In his small, affecting documentary Lee Marvin: A Personal Portrait, John Boorman (who directed the snub-nosed star in Point Blank and Hell in the Pacific) recalled a day in an airport lounge in the late 1960s when he saw Marvin accosted by an American general with a chest full of fruit salad who, assuming that the World War II vet and top box-office action star must be a kindred spirit, gave him an extended and unsolicited lecture on how brilliantly the Vietnam War was going and then asked Marvin for his opinion of it all. Marvin looked at the fellow as if he were something he'd picked up on his shoe and murmured, "I think the war is very rude" while reaching over to steal the general's hat, which he had apparently judged his new friend unfit to wear, and setting it on his own silvery head. (At that point, the loudspeaker announced that the plane was boarding, and Marvin simply got up and sauntered aboard with the hat still on his noggin. Boorman reported that after they'd been in the air awhile and Marvin had fallen asleep, a frightened-looking military aide was dispatched to retrieve the festive headgear.) Marvin was a man of many talents and someone who clearly delighted in subverting people's expectations of him, and both qualities are on display in an article he wrote in 1964 for Gun World, a prize specimen of Marvianiana that Mike Russell has just unearthed for his website, CulturePulp.
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