Lee Marvin Centennial

“Lee was my kind of actor, a real tough-looking, tough-talking sonofabitch.” – Sam Fuller

Lee Marvin was born in New York City on Feb. 19, 1924. Today marks his centennial. (He died of a heart attack in 1987 in Arizona at the age of 63.) He was the quintessential movie tough guy of the 1950s and ’60s, emerging alongside Charles Bronson, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Palance, and Lee Van Cleef, all of whom, like Lee, would eventually become stars, as well as a rogues’ gallery of equally rough-hewn, battle-scarred visages found among such contemporaries as Neville Brand, Aldo Ray, Ralph Meeker, Jack Elam, Leo Gordon, and Claude Akins, among others, nearly all of whom had served in the military in World War II. (Marvin was in the Marine Corps and was seriously wounded at the Battle of Saipan in the Pacific, for which he got a Purple Heart.)

THE BIG RED ONE (1980) directed by Sam Fuller

For years, these guys plied their trade in crime pictures, war movies and westerns, both on the big screen and small, as well as dramas about working men far removed from the centers of power, and became favorites of grindhouse and neighborhood theater audiences everywhere. (Quentin Tarantino regards these men with great awe in his books, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Cinema Speculation.)

Robert Aldrich Centennial

Robert Aldrich was born on August 9, 1918 and would have turned 100 today. (He died in 1983.) He was one of my earliest favorite movie directors. By the time I saw THE DIRTY DOZEN (pictured above, with Aldrich in the red sweater directing, with Charles Bronson on the right) in high school, I’d already seen three of his earlier films, two in theaters (THE LAST SUNSET, HUSH HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE) and one on TV (VERA CRUZ), and I loved DOZEN so much I made it a point to seek out every one of his films as they came out. In fact, just three weeks after I first saw DOZEN, I went to see his newest movie, TOO LATE THE HERO (1970) when it opened on Broadway. I missed the next one, THE GRISSOM GANG (1971), when it opened, but starting with ULZANA’S RAID (1972), a cavalry-and-Indians western starring Burt Lancaster, I saw every one of his remaining films in theaters on their original release. Also, as I began taking film classes in college and seeing movies in repertory theaters in Manhattan, I sought out Aldrich’s older films, especially as I learned of the high esteem he was held in by auteurists, and discovered for myself some of his very best films, including KISS ME DEADLY (1955), ATTACK (1956), and WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962), not to mention the chance to see VERA CRUZ (1954) on the big screen. At the beginning of 2018, I finally caught up with Aldrich’s debut film, THE BIG LEAGUER (1953), a baseball drama starring Edward G. Robinson, and, as of this writing, I have only one Aldrich film left to see, the rarely-screened lesbian drama, THE KILLING OF SISTER GEORGE (1969).