that's a lung shot. He went down and I stuck my finger in the hole to try to keep the lung from collapsing, but he was dead. I started firing to try to stop whatever was coming at us. The enemy was laying down a cross fire behind us. It was about a 15-minute fire fight and I don't think we got one Nip. They just decimated the company.

[Q] Playboy: Where did you get hit?

[A] Marvin: If you mean physically, there are two prominent parts of your body showing when you're lying down on the ground in the middle of a fire fight--your head and your ass. Either you get killed or you get shot in the ass, one or the other. Only the Marines got shot in the ass--did you know that? I never saw a sailor or an Army guy that got shot in the ass. But that's where I got hit. It took me a long time to get out, because I couldn't walk, so I crawled back through some brush until I came to a clearing. There were two guys alongside of me. I said, "Lift me up. If I can stand, turn me loose and give me a shove." They did that and I did a couple of jumps, skidded and went into the brush on the other side. I got behind the trees and a guy stepped on me. Then he got shot through the spine and fell over on me, dead. I couldn't get him off me.

[A] Someone finally put me on a stretcher and took me to battalion aid. The doc was standing there with two Jap pistols stuffed in his belt, with his shirt off, and he says. "You need any blood?" I said, "How the fuck should I know?" Eventually, they put me on an ambulance jeep and took me to the beach and then out to a hospital ship called the Solace. How does that name grab you? Then a Corpsman came by and said, "Do you want some ice cream or ice water or anything?" I couldn't believe it. Moonlight Serenade was playing over the P. A. system and you could hear the gunfire on the beach about 1000 yards away. That's when I felt the blow. "Jeez, I fucked off." I knew all the assholes were still fighting it out. I felt like a deserter, like I had thrown down my rifle and run from the battlefield. Complete cowardice. A day or two later, I realized that I was out of it. They weren't going to put a cork in me and send me back out, so I relaxed.

[Q] Playboy: Were you able to see Death Valley, the site where you were wounded, on your recent trip?

[A] Marvin: Yeah, I went through it. I had magnified it in my memory because of the original experience. It's not a field anymore; it's a weed patch. When I saw it again, 25 years later, it made me think about the original pain. Have you ever passed out from pain? When you wake up, you say, "Hey, it didn't hurt that much." Then you laugh at yourself, 'cause you know pain isn't that horrible to take. When it's over, you forget it. But I passed out from it a couple of times, and each time, I didn't believe it. Me pass out? What kind of talk is that? That's for girls, like the vapors, in those classic 1850 stories.

[Q] Playboy: Did you forget the fear of the fire fight as easily as you forgot the pain of the wound?

[A] Marvin: That took me a little longer. In fact, even after I was shipped back to a hospital in Hawaii, I'd have this dream every night before I went to sleep. I'd be looking out at the ocean through the palm trees and just as I'd drift off, I'd see a Japanese soldier slip from one tree to another. I'd wake up and I'd look and say, "It's Hawaii, it's impossible; now come on, Lee. It's your imagination." That happened on three of four nights. On the fifth night, just as the Jap was slipping across, I heard one of the air-raid sirens on the island; they started firing 90-millimeter antiaircraft just as this imaginary guy moved. I leaped out of bed and went down on my knees. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't move; I was paralyzed. I had a rifle, but there was no ammunition for it. Guys were running around, going off their nut. Then there were flashlights and I was yelling, "Kill the lights!" It was absolute confusion till we found out that it was just an air-raid practice, that the President had come out and they were putting on a little show for him.

[A] In a funny way, I related the paralyzing fear of that moment--the sirens, the explosions and the flashlights--to my own birth. When I was born, those very same things happened: the explosion from the uterus into the vagina, the sudden flash of light and, instead of a siren, the sound of my own crying. I imagine that birth must be the original fear; coming from a secure place and being blown out into a cold world. But fear of one kind or another follows us throughout life. Fortunately, I learned a very valuable lesson in the Marine Corps: how not to project your fear, how to cover it up by preoccupation with whatever was at hand--loading the machine gun or keeping it clean, so that I wouldn't look like I was afraid.

[Q] Playboy: Would it have been so terrible to show fear?

[A] Marvin: Yes. Fear is a very contagious emotion; it can lead to disaster, especially in war; it can lead to the annihilation of the group.

[Q] Playboy: Your ability to subordinate your fear of death to the interests of the group is an expression of traditional military discipline--yet you spent a considerable amount of your time in the stockade for insubordination. Did you find it difficult to reconcile your individualism with military authority?

[A] Marvin: I did at first; but after my sojourn in the stockade, I learned to take not only the discipline but the verbal abuse that went along with it. At boot camp, all the Yankees were D.I.'d by the Southern guys and all the Southern guys were D.I.'d by the Yankees. It kept the pot stirring. To save myself from being bloody all the time, I learned how to take verbal or physical abuse and not respond to it. I Uncle-Tommed the hell out of them. But I can't do that anymore. Now, in my acting, I fight the military, even when I'm playing a military role. When I was revisiting Saipan last spring, I went out and had a few drinks one night. I remember talking to a couple of admirals who were on their way back from Vietnam. I grabbed a saltcellar and poured salt all over their hats. I told them I wanted to eat the scrambled eggs on their visors. They had no sense of humor. Why should they? Otherwise, they wouldn't be wearing that outfit.

[Q] Playboy: You once told an interviewer that you hated uniforms, especially police uniforms. "Every time I see one," you said, "bells ring. Guys who wear uniforms ought to look for a monarchy to live in." Feeling as you do, why did you enlist in the Marines?

[A] Marvin: I remember the uniform of flesh, not the clothing. I remember the men. The war effort, at that time, was a condoned world-wide effort for peace and freedom. But uniforms, even then, seemed to take identity away from the individual. It's the mentality of the uniform that I don't like; I attack the uniform as a symbol of that mentality. I feel the same way about the police mentality, but instead of attacking it, I avoid it; you're in trouble if you give the cops an excuse to unload on you.

[Q] Playboy: It sounds as though you're talking from experience.

[A] Marvin: Almost. My girlfriend and I returned from a shopping trip several months ago and found a stick of marijuana in the mailbox. "Get away, baby," I told her. "I ain't gonna touch that." Called the cops. Twenty-five minutes later, they showed up. One of them said, "What's that?" I said, "I don't know. You tell me." That same night, we were going out to dinner. We got into the car and there was a sack of marijuana on the front seat. I just fuckin' blanched. I drove to the sheriff's office in Malibu and told one of the cops to look at the sack. "Oregano, huh?" he said. I told him, "You smell it, baby, not me." They never found out who planted the stuff.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever smoked pot?

[A] Marvin: Through the years, maybe three or four times. It was always with a girl, for some kind of sexual "high-lation." I don't recall any big response to the marijuana itself; just the presence of the girl was enough to expand my mind.

[Q] Playboy: Then you've never had any memorable psychedelic experience?

[A] Marvin: I had a bad reaction once. Literally, I didn't know whether to shit or go blind. Those were my choices and I couldn't do either one of them. That's when I hung it up. I don't like being out of control--not that way, anyhow. I don't mind being out of control with liquor, because everybody knows what you're doing; but if you're out of control with other inducers, such as marijuana or LSD, nobody knows what you're doing, so you become spooky to them. They want no part of you. They don't know whether you're going to flip out or whether you're having a nervous breakdown or what.

[Q] Playboy: In spite of these drawbacks, increasing numbers of young people are turning on to psychedelic drugs. As a father, would you advise your son against their use?

[A] Marvin: I don't usually advise him about anything. I say, "Well, what about pot and all this shit; do you smoke it?" He says, "No." And I say, "Well, you can if you want to. It's up to you. But if you get caught, it's going to be awful bad for you." And he says, "Naw, I don't fool with it." And I say, "Ok, then, that's all I want to say. Just let's not lie to each other." But I hope that he has smoked it. I hope he's tried all those things. I tried them when I was a kid. Why should he be different? Sooner or later, someone's going to stuff it in his face, and I'd rather have him do it at a time when he's free of major responsibilities. He can learn the lesson better at a young age than he can when he's a mature man.

[Q] Playboy: Do you have a close relationship with your son?

[A] Marvin: I withdrew in the parental area immediately after he was born. When I first saw him, I realized that the only thing I could give him was his freedom. I didn't force a life style or a mood on him or a feeling that he must exemplify me or carry the banner up to the front line. It can be very destructive to an offspring to set a guide or a mold. What you want to do is leave a feeling within your son, so that when he gets in a jam, he may not know what to think but at least he has something on which to base his decision. By resolving his own problems rather than relying on what someone else did in a sticky situation, he gains strength from it, as opposed to just imitating my behavior. That way, he becomes his own man. The beauty in him is that he is him, not me.

[Q] Playboy: Has your rather unique method of child rearing worked out?

[A] Marvin: I think so. My son is an amazingly straight boy, most likely because I just try to be honest with him. When he asks me something, I give him a straight answer. After I finished M Squad, I didn't work for a year. I was having big problems. I'd sit out in my playroom and stay about half stiff most of the time. Chris would come in and say, "Are you drunk, Dad?" I'd say, "Yeah." And he'd say, "OK, I won't bother you." Which is all I can ask. I didn't lie to him. By allowing him his freedom, I think I've let him find a strength that will help him in a pinch someplace when I won't be around to save him, when he's going to have to work it out for himself.

[Q] Playboy: Are you as self-sufficient as you'd like your son to be?

[A] Marvin: I tend to be self-sufficient to a fault. It's every man for himself. The most useless word in the English language is "help." The only time you hear it is when something occurs that a person's not prepared for or hasn't even considered. If you're in a jam like that and you scream for help, you'd just better hope that there's somebody around who has the time and the inclination to give it to you. But I'd rather not take that chance. If you have a problem, you have to be ready to work it out yourself. Like, if loneliness is the problem, no one else can solve it for you. You have to feed it in order to get through it--like taking a walk on the beach so you can really be alone, away from recognizable items that might reflect other times and other places that would encourage you to wallow in self-pity. If you're lonely, you've got to be alone; you'll get over it more quickly that way.

[Q] Playboy: But you have a reputation for preferring to be alone.

[A] Marvin: Everybody wants to get off by himself now and then. I just need more of it than most people. I can do that now, here at the beach. When I close the front door, that's it. Who walked up on the porch today? Nobody. When I was living in town, or in New York, in a cold-water fiat or a rooming house, I had to deal with people constantly. Now I have the privacy to sit on the porch and just read all day. But my reputation as a loner is more romantic than it is valid--though I suppose every man would like to be known as the tall, raw-boned loner. That desire came at a very early age in my case, when I realized that you can communicate only so long with somebody before they start wandering on you.

[Q] Playboy: Is it possible that you're projecting your feelings to others? Maybe you're inclined to wander.

[A] Marvin: Very true. It depends on who I talk to, doesn't it? Any conversation's good for about five minutes and then you start getting into quotes. If there's anything of the loner about me, it's because I know I can become a bore after a certain time with people. Before they get to the "See you around" stage, I usually duck out.

[Q] Playboy: Couldn't that be an excuse for not getting emotionally involved?

[A] Marvin: No, I don't think so. The reason for the boredom is that I lose interest in the contact I've made. It's no longer a 50-50 proposition. If the other person has the edge in the conversation with me, I listen. If I have the edge on him, I tend to become obnoxious--or to bug out. That would certainly give some people the impression that I'm a loner. In that sense, maybe they're right.

[Q] Playboy: In addition to your reputation as a loner, another image of Lee Marvin has emerged in recent years. Is there any truth to the rumor that you're an alcoholic?

[A] Marvin: I see you've read those stories about how I'm drunk on the set all the time. Well, on occasions I have been. So what? Pope Paul can't take a day off and go out and get smashed at the local gin mill, but that's one of the prerogatives I can enjoy. Just because it happens once in a while, people think it's a pattern. My performance as Kid Shelleen in Cat Ballou didn't help things, either. I guess I acted so realistically drunk that audiences figured nobody could pretend that well.

[Q] Playboy: What makes you drink while you're working?

[A] Marvin: It usually happens when I pump up too hard, when I get my energy level so high that I'm wringing inside; I just have to stop it. Nothing can be that important, so the way I show its unimportance to myself is to have a drink or two or three or whatever. The next thing you know, I'm a little juiced. It's really a defiance of my own involvement. It allows me to be honest with myself. When I get stoned, I reduce myself in my own eyes to nothing.

[Q] Playboy: Why do you want to do that?

[A] Marvin: Because for every high, there must be a low. If my involvement becomes too intense, I have to counterbalance it by getting stoned. Then I can figure a straight, pure thought. Pure thoughts are survival thoughts. At the survival stage, you can really look at something and say, "I've gone too far in this direction. How do I stop it?" Invariably, it works for me.

[Q] Playboy: Even the morning after?

[A] Marvin: When I wake up, I've figured something out. I don't know what it is, but at least it doesn't bother me anymore. Totally juvenile, but it works. The aftermath, of course, is tremendous hangovers and guilt--and the pledge. Then, three days later, when my joints start to creak again, I have to look around for oil.

[Q] Playboy: Are you a genial drunk or a belligerent one?

[A] Marvin: It depends on what I'm drinking, how much I'm drinking, why I'm drinking and who I'm drinking with. I was working very hard once, doing a television drama called Sergeant Ryker, and one night after the shooting was completed, I was drinking in a San Fernando Valley bar with an assistant director. We were laughing and telling each other stories--but this stranger kept barging in. He was just asking for it. In the past, guys I had never seen before would walk up to me in a bar and tell me that their wives really hated my guts. I'd just sneer. It was expected of me. But it would always end up in a very amicable conversation and I'd say, "Well, maybe your wife is right." So he'd say, "Nobody's that bad. I mean, you ought to know my wife." Before long, we would be buying each other a couple of drinks and laughing.

[A] But this guy in the Valley just kept baiting me. My thoughts were a million miles from him. He was fulfilling some need and, goddamn it, for some dumb, stupid reason, I helped him along. I just had to shut him up, so I hit him over the head with a banjo. It had nothing to do with him. I'm sure I had a mask on him; he represented some anxiety that I was working out and he just happened to be in the way. Otherwise, I probably would have slammed myself. Anyway, I was responsible for what happened, so I paid the guy. At least he got another set of teeth out of it--and some money.

[Q] Playboy: That kind of off screen behavior seems to be consistent with the characters you most often portray in films. In Ship of Fools, for example, you played Bill Tenny, a washed-up former baseball star whom one reviewer called "a boorish, frightened, whoring, alcoholic bigot." At the time you made that film, you told a reporter, "I had to play him, because he is a facet of me, a part of me I don't like." Do you share all those traits?

[A] Marvin: Sure. They're just magnifications. Tenny was such an unpleasant guy that nobody else would play him. Even I bridled when I was first offered the part. But my attitude changed when I realized I'd be playing myself. It was perfect typecasting--all my facets multiplied and expanded. I steeped myself in that guy, got it all together at one time and then exposed it. Having examined myself that closely, I knew I wouldn't have to do it again. I'm rid of it, so I don't have to fear that those things will come out in me again. No, that's not true. To be honest, on occasions I can still be a pain in the ass, just like Bill Tenny. I try not to be, but once in a while I slip.

[Q] Playboy: Are you still boorish?

[A] Marvin: Yeah, sometimes when I'm with friends and I wish I weren't. When I have nothing to say intellectually, when I'm not attuned to my surroundings, I tell a dirty joke. I'm still guilty of those excesses, but I try to be less guilty.

[Q] Playboy: Are you a bigot?

[A] Marvin: No, that was something I felt in kindergarten. The world has gone by quite a few days since I was a kid. I was raised in New York in the Twenties and the early Thirties in a very class and race-conscious area. Your address meant something--and your "background." I heard all the bigoted remarks by the time I was five or six. Kids talking. Adults grumbling, "That so-and-so prick!" Growing up and discovering that the other races, creeds and colors weren't really any worse than mine was a revelation for me. I still can't say that all the stereotypes aren't true, but they're more often false than true.

[Q] Playboy: From what you said about fear earlier in this interview, would it be fair to conclude that, like Bill Tenny, you're frightened as well as boorish, whoring and alcoholic?

[A] Marvin: Oh, yeah. Frequently. Fear is possibly the greatest motivation there is. But, as I said before, by pretending not to fear, you can make it work for you and get the job done. Every actor is full of doubts about himself, and I'm no exception. If you see those fears in yourself--and expose them--the audience can associate with you more deeply than if you try to play it safe and pretend to be the invincible tough guy. To show my strength is nothing; to show my weakness is everything. I suppose it takes a certain kind of strength to admit your fears, but I really don't think it's anything more than simple honesty.

[Q] Playboy: You've reached a peak in your profession in terms of wealth, power and public acceptance. What do you have left to fear?

[A] Marvin: You have to remember there are tremendous chasms between the peaks. I've lost my grip before and it could happen again. It's a long way down and it gets deeper every time. To be a failure when I was 30 isn't like being a failure when I'm 44. There's more to lose and less time to get it back.

[Q] Playboy: You said earlier that you've overcome your fear of death, but you seem to dread growing older.

[A] Marvin: Not really. I don't want any more than I've got coming to me, and I don't understand those who do. Like, why would anyone want to undergo a heart transplant? A person would have to have led a pretty empty life to be that frightened of dying. How would you like to be walking around with a 17-year-old broad's heart in your chest, just to live a few years longer? You wouldn't know whether to menstruate or ejaculate. Jesus, give me my span of years and knock me down when it's all over. You've got to make room for the other guy. I know that when my ashes are blown away or they stuff me in a sewer, it's not going to hurt. I've had the simple pleasure of being present when the sun was shining and the rain was falling. I've had mine, and nobody can take it away from me.