Lee Marvin was never one for polished speeches. When he accepted his Best Actor Oscar for Cat Ballou (1965), he quipped to the audience, “I think half of this belongs to some horse out in the Valley.” The crowd burst into laughter, but Marvin was serious—the drunken horse in the film had been his best scene partner.
That was Lee Marvin: unpredictable, outrageous, and unforgettable. On set, he blended mischief with genius. Actor Dwayne Hickman remembered how Marvin would rehearse sober, then sneak vodka before the takes to nail Kid Shelleen’s iconic drunken swagger. “Tension, baby,” Marvin would grin, explaining his process.
While his antics entertained most of the cast, they didn’t sit well with Jane Fonda. A dedicated actress who took her role seriously, Fonda was irritated by Marvin’s constant jokes. He didn’t help matters by taking jabs at her husband, director Roger Vadim, with his famously blunt humor.
Marvin was larger-than-life on screen, but in real life, he kept only a few mementos from his career: his Oscar, a cowboy citation from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a gold record for “Wand’rin’ Star,” and the high-heeled shoe Vivien Leigh threw at him during Ship of Fools.
When asked where he learned to act, Marvin didn’t credit acting schools or workshops. Instead, he pointed to the Marines, saying he learned to act by pretending not to be afraid while under fire on Saipan, where he was wounded and awarded a Purple Heart.
From the battlefield to Hollywood, Lee Marvin lived by his own rules—a rascal, a rebel, and an Oscar winner who never forgot the horse that helped him get there.✍️
