Lee Marvin: Point Blank
When a five-year-old boy’s Christmas list includes a cannon and a battleship, it’s not a big surprise that he winds up being a tough guy. Marvin was a tough guy in life—he fought in WWII—and on the big screen (although his first wife said he was “a bowl of mashed potatoes” in private). Epstein’s biography of the star of Cat Ballou, The Dirty Dozen, and Point Blank (whence the book’s title) tracks the actor’s life from his early years to his death in 1987. It’s a good Hollywood bio, focusing on its subject’s public and private lives without descending into the sort of gossip and rumor that typify many celebrity life stories. Almost all the interviews for the book date from the middle to late 1990s, suggesting that the majority of the preliminary work was done quite a while ago. A lengthier appraisal of Marvin’s film legacy might have made the book feel more current, but that’s a minor quibble. This is the kind of biography Lee Marvin deserves, even if it feels like it sat on a shelf for a long time. --David Pitt