Originally Posted by
spellbound
Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou
I do remember that scene and the young guy in the top hat. It must have been a really long time ago when I saw it. And, lucky me, they have it at the library. I may have to do a triple feature with Support Your Local Sheriff and Support Your Local Gunfighter, both of which are also at the library.
Lee Marvin was obviously good at crime movies and westerns, but he was so good at comedy, too. He was great in Paint Your Wagon.
Have you ever heard the story about him that Roger Ebert tells? This is from an interview with Siskel & Ebert on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross discussing how publicists have changed things for journalists when interviewing celebrities:
GROSS: You both have done profiles of actors in addition to reviewing movies. You write feature stories. My experience is that sometimes actors are very temperamental and that if you're not asking them questions that will help them promote their film, if you go what publicists like to call off-topic, that they'll sometimes get very temperamental and even walk out.
EBERT: It didn't use to be that way. I mean the key word in your observation is publicist. When I started, you kind of hung out with the stars. I mean Gene and I remember a day when John Wayne came to town to see his friend Step'n Fetchit, who was dying in University of Chicago Hospital. And he called up the movie critics and said, "Come on over here to the Conrad Hilton and we'll drink some tequila and talk."
And we, the four movie critics at that time, turned up, you know, with our tongues hanging out, delighted to just sit around and talk with the Duke for a while. Well, these days, of course, with spin control, you'd have somebody feeding him his soundbites, you know.
And I've done many interviews in the past where you really got to spend time with a person in an unstructured environment, maybe in an environment where they didn't always look their best. As, for example, the day I spent with Lee Marvin when he was dead drunk. And yet it was a very good story. He liked it. He talked to me again many times later in his career. He thought it was a good story about that day.
Gross: Did you have any publicists from Lee Marvin's movie call you up and say please don't mention that he was drunk, please don't quote certain things that he's saying?
Ebert: "Please don't mention that the dog came out of his bedroom with a pair of panties in its mouth." And his girlfriend said, "Whose are those panties?" And Lee Marvin said, "Michelle, those are your panties." And she said, "Those are not my panties." And Marvin said, "Bad dog!"
I love that story.
Bookmarks