The Five Best Lee Marvin Performances

While recently reading a new biography of Lee Marvin, I was reminded of his many memorable performances. That led to this latest installment in our "Five Best" series:

1. Point Blank.  As the vengeance-driven Walker, Lee Marvin could have opted to play the protagonist as a robotic killing machine in John Boorman's cult classic. Instead, he provides a complex, nuanced performance that allows Walker's uncomfortable quietness to explode into raw violence. Marvin may have done better acting in other films, but this is his most powerful performance.

2.  Monte Walsh.  Like Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country, this fine Western explores the changing times faced by the rugged men who tamed the frontier. A grizzled Marvin captures the title character's honesty, toughness, and--most of all--understanding of the inevitable (the film is often labeled a tragedy).  Had the Academy Awards not given Marvin an Oscar for Cat Ballou, I think he would have been at least nominated for this performance. Incidentally, there's a strong Shane connection: Jack Palance co-stars and the source novel was penned by Shane author Jack Schaefer.

3. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Compile a list of great Hollywood villains and Liberty Valance is likely to be on it. He's downright despicable in scenes like his confrontation with a pistol-packing Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart). As Stoddard approaches nervously from the shadows, Valance leans casually against a post and laughs almost gleefully, before finally announcing: "All right, dude, this time right between the eyes." It's a pivotal performance in a classic John Ford Western.

4. The Dirty Dozen. In perhaps his most famous role, Marvin played Major John Reisman, who is given the perilous task of molding twelve Army convicts into a cohesive unit for a suicide mission behind enemy lines during World War II. The film's first half is lighthearted, focusing on Reisman's training challenges; the second half is first-rate, nonstop action. As a result, The Dirty Dozen provides Marvin with an opportunity to show both his lighter side and his familiar tough side. In a film with several memorable supporting performances, he is the glue that holds everything together.

5. Cat Ballou. I struggled with this choice, because I think Marvin's Oscar-winning performance is overrated. Personally, I much prefer Marvin in The Professionals and other films listed among the honorable mentions. However, having recently watched Cat Ballou, one can't deny that it features his most different performance as washed-up, drunken gunfighter Kid Shelleen (although he does double duty as villain Tim Strawn, that amounts to little more than a cameo). His best scene is when Kid finally decides to get cleaned up for a showdown against his rival.

Honorable Mentions: The Professionals; The Big Red One; The Iceman Cometh; Ships of Fools; and The Killers (1964);