March 9, 2024 • 51 mins
Dwayne Epstein is an accomplished author and biographer, renowned for his insightful explorations into the intricacies of his subjects' lives. His most notable works include Lee Marvin: Point Blank and Killin' Generals: The Making of The Dirty Dozen.
He delves into some of Lee Marvin's thoughts on The Dirty Dozen and how his favorite aspect of the movie was how it reflected the thoughts and feelings of the greatest generation—the ordinary people who lived through it.
Dwayne also shares that Lee Marvin was a US marine serving in the Pacific theater before he became an actor. He talks about how Marvin suffered from PTSD his entire life upon returning due to his harrowing experiences and his realization of how horrific war really was.
Get your copy of Lee Marvin: Point Blank: https://amzn.to/3v5NnMp
and Killin’ Generals: https://amzn.to/3T1OVPm
Join the SOFREP Book Club here: https://sofrep.com/book-club
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Route Force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails and
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Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hi, welcome back to a special edition of soft Rep Radio.
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(00:57):
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I have an author with me, as I usually have
(01:19):
authors and the like. This is Dwayne Epstein and he
wrote The Dirty Dozen, the most iconic World War two
film movie with Lee Marvin And the reason why I
kind of am like just thinking this through is because
I really like Lee Marvin. And if you're my listener
out there, and you know who Lee Marvin is, white hair,
think Chuck Norris and Delta Force, think the Dirty Dozen
(01:43):
as the he's the major major John Reisman, Right, isn't
that right? Reiman Riceman? So, Dwayne, you've written books the
Killing of Generals, you know, the Dirty Dozen, the best
iconic movie. Welcome to the program. Thank you right, I
appreciate it. Yeah, we've been trying to get each other
for a few days now, and I'm super excited to
have finally got this all stream together. So am my.
(02:06):
So let me just kind of say it correctly. So
you wrote Killing Generals, the Making of the Dirty Dozen
the most iconic World War Two movie of all time.
Where do you get off saying it's the most iconic
World War two movie? Tell me why?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Well, real quick answer. That was not my idea of
a subtitle. That was my publisher. I didn't even know
he was going to call it that. I kind of agree,
not entirely agree. There are equally iconic movies. It's not demos.
But the one thing we did agree on early on
the publisher and I was in the title. I was
thinking maybe calling it meant on a mission or I
think he had suggested something like, oh, what, what's the
(02:45):
line cuss already so you don't know, Victor Franco, you know,
something like that, But that not.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Anything we talked about.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
That was something we talked about after We immediately both
came up with killing generals.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
It was amazing. We said it at the same time
in a phone.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Conversation, and then he mentioned to me some of the
other ideas he had had. But we both thought killing
generals is perfect because it's one of the most famous
lines in the movie.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
It's also the last line in the movie.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And it also says in two words volumes about what
the theme of the movie is about. It's rather antisocial,
it's anti military. Some would say it's anti war. I
don't know if that's necessarily the case or not, but
it's certainly. There are several major themes in the film,
and one of them is that, you know, the film
came out during the Vietnam War, which was growing more
(03:31):
unpopular with every passing year, and by sixty seven, which
I write about in the book, we were in the
hit heat of it in the midst of it, and
people were starting to not want to be involved in
the war anymore, wanted us to pull out. There were
more and more protests and demonstrations, and so there were
parallels to what the film is about to what was
going on in the country at the time. Director Robert
(03:55):
Aldridge called it the perfect storm and that we couldn't
have planned to have this woe come out at the
time things were societally going on. As it turned out,
a lot of young people liked the film for that message,
you know, draft age kids, and a lot of older people,
the greatest generation, you know, the war had only ended
(04:16):
sixteen years before, and so they loved the movie because
it was a lot of what they felt about and
saw in real life. Even though they took a lot
of you know, what's the word they they took a
lot of freedom with the storyline, you know that would
never happen in real life. You know, twelve convicts being
trained for a suicide mission.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
We do have the French Foreign Legion though that does exist.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Oh that yeah, by definition, that's what they do, you
know what I mean, We just want you to fight
for us, and it has happened, by the way, historically,
but never in this country. We would never have that
happen here. A matter of fact, it's going on right
now in Russia. They opened up the Russian prisons and
made quote unquote mercenaries they're not mercenaries, they're prisoners, and
(05:02):
trained them to fight against the Ukrainians.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
In fact, that guy that was shot was killed and
killed in the airplane.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
The guy who trained them end up being an enemy
of Putin, and he was kind of I think his
name was Pegosian.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
He was. He was running that mercenary group, the Wagner
gu Yeah, the Wagner, right, Yes, that's right, that's right,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
He was kind of like John Reichman, but a lot
less ethical, for lack of better way to put it.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
And by the.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Way, during World War Two, the Nazis had done it
themselves in oh Gosh I which you can remember the
country one of the eastern European countries. I write about
it in the book that had opened up the prisons
to fight the Partisans.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
In oh Gosh. I think it was Romania, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And it was done by a German officer who was
had been convicted for had a prison wrecking himself. He
had been a child molester, and they don't seem to
really care, the Nazis.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
They'll do whatever, right, right, We'll look at this exactly.
So Lee Marvin, right, that's that's what we're really celebrating here,
is him as a United States Marine Corps veteran who
fought during World War Two, kind of had a call
to service again as an actor to almost like, you know,
(06:21):
help the effort. Put it out there. And so he's like, Hey,
I'm gonna do a movie and we're going to show
these guys give their last breath of possible air to America.
Still they may have done these heinous crimes that they're
accused of, like Charles Bronson, and boy, there were some
others in there. Holy cow, there's so many people in that.
It won like four Academy Awards and it wasn't even
(06:44):
supposed to win an Academy Award.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Well it actually it only won one, but it was
nominated for four. Excuse me, that's okay. And when I
did my Lee Marvin book, Lee Marvin, point blank, I
got to interview a lot of great people who newly
really well, including his son who has since passed away.
But Christopher Marvin told me his father made a lot
of military theme or war films. And Christopher said, I
(07:08):
know why my father made those movies. He made them
for the guys who didn't come back. That it was
a matter of making a statement. And you know, Lee
Marvin never really made like a I don't I'm not
putting him down per se, but he never made a
kind of a John Wayne war movie. If you understand
what that means and praising it. It was never He
(07:29):
never made a real gung ho let's go get them guys,
Let's get that hill blody blahody blah. There was always
a much greater subtext to any time he wore a
uniform in a film, and it was often about how
you know.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
I'll give you an example.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
There's a rumor that still exists about how Lee what
Lee Marvin felt about The Dirty Does and a lot
of people think he did it just for the money
and it was a popcorn film.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
And he didn't really like it because he didn't believe it.
That's just not true.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
I don't know how that got started, but it's an
historical misinformation and interview upon an interview after the film
came out.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
He didn't have to say this, but an interview.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Upon an interview, he would always say, I like this movie,
and the reason I like it is because it doesn't
necessarily tell the truth. It's not very believable as a premise,
but what the movie has to say about war, I
believe in it and I like it. John Wayne was
first offered the lead, and he turned it down, and
(08:25):
I loved this story. He sent a memo to the
producer Ken Hyman, whom I interviewed. By the way, he's
still alive, and John Wayne wrote in the memo, whoever
wrote this piece of crap script, okay, is probably some
sandal wearing, long haired hippie freak carrying a sign that
says he doesn't want to fight in a war that
(08:46):
he really should be fighting himself. Okay, here's the thing.
The script was written by a sixty six year old
screenwriting Oscar winning veteran, Nunneley Johnson. Now, when they offered
it to Lee Marvin, he said, I guess right away.
It's often been said too that one of the things
John Wayne didn't like about it was the innocent killing
of some of the people at the end of the film.
(09:08):
You know the Nazis, yes, but also they were there
with their concubine women whatever. And it's open to question
exactly how innocent and a woman is who hangs up
with a Nazi.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
But that's another subject.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Guilty by association, dude, I mean it happens all the time.
You know, we took out a whole wedding and a
Yemen just for one guy, right with Lee Marvin didn't
have a problem with that.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Lee Marvin actually said, look, war is hell, and let's
be honest with each other. You know, innocent people died
more all the time, and he cited the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
A lot of innocent people died. That happens in more
and that's one of the points in the film. Matter
of fact, the way they die at the end was
(09:49):
really kind of parallel. And Robert Aldridge did this on
purpose to you know, the blowing up of the chateau
at the end of the film. He considered it parallel
to the use of napalm Vietnam and as well as
the ovens during World War Two in the concentration camps.
It wasn't an accident, and it wasn't did they mean
this or did they mean that? It was clear what
(10:10):
they meant. It was very symbolic. And like I said,
Lee Marvin didn't have a problem with that, and he
liked it. He also loved playing the character of John Reichman.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, he held it pretty well. You know. You'd see
him walking in the courtyard as he's like, you know,
looking at his dirty dozen, you know, and he just
kind of walked with a nice walk, and he really
held it well. I enjoyed that movie. I grew up
with it. I was born in the seventies, you know,
I'm forty six, so it's been around. You know, a
lot of Lee Marvin has been in my life. I
didn't realize it until looking up Lee Marvin. Really how
(10:39):
much more Lee Marvin there was? And all the Delta Forces,
right you do you know the first one, Well, he
was like the main guy. He's like the guy that
put him all there. He's like, I need you all
to do this, Chuck Norris, you need to go on
this mission point blank. Huh you talk about that? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
That was a book that took me twenty years to
get pub and in the twenty years I did a
lot of research. The twenty years were a little kind
of off and on because in between both my parents
got ill and we had to take care of him
a little bit until they passed away. And the guy
most responsed to people are most responsible for me being
able to get that published one was my agent, wonderful,
(11:19):
wonderful human being who passed away a few years back,
named Mike Hamilberg. Mike Hamilberg believed in this project more
than anybody other than myself, and he finally found a publisher,
a gentleman by the name of Tim Schaffner of Schaffner
Press out of Tucson, Arizona. And we had gotten rejection
from pretty much every publisher there is.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Now this is just real quick aside.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
When the book came out and it became an ebook,
it made number four on the New York Times Bestsellers list,
rare thing for a film biography of a gentleman who
had gone since nineteen eighty seven. And because we had
gotten turned down by everybody, Tim had gone to a
conference of other independ to publishers and they all came.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Up to him and I went, Wow, great job.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
But the Lee Marvin book boy, I wish we would
have published it, to which you know, I could say,
you had your chance, man, you blew it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
a little you know, pat on the back there. And
it did well and I I'm very proud of it,
and it also won a couple of publishing awards too.
But I came to Killing Generals via my new agent,
(12:24):
a gentleman by the name of Lee Sobol, who is
a go get her as you can get man.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
You talk about a hustler. He's amazing.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
He contacted me asking me if I need an agent,
and I said, yeah, but you know agents don't contact writers.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Writers look for.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Agents, and he's said, yeah, he goes, why a writer
so cynical? We could work this out. So we started well,
first I checked him out to make sure he was legit,
and he was, and then we started talking about a
project and he asked me, well, he said to me,
I loved your Lee Marvin book. How would you like
to write a book about one of only Marvin's films?
I said, yeah, that would be great, and he suggests,
(13:00):
point blank the John Borman film, which is what I
subtitled my bio on And I told him, you know what,
I liked that movie I don't love it. You want
to know my favoritely Marvin movie, that would be The
Dirty Dozen. I've always loved that movie ever since I
was a kid. And he say, tell you what, put
together a proposal. I'll shop it around and we'll see
what we can do. And I did, and he did,
(13:21):
and it wred.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That's amazing, you know, for a writer out there, you
know you just I want you to. I want them
to hear that. You just kept to it. You didn't stop.
You said, this is a twenty year in the making.
So by the time you had putten this altogether in
the beginning, you know, twenty years had gone by, you
were still trying to get it published, right, right.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
I came close a few times. It was a lady
at Penguin, one of the editors there, who really really
wanted to do it. But you see, I don't know
if most people know how these things are done, but
they're done by conference, you know, once a week or
once a month. Everybody in the editorial staff get together
and pitch ideas, straw out ideas, and they have to
(14:03):
have a majority vote in order to get the okay
to go with it. She didn't get it, and she
was very frustrated. I was working another job. I was
at a day job, working at a I was the
managing editor at a publisher for children's books.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Anyway, she would contact me periodically when I was there,
and she would say, if I don't get to get
this book published, I'm gonna cut my throat. And I said, Hillary,
don't do that. That doesn't help anybody, and just keep plugging.
And ultimately it was a Penguin. I believe they turned
it down, and Mike Hamilberg knew that because he was
the one who got her in touch with me. And
(14:40):
Mike just said, keep plugging. We can do this. We
just can't give up. And I didn't. And don't get
me wrong, there were indeed times where I can't close
where I was like, why am I spending my wheel?
Why am I wasting my time? I could be doing
the something else with my life. But Mike didn't give up,
and I didn't give up, and it came to pass.
Funny thing is there was a period there, like I said,
(15:00):
when my parents were ill, where I didn't have any
contact with Mike anymore. I mean for a while, like
five six years, I think and then when I got
back in contact with him, first of all, I didn't
even know if he was still alive.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
And right, things are changing, right, right, I'm sorry, I said,
I said, things change, you know, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
And when I got back in contact with him, I said,
are you still are you still running your agency? And
he went, oh, yeah, I'll never quit. I'm semi retired.
I'm not taking on any any more new clients. But
and then he goes, what do you got And I said,
let me re ramp them Lee Marvin book, and you
tell me what your proposal and you tell me what
you think. And he said, do it and I did,
(15:38):
and he liked it even more because in the interim
I was able to find out a lot more information.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
So we got to really just crack that egg open
on Lee Marvin and just get more. And then you
could just you know, just edit your book and just
make it even more, uh you know Lee Marvin?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Right, he had said too. One of the ways he
encouraged me. I love this, he said, because people publishers
were saying, you know, he's been gone on too long,
people don't remember him. Who cares about Lee Marvin? And
Hammelberg said, look, you just keep plugging at this. I
guarantee you the Marvin fans are going to come up
behind the curtain once they know this exists, because they're
there and excuse me, he was right, He was absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh it's true. And I know my listener and the
folks on SOFTFRA know Lee Marvin. And if they haven't,
they need to know Lee Marvin. Just like a new
pop singer will do another rendition of a classic song
and old timers get upset at that new guy breaking
it out right, how dare he redoce somebody else's song?
But yet he's now just exposed that same that artist
(16:40):
through his rendition to his fans. Absolutely right, you know right,
And so I have to just say, you know again,
Lee Marvin. Right, let's let's talk about Lee Marvin Marine
Corps right, the United States Marines. He would be one
hundred years old. So we're filming this in February, you
and me and I usually posted up about a week
or two later, so it'll be his one hundredth birthday,
(17:00):
right February nineteenth.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I actually like to say, you know, President's Day is
an important day in our history and calendar.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
But it's every year.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Ali Marvin Centennial once and that's it, and this is
and that's when you got to celebrate. And it is
on Monday, February nineteenth because he was born February nineteenth,
nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
And I'd love to see him.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
More in the media for that and and you know,
have more conversations about his films, about his work, about
his life, mostly his legacy, which would be you know,
his films exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And like you said, he wanted to leave something of himself,
you know, and also for his buddies or those that
didn't make it back. I really like that sentiment that
you know, he would put into his acting. But I
also I loved him and I owned this movie growing up.
I'd watch it all the time. Was cat Balloo right
where he is this just like sixth sense, shit cowboy,
(18:01):
he just needs to sober.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Up, right And he also you know, he played that character.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yes, it was a comedy and he won the Oscar
for it, by the way, which is extremely rare for
comedy performances to win an Oscar. But he played that
character with a sense of poignancy. He has several speeches
in that movie where it's kind of like, what do
you do with a burnt out gunfighter, And Marvin had
commented that he thought of him as like an old boxer.
(18:28):
What do you do with a boxer who's passed his
prime and burnt out? Do you give him one more shot?
Maybe let him kill himself in the process, or what
I mean, what transpires for him? And there's a wonderful story.
I got to interview the late director Elliott Silverstein, who
directed the movie. He said, one of the first scenes
we shot was the scene where he has this really
long speech where in the speech he's, you know, he's
(18:52):
drinking from a flask and he keeps getting drunker and
drunker until I think it's I think it's Michael Callen's
character who says, I've never seen him and get through
a day so fast because he's getting drunk and drunk
un till he's falling down. But in the scene he
talks about what it's like to be an old gunfighter.
And they had to shoot it seven times before they
(19:14):
got it right. And it was the first thing they did,
and Marvin, of course was nervous, and Elliott Silverstein kept
coming up to Lee and he goes, try it this way,
try it that, way, and the producer of the movie
was on the set, a guy named Harold hecked, and
he was ready to fire Marvin on the spot because
he didn't like what he was seeing.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
And so on the.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Eighth take, Elliott Silverstein walked up to Lee and he went, look,
I know you can make me laugh.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
You're making me laugh. That's fine. I want you to
make me cry.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
See if you can do this where it's just so
poignant you feel for this guy. Elliott Silverstein had been
a director on a TV show called Naked City, and
a lot of the characters in Naked City, you know,
it's all about New York and people who are wanted
by the cops for a crime of this, and they're
all kind of desperate and downtrodden.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
And he goes, think of it as a he told Lee,
think of it as.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
A Naked City character, but you're in the Old West,
and Lee, Marvin being Lee, Marvin would go, gotcha, buddy,
right on, And then he did the scene and he
goes and then Elliott Silverstein said, I named my yacht
take eight because we got it.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
We nailed it on the eighth take. So I thought
that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
That is pretty cool, you know't Lee Marvin has the
eyes that can just squint and just look in the camera.
And you know when you watch him in that movie,
he seems like a dirty, drunk cowboy. He just seems
like he smells and you know, you're just like, you know,
they're dragging him along and just like you know, he's
dragging his boot.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
He you know, the thing about his eyes.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
A famous scene that psych gag of him and the
horse drunk leaning against the wall and one of the
characters comes up to him, the Indian, and says.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Kid, look at you what look at your eyes?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
And Lee Marvin goes, what's wrong with my eyes? And
the kid goes, they're all red? And Lee Marvin goes.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
You ought to see him from my side? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, he's looking out of him man. Right, he was great, Yeah,
he was. He was. He was rip to Lee Marvin,
you know, and the legacy that he'll leave, and well
we're going to capture that here on softwarep And as
long as this website gets its bills paid, it'll stay
out there as long as the Internet can hold it,
I'm sure. So that's more you know of us talking
about Lee Marvin, and you know, his legacy and his kin.
(21:36):
You know, Like just recently I saw that John Wayne's
grandson is in The Mandalorian as he and he's the
way it's the way he walks. So the Mandalorian is
John Wayne's grandson dressed up with Pedro as the voice. Okay,
so there's three people that play the Mandalorian in this movie, right,
(21:58):
So I mean John Wayne's families out there still doing stuff.
I'm sure Lee Marvins got lineage out there. Did he
have grandkids and kids like that? Like he had?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
He had four children, two of which are still alive.
And the one I spoke to the most was his
was his son Christopher. Christopher became a drummer. He played
on Tom Waite's album Mule Variations and a few other things.
And he had three daughters.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Now.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
One of his daughters, his oldest daughter, Courtney, was a
film editor. She worked on that Got Awful Kevin Costa
water World. Yeah, she was one of the main cutters
on that.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
And his other daughter.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Oh gosh, darn it, they all have c names, not Cynthia.
She was the baby she passed away. Courtney. It'll come
to me anyway. She is a wardrobe dresser for TV
and movies. So they're kind of in a roundabout way,
got what you call it in the industry, somewhat.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, they're still working in Hollywood, still doing working in
film and television and theater.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Now, as far as grandchildren goes, it kind of works
like this. Lee was married twice and he had that
infamous relationship resulting in the palamony case with Michelle Triola.
But they never married and they never had children. But
Pam Peely Lee's last wife, his widow, no, his widow.
She had a bunch of children from previous marriages, and
(23:23):
several of them are still to this day trying to
break into the business. Well, not her children, her grandchildren
trying to break into the business. One of them is
I think, trying to be a stunt man. I think
his name is Joe King. I'm not sure. But in
any event, Oh, and Marvin did have a grandson. His
name is Edward Michael or something like that. His daughter,
(23:44):
once again, whose name I don't remember, she had a son,
and I think he's in his thirties.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Now, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I asked him if he remembers his grandfather, and he said, yeah,
one time he told me to get my feet out
of the pool.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
That's all I remember.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Get your feet out of the pool. Kid, there's an
alligator in there. Or he just tried to warn the pool.
Let's see. Claudia, Courtney, and Cynthia that's it.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Claudia was the one who died, Okay. Cynthia, that's the one.
She's the one who works in the wardrobe department of
different studios. Courtney was the one who was an editor.
I don't know if she still is anymore.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I haven't had Courtney Lee. Yeah, it says here. Marvin
married Betty Evely in April of nineteen fifty two, and
together they had four children, a son, Christopher Lamont and
three daughters, Courtney Lee, Cynthia Luis, and Claudia Leslie. Well,
shout out to your father. All right, if you guys
happen to stumble on this podcast and you're still around,
so shout out to your father. We're keeping him going,
(24:49):
all right, rock and roll.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Did you notice the story the way they were named
first name with the sea, last name of an l Oh, Yeah,
uh they did. Yeah. I got to know Betty Marvin
very well. She was a wonderful wonderful person.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Well, they gave they gave Courtney. His middle name is
his first name, Lee. Yeah, they gave that, which is
actually my middle name. They gave Christopher, Lee's father. Christopher's
middle name is Lee's father's first name, Lamont Marvin Okay,
so Lamont is Lee's original is his first name.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
No, Lee's Father's first name.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Oh, I see, I see. So they kind of kept
that whole family in there. I got you right.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
I asked Betty about the names, and she said it
was ridiculous. It was like we were naming orangutangs. She
was a trippy chick. He said such great things to me.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I named all my kids after bridges. We named my
daughter Brooklyn, and then we named my daughter. My name,
my daughter Sydney. And then we try to think of Alexander,
but we just went with He made the Silk Road.
So that's a bridge between economies. Right there, you go,
that's cool. I always liked what that think Ron Howard
did with his kids. He named all of his kids
(26:01):
in the hotels that were conceived in. He has a Marriott, but.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
His daughter, who's an actress, Bryce Howard. There was a
Bryce Hotel and.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
There o mg Ron Howard, I'm gonna I'm doing this.
I'm looking it up right now. Ron Howard who played
Opie on Andy Griffith and is a huge director nowadays.
He did Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Uh Rich, Richie Cunningham on Happy Days.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Richie Cunningham on Happy Days. Bryce so Paige and see,
we'll have to find out. Yeah, he does have a
Bryce stylest. That is funny. That funny enough. Wow, his
kids are my age.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
It's just something I thought about. Yeah, getting back.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
To Lee Marvin. Yeah, as you know or may not know,
I'm assuming you do or not. Doesn't matter that I
know everything.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I'm sorry, I said I know everything.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
It takes all the mystery out of life.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
And yeah, he was in the Marines and he did
twenty one landings during the Marines island hopping campaign in
the Pacific, and he saw some things and he did
some things that were pretty horrific that stayed with him
the rest of his life. I didn't say it in
specifics because I didn't know for sure, but when I
(27:24):
was working on the book, it seemed to me he
suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, and I hinted at
it when I wrote at it and I didn't find
out specifically until I talked to a friend of his,
the lifelong friend of his, who said, almost definitely he
had PTSD. You could see it, and he knew he
had it, but he didn't find out until the end
of his life. I would find out in talking to
(27:45):
all the people he knew that he was close to.
I found out if there were ten symptoms of PTSD,
he had eight of them. But in truth he had
all ten. The alcoholism, screaming nightmares, and attraction to violence,
loud noises would make him jump ten feet in the air,
you know, things like that.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Those are the only ones I can think of off
the top of my head.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
But his wife, his first wife, his brother, his son,
they all told me that he had screaming nightmares when
he came back from the war.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
And it even quotes you. Honestly, I just googled. Here's
what I did. I just looked up Lee Marvin USMC PTSD,
and it says a World War Two veteran and former marine,
Marvin was in some of the bloodiest battles of the
Pacific Theater. He suffered from post traumatic stress disorder most
of his life. Epstein says, they had to slug through
jungles for days just to gain yardage, and he was
(28:39):
wounded on Saipan. Right, this is just a this is
the first thing that pops up when you type that
in for Lee Marvin. So, yeah, for sure, if he's
in all these bloody battles, he's gonna have just you know,
he's gonna see it.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
I don't know how strong a stomach you were, your
audience has.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
But strong it's weak. Their stomach weak. Let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Okay, great, let's be good and sadistic. He used to
tell this story to test people about whether they can
handle anything he tells them in terms.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
Of his experience.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
And it was shortly after he landed, and I think
it was either enerwe talk equation in one of the
Japanese islands, Japanese held islands.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
That and it was early on.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I think it was like nineteen forty three, and he
joined in late forty two. Anyway, they trained real quick
so they could get sent overseas. He was in the
fighting forth the fourth Marine Division. And once they landed,
he saw a pregnant woman, a Japanese pregnant woman with
a dead baby in her arms, and she was crying, okay,
(29:43):
and one of the Marines in his outfit stepped up
and said, drop that baby. She was crying, she said,
you know, and I don't even know if she understood
what he was saying, right, And she just kept crying
and shaking her head, and he asked her one more time.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
She refused.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
He took his he took his knife out, cut her
belly open, disemboweled her. The fetus fell out, put the
knife back, and, as Lee Levin would tell people, it
was at that moment he realized what war was said,
it wasn't anything like I ever thought it would be. Now,
granted that might have been considered a war crime, and
it probably is, but it happens, happens all the time
(30:22):
in any gracuation.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Dude, Yeah, it's you know, I talked to a lot
of folks right that have gone through a lot of
the rigamoose of war and combat, and they all have
some type of a kind of like a hollow voice
stare when they're talking about certain things, and you know,
you just kind of let it, let it go, you know,
(30:44):
let him, let them talk. And then at the end
of it, I'm like, you're home, Johnny, You're a home. Yeah,
welcome back, you know, welcome back from nom And he's like,
but I went to Afghanistan. It's like, yeah, I know, bro,
welcome home. Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
See, I do war games, and I'm sure you're totally
aware of that, but I do large scale wargames as
like as a commander of a unit and everything like that.
We have guys with night vision and we go out
to the west deserts of Utah and we get together
and we fight each other till from like ten in
the morning till about two in the morning. So we
go into the night and we go late into the night.
And I had a friend of mine come home from Afghanistan.
(31:24):
And the first thing he did was he came straight
off the plane. He got a ride out to the
desert right to where we were, and he got dropped
off by whoever, and he's like, hey, I'm back. We're
like yes. Everyone put their plate carrier on him and
gave him an extra rifle and gave him his night vision.
As soon as they put that night vision on him,
and he had just gotten home and he's now not
in Afghanistan. As soon as they put that night vision
(31:44):
on and we started moving out. He just had to
sit down. He's like, I can't do this, and he
kind of just melted right there. And you know, he
had just been wearing night vision and just doing all
of that, and what he thought he was missing out
on here he had already. It was just too much,
too soon. And so I can only imagine, you know,
somebody who has been through twenty one of the bloodiest
(32:08):
battles of island hopping along Japan and Saipan and all
these different places as a young mareen.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
You know, the thing is what you just described that
gentleman went through is very typical. He just gets off
the plane and he wants to go back into a
war game, and then he freezes that paradox that irony is.
Did you ever see the movie The hurt Locker, Yes, Yeah,
kind of like that. He's lucky to get back from
(32:37):
the war and he's standing in a grocery store and
he can't focus and he can't concentrate, he can't think
of anything except being there, and he goes back right
right that PTSD. The whole time, You're like, I want
to go home.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I want to go home and start my motel on
a river that's in this forest area and then it's
been mowed down and turn into a mall. And then
you're like, I'm gonna go back to thes or the
military because they'll take care of me. And it's just like,
you know, the the transition that our troops have to do.
What Lee Marvin did was transitioned successfully from civilian. I
(33:12):
think a boxer didn't need box too. As a young man,
he is in box No, I'm not a boxer.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
No, he played he played a boxer on TV until
you like, from a movie.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
That's what I'm thinking of. That's what I'm thinking. So
what I'm getting at is he started as a young man,
went to the Marine Corps and got out and had
to transition into something that all a lot of my
listeners who are veterans, they always say, what's next for
me after I get out of the military. Well, this
dude became an actor, right.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, Well what happened with Lee was when he came
back his parents lived in upstate New York. They lived
in Woodstock, and uh, the same place before the concert, Right,
They lived in Woodstock, and there was a kind of
a little artist colony in Woodstock. There always had been.
And when he got back, his father knew some people
in town. He was fairly well known, and he got
him a job as a plumber's assistant. And that's what
(34:01):
he wanted to do. He wanted to be a plumber,
he said. It was the best thing he could do
at the time. It was therapeutic, It made him not
have to think about things, and it was good exercise
for his back, he said.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
And then this is a.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Great story about There were like three or four different
versions of this story about how he became an actor.
The one that was the true story is probably the best.
And I won't even tell you the story he made up.
This is the real story. He became really good friends
with a guy named Ian Valentine, who would later go
on to.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Create Valentine Books.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
And Ian Valentine's wife was Betty Valentine, and they were
having a party at Ian Valentine's parents' house for his birthday. Now,
Ian Valentine's father was a gentleman, Teddy Valentine, and he
ran or co ran this place called the Maverick Theater
in Woostock, New York. Now, for such a small community,
there are actually three or four live theaters there, which
(34:59):
is kind of interesting. But that night at the party,
everybody's getting swapped everybody. That was the word that Lee used.
And there was an actor and a play they were
about to do. The play was called Roadside, which would
later become musicalized as Oklahoma Anyway. So the actor that
was supposed to play this character called Texas was sick
(35:21):
and in excuse me, Teddy Valentine shouted from across the room, Hey, Lee,
we need a loud mouth drunk. Can you play a
loudmouth on stage? He was drunk, he said yes. Now
the next morning he was hungover, I mean I really hungover,
and he was kind of like, oh what did I do?
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
So Betty Valentine, and she was the one one of
the people who told me the story. Betty Valentine said,
I stayed up with him all day, you know, sobering
him up, learning the lines, and she goes, but in truth,
he never really learned the lines. How could he. He
had one day. So what happened was when he made
his entrance. I loved this story. Back East, they have
(36:02):
dry storms where you know, I don't know, say almost
fire whatever, and there's lightning and thunder, but there's no rain.
When he made his entrance, all six foot two and
a half inches of him in those big boots, cowboy hat,
and gun belt. There was a thundercrack when he came
out on stage with that presence of his and he
was like, that's it. I know what I'm doing with
(36:24):
the rest of my life and there's no holding me back.
I want to be an actor. And he joined the
American Theater Wing, which was an organization that was created
under the GI Bill for returning vets in order to
learn to be an actor. And the interesting thing is
they didn't do like Stanislavsky or the Royal Academy or
anything like that. What they did was they taught these
(36:45):
guys how to get jobs, how to do an audition,
how to.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Audition, yes, audition and audition and cold reads, and how
to audition against dathells yes.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Which is an art in and of itself. Now, the
funny thing is he didn't tell his father he was
going to do that. His father thought he was gonna
apply to the GI Bill as a what you call it,
a bricklayer, betrayed a sprint player.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
But what he did was he used the money from
the GI Bill to get into the.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
American Theater way. Yes, and it worked and why not.
His father was very pissed off at him. But and
it's interesting he had Robert his brother told me that
when his when Monte Lamont Marvin found out that Lee
was going to be an actor, he hit the roof
and Robert told me, he goes. My father said to him,
(37:35):
don't ever expect any help from me. You're on your own,
you know, if you're if you're gonna do this crazy thing,
no help from me. Well, apparently I found Lee Marvin's
check book from that time.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Go oh.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
I stayed at the Marvin home because that's where Robert
was living. And I was there for about two weeks
and I was able to find all contragreat stuff. And
I found Lee Marvin's checkbook and his father's checkbook, and
apparently his father.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Lent him money for a winter coat. He paid his
phone bill one month. He yeah, he's a dad. That's
exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
You know, you gotta believe in your kid. Who went
to World War two?
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Bro right, By the way, so did Monte Marvin. He
was in World War One and he was in World
War Two. He was in both. He was a lieutenant
in World War One and in World War Two he
resigned his commission and was just like, you know, a
death sergeant.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
But wow. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
His brother Robert was also in World War Two. He
was in the Army Air Force. He was in the
ground What the hell was the word. He's the guy
with the lights to go like this, you know where
the plans you're coming in?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Sure? Sure, yeah, like a runway guy on the tarmac
that crodded ground crew. Sure.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Yeah. So all of it, all of them.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
His dad was in World War One and World War Two. Yeah,
because they were like not that far apart, like seventeen
twenty one, see nineteen eighteen, nineteen thirty.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Yeah, seriously, Yeah, you know, it's funny. Marvin had a
very complicated relationship with his father. He loved his father dearly,
but he was always disappointing his father. And at the
same time, Monty was a very cold and somewhat unemotional man.
And Lee used to tell the story about his father.
He said, I know a lot of people think that
(39:21):
my father was unemotional, but when he was in World
War One, he was in command of a cavalry platoon,
you know, horses, And he said, when they got hit
with mustard gas. He said, they had gas masks on,
but they didn't have it for the horses. And he said,
and he goes, and when he saw all those horses
bodies getting twisted and mangled, he goes, he cried just
(39:43):
in me telling it, and he goes. He can be
emotional depending on what it was about. So it's kind
of interesting.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
I always cry when the horse gets killed and not
the cowboy too. Right in a movie, right what not?
Speaker 4 (39:56):
The horse.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Out to horse.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
I remember one time, and this is one of the
reasons why I was always proud of my mother. Do
you remember the movie sounder Paul Winfield Cecily Tyson. Great
movie She's Got a Black share cropping family in the
nineteen thirties, And we saw the movie in the theater.
I was like ten or eleven years old, and we
saw the movie in the theater. And there's a scene
in the movie when the father played by Paul Winfield,
(40:23):
the family is so desperate for food they're apparently making
any money. He breaks into a local market and steals
some food. Okay, so the cops come and get them,
and they're carrying them away, and everybody in the family
is in tears. It's like, don't take daddy right, understandably right.
And as they're taking them away their dog the title
of the movie, Sounder gets shot. Sounder gets shot chasing
(40:47):
Paul Winfield. And when that happened in the theater, everybody's like.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
Oh no, not the dog. My mother turned around. Does
the whole theater have went? How's the matter with you people?
He's going to jail. You can crying for the stupid dog.
I just got my way to go.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Oh that's like old yeller. Yes, you know, you just
don't don't want it to happen. But I liked that
my mother's sentiment was in the right place. Hey, you
know in your book, you know, the Dirty Does in
the best World War Two iconic film, you have like
(41:24):
a special thanks page in there, right, there's a Barbara says.
It says special thanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so there's let
me speak up just a little bit for you, my friend.
It says, like, you know, to my friend, maybe Barbara,
you know, why do you want to explain why?
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (41:42):
What I wrote was this? Okay? Where is it? Yeah?
For Mike, he knows why. And to Barbara she knows why. Okay,
Barbara is my girlfriend and she's right across the apartment
now and I love her.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
She's the love of my life.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
No ship together over almost almost twenty five years now.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
The interesting part.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Is Mike, Okay, my landlord's name is Mike Peterson. And
he read the book and he went, hey, man, thanks
for naming for dedicating the book to me. And I
was like, it's not dedicated to you, morohnes the matter
with you?
Speaker 4 (42:17):
Why would I dedicated to my landlord? Okay.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
One of my best friends growing up was a guy
named Mike Barrow now Mike Barrow and I used to
watch The Dirty Dozen constantly, every single time.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
It was on TV.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
When they used to show it in two parts, we'd
watch it together. When it first came out on VHS,
we would I got it first, he got it later.
But because I got it first. If there was nothing
going on, this is when we were in our teens
in twenties, there was nothing.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Going on in our lives.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
He would call me up and say, you got anything
going on tonight? And I said no, and he would go,
you want to watch a Dirty Dozen? I said yeah,
And it got to the point I'm not making this up.
It got to the point I reminded him of this
late recently. We're still friends. He would go, he'd call
me up and it was it was it was before
call caller ID. So I hear the phone ring, I
pick it up and he would go shoot and I
(43:09):
would go, okay, come on over.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
And watch it the theme song. So that's why it's
dedicated to Mike.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I love that.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
I love you for to do that either, which was
really cool. He was blown away.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
That's the best thing, you know. That's so awesome. I'll
tell you I have a similar kind of blowing my
friends away kind of nice thing is I have a
warehouse outside a Hill Air Force Base where I run
indoor war games. And they got these big windows on them,
and uh, me and my business partner were like, well,
let's just put our homies up that we play war
games with on the windows, like show it's a community environment.
(43:45):
And so we went and got all these pictures that
I had taken over the years, and I was like,
which one I'm gonna put and we put them up
on the windows and the guys never knew it, and
they showed up to see the shop and they saw
themselves on the windows. And they're like, yeah, they're all
like standing like like Captain Morgan's like pointing themselves the window.
You know what They're like, that's me, you know, take
a picture and you know. It's the simple things that
(44:06):
make us love one another in a relationship, right, It's
the small things, dude, That's right. It's the littlest things memories.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
And that's usually what's so funny. That's usually what you
remember most. You don't remember well, you know, I remember friends'
weddings and stuff like that. But for the most part,
it's those little moments in life that take precedence, you know.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
That's what you're always have to do. Mike and I
have a lot of As matter of fact, there's a
group of us. I don't know I'm telling you this,
but I'm gonna tell it anyway.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
We call ourselves the Movieland Rat Pack because when we
were teenagers, Me, Mike, Brett, and Greg the four of us,
we all worked at movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park
and we bonded. We bonded really tight, and we still
are friends today. And once a year we haven't done
it in a while, but once a year we used
(44:54):
to have what we called the movieland rat Pack Summit,
where we would all meet somewhere for the longest time.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
You always want d up being Vegas.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
You know, sir. Of course everything's in Vegas. Let's see
to Vegas.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
We had gone to San Diego, we had gone to
San Francisco, and when we couldn't think of what which
way to go back to one of them again or whatever,
it was Vegas, Vegas.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
And we had a ball. We had so one time
when the Sands was about to close, when they were
about to demolish it at the Sands Hotel, we went
there and we decided, because every year we would do
something weird and wacky, and we decided, this year, we're
all gonna rent tuxedos and we're going to walk around
Vegas and tuxas and try to look cool.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
And we did, and we went to the Sands and
the act that was on stage it was one of
the last times, was Alan and Rossi.
Speaker 4 (45:43):
Remember Alan and Rossi from the old Ed Sullivan Shows.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
A matter of fact, Yeah, with Steve Rossi and Marty Allen,
you know Marty Allen with a big wild hair, Hello Dad,
And we came in we got in a little late.
Marty Allen couldn't help but notice us, and he sees
us and he goes, look, it's the White Molls brothers, and.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
Which was actually kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
And here's the way we After the show, we got
to go backstage to the dressing rooms of the Old
Sands and I and I asked, I said, is this
for Sinatra stage before he came on stage? And Marty
Allen said yeah. And I looked and I went, a
bitch of Dean Martin threw up in that toilet.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I'm best. Sammy Davis put in his eyeball on that
out right right from the mirror, right right there. You
got a baby, Oh yeah, baby.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
And then when the show was over, we're going back
to our room, and in the parking lot out comes
Marty Allen. We kind of crossed paths, and he remembered us,
talked to us a little bit somewhere.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
I got, well, I'm not gonna look for it.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
But anyway, he tells us a joke and he goes,
let me ask you boys a question.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
Who's a really hot sectionmber right now?
Speaker 3 (46:55):
And we thought for a minute. At that time, I said,
we said Pam Anderson, and he went okay, guy's on
a desert island all by himself, been there for years.
Then a giant wave washes over and on the wave
is Pam Anderson and she lands right on the island. Okay,
and as luck would have it, she was doing Baywatch
at the time, but anyway, she goes exactly yeah, and
(47:18):
Pam Anderson tells the guy, thank you for saving my life.
Is there anything I can do for you? And the
guy says, yeah, what do you think? And so after
about the four or fifth time, she she goes, wow,
that was incredible. That's the best sex I ever had.
Anything I can do for you, and the guy says, yeah,
do me a favor. Put it on this hat and coat,
(47:40):
man's man's trash coat, trensh coat in a fedora.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
She puts it on and the guy looks around and
he goes like this. He puts his.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Arm around Pam Anderson goes, did you know I'm stopping
Pam Anderson.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
To this guy. He wanted to let this guy know.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
For Fuddy Ola told us that joke. We all fell apart,
and then he just walked way.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
It was so cool. It was like, you know, Batman
or something.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
That guy. Yeah, he just had it up here, that
rollodex of those jokes.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
You bet you anyway.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Well that's great, No, I love that and the fact
that you were able. You were like, did Dean Martin
throw up in that bucket or that toilet? I bet
he did? I bet he did.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
He? Actually, this is so stupid. We actually took a
vote about who was who. My buddy Brett because she
was the shortest, was Sammy Davis Jr. My buddy Mike
because we always thought it was so cool, he was
Dean Martin. And my buddy Greg Fry, who was very fastidious,
very uh cognizant of how he dresses or whatnot, he
was Peter Lawford, and I was Frank sat.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Of course I got. Of course we actually took I
want to be Johnny Carson. Well, what's the joke. Left
one in the room is Joey Bishop. Well, Well that's
the show tonight, ed. Well listen you have I've had
(49:04):
you for almost an hour of your time talking Lee Marvin,
talking about his lineage, talking about the book that you
wrote as an author, as a respected author, you can
find Killing Generals, the Making of the Dirty Dozen, the
most iconic World War Two movie of all time written
by my new friend Dwayne Epstein. It's out everywhere, right,
we can find this on the internet at bookstore and.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Born and Noble and wherever find books are sold. And
this is still very much in print and still selling.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Lee Marvin's point blank. Dwayne Epstein. Yeah, we will put
that in the description of this episode, so when people
are looking at soft rep dot com they can just
read about what we kind of talked about and click
on it and possibly go find your book. So, you know,
let's make sure that Anton, my producer, gets a link
from your bio so we can share that because we
(49:52):
would love to put that out there and probably in
the book club.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
And I was that last part again, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
We could try to get in the book club.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Oh, that would be terrific. Thank you, And if you
need to, I can email you the Amazon link for
both books.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Oh yeah, that's perfect, and we'll just give it to
Anton and the guys and they'll just go ahead and
do a dissertation and they'll put that all linkage in there.
So really, I just want to say thank you for
the working through all the technical difficulties these last two
three days to get together and it's really been worth it.
Speaker 4 (50:25):
Yeah, and thank my neighbor Shannon. She's a sweetheart.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Oh, Shannon, you're a sweetheart. Huh hey, no problem, Thanks Shannon.
We appreciate you absolutely.
Speaker 4 (50:32):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
And if you want to Barbara and Barbara, we appreciate Barbara. Yes.
Speaker 4 (50:36):
And if you want to cut out that movieland rat
pack stuff, that's fine by me.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Oh we're not. We're not even done yet, brother, nothing's
getting cut. No, we're still going strong, bro. You go ahead,
keep telling Bishop rad what else you want to confess.
Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
If you want to leave it in. If you want
to leave it in, I could certainly send it to
them and they could.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
Oh yeah, no, oh please, we will. Yes, And we're
going to leave it in there, and that rat pack
is going to exist for the rest of this internets,
at least this payment of this website.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
Right on.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Cool Now, listen, I'm gonna wind this down, and I'm
gonna say it's been a pleasure to have you on
the show, Dwayne, and I'd love to have you again
as a guest or commentary about anything Lee Marvin or whatever.
If you have another book coming out man, you have
a welcome welcome position.
Speaker 4 (51:18):
Here, coolness.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
I'm working on a few things actually, and when they
come to fruition, I will certainly let you know about it.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
It'd be my honor to have you back on the show,
and I'm sure our guests would be stoked to have you.
And with that said, I want you to go out
and check out soft reap dot com and check out
our book hyphen Club okay, and the merch store. Keep
supporting us. And thank you so much to my guest
Dwayne and to his significant other Barbara. Okay, you guys,
thanks so much. This is rad saying peace.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
You've been listening to self Rep Ladia
Route Force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails and
straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Hi, welcome back to a special edition of soft Rep Radio.
I am your host rad Before I introduce my guest,
I want to tell you guys to consistently check out
our merch store right We really appreciate you going in
checking out the merch at soft reap dot com. And
also our book club. We've been getting a lot of
new memberships in the book club and I can only
think that it's because I'm mentioning it. So we have
(00:57):
soft rep dot com Forward slash book hyphen Club. Go
check out the book club. See what Brandon Webb has
been putting inside of that book club for you to
enjoy and check it out. And we also have a
lot of things going on if you sign up for
our newsletters at soft rep dot com. There's some membership
deals right now, so go check out soft rep dot com. Now.
I have an author with me, as I usually have
(01:19):
authors and the like. This is Dwayne Epstein and he
wrote The Dirty Dozen, the most iconic World War two
film movie with Lee Marvin And the reason why I
kind of am like just thinking this through is because
I really like Lee Marvin. And if you're my listener
out there, and you know who Lee Marvin is, white hair,
think Chuck Norris and Delta Force, think the Dirty Dozen
(01:43):
as the he's the major major John Reisman, Right, isn't
that right? Reiman Riceman? So, Dwayne, you've written books the
Killing of Generals, you know, the Dirty Dozen, the best
iconic movie. Welcome to the program. Thank you right, I
appreciate it. Yeah, we've been trying to get each other
for a few days now, and I'm super excited to
have finally got this all stream together. So am my.
(02:06):
So let me just kind of say it correctly. So
you wrote Killing Generals, the Making of the Dirty Dozen
the most iconic World War Two movie of all time.
Where do you get off saying it's the most iconic
World War two movie? Tell me why?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Well, real quick answer. That was not my idea of
a subtitle. That was my publisher. I didn't even know
he was going to call it that. I kind of agree,
not entirely agree. There are equally iconic movies. It's not demos.
But the one thing we did agree on early on
the publisher and I was in the title. I was
thinking maybe calling it meant on a mission or I
think he had suggested something like, oh, what, what's the
(02:45):
line cuss already so you don't know, Victor Franco, you know,
something like that, But that not.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Anything we talked about.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
That was something we talked about after We immediately both
came up with killing generals.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
It was amazing. We said it at the same time
in a phone.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Conversation, and then he mentioned to me some of the
other ideas he had had. But we both thought killing
generals is perfect because it's one of the most famous
lines in the movie.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
It's also the last line in the movie.
Speaker 3 (03:10):
And it also says in two words volumes about what
the theme of the movie is about. It's rather antisocial,
it's anti military. Some would say it's anti war. I
don't know if that's necessarily the case or not, but
it's certainly. There are several major themes in the film,
and one of them is that, you know, the film
came out during the Vietnam War, which was growing more
(03:31):
unpopular with every passing year, and by sixty seven, which
I write about in the book, we were in the
hit heat of it in the midst of it, and
people were starting to not want to be involved in
the war anymore, wanted us to pull out. There were
more and more protests and demonstrations, and so there were
parallels to what the film is about to what was
going on in the country at the time. Director Robert
(03:55):
Aldridge called it the perfect storm and that we couldn't
have planned to have this woe come out at the
time things were societally going on. As it turned out,
a lot of young people liked the film for that message,
you know, draft age kids, and a lot of older people,
the greatest generation, you know, the war had only ended
(04:16):
sixteen years before, and so they loved the movie because
it was a lot of what they felt about and
saw in real life. Even though they took a lot
of you know, what's the word they they took a
lot of freedom with the storyline, you know that would
never happen in real life. You know, twelve convicts being
trained for a suicide mission.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
We do have the French Foreign Legion though that does exist.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Oh that yeah, by definition, that's what they do, you
know what I mean, We just want you to fight
for us, and it has happened, by the way, historically,
but never in this country. We would never have that
happen here. A matter of fact, it's going on right
now in Russia. They opened up the Russian prisons and
made quote unquote mercenaries they're not mercenaries, they're prisoners, and
(05:02):
trained them to fight against the Ukrainians.
Speaker 4 (05:04):
In fact, that guy that was shot was killed and
killed in the airplane.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
The guy who trained them end up being an enemy
of Putin, and he was kind of I think his
name was Pegosian.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
He was. He was running that mercenary group, the Wagner
gu Yeah, the Wagner, right, Yes, that's right, that's right,
that's right.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
He was kind of like John Reichman, but a lot
less ethical, for lack of better way to put it.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
And by the.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Way, during World War Two, the Nazis had done it
themselves in oh Gosh I which you can remember the
country one of the eastern European countries. I write about
it in the book that had opened up the prisons
to fight the Partisans.
Speaker 4 (05:44):
In oh Gosh. I think it was Romania, I'm not sure.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
And it was done by a German officer who was
had been convicted for had a prison wrecking himself. He
had been a child molester, and they don't seem to
really care, the Nazis.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
They'll do whatever, right, right, We'll look at this exactly.
So Lee Marvin, right, that's that's what we're really celebrating here,
is him as a United States Marine Corps veteran who
fought during World War Two, kind of had a call
to service again as an actor to almost like, you know,
(06:21):
help the effort. Put it out there. And so he's like, Hey,
I'm gonna do a movie and we're going to show
these guys give their last breath of possible air to America.
Still they may have done these heinous crimes that they're
accused of, like Charles Bronson, and boy, there were some
others in there. Holy cow, there's so many people in that.
It won like four Academy Awards and it wasn't even
(06:44):
supposed to win an Academy Award.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Well it actually it only won one, but it was
nominated for four. Excuse me, that's okay. And when I
did my Lee Marvin book, Lee Marvin, point blank, I
got to interview a lot of great people who newly
really well, including his son who has since passed away.
But Christopher Marvin told me his father made a lot
of military theme or war films. And Christopher said, I
(07:08):
know why my father made those movies. He made them
for the guys who didn't come back. That it was
a matter of making a statement. And you know, Lee
Marvin never really made like a I don't I'm not
putting him down per se, but he never made a
kind of a John Wayne war movie. If you understand
what that means and praising it. It was never He
(07:29):
never made a real gung ho let's go get them guys,
Let's get that hill blody blahody blah. There was always
a much greater subtext to any time he wore a
uniform in a film, and it was often about how
you know.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
I'll give you an example.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
There's a rumor that still exists about how Lee what
Lee Marvin felt about The Dirty Does and a lot
of people think he did it just for the money
and it was a popcorn film.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
And he didn't really like it because he didn't believe it.
That's just not true.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
I don't know how that got started, but it's an
historical misinformation and interview upon an interview after the film
came out.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
He didn't have to say this, but an interview.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Upon an interview, he would always say, I like this movie,
and the reason I like it is because it doesn't
necessarily tell the truth. It's not very believable as a premise,
but what the movie has to say about war, I
believe in it and I like it. John Wayne was
first offered the lead, and he turned it down, and
(08:25):
I loved this story. He sent a memo to the
producer Ken Hyman, whom I interviewed. By the way, he's
still alive, and John Wayne wrote in the memo, whoever
wrote this piece of crap script, okay, is probably some
sandal wearing, long haired hippie freak carrying a sign that
says he doesn't want to fight in a war that
(08:46):
he really should be fighting himself. Okay, here's the thing.
The script was written by a sixty six year old
screenwriting Oscar winning veteran, Nunneley Johnson. Now, when they offered
it to Lee Marvin, he said, I guess right away.
It's often been said too that one of the things
John Wayne didn't like about it was the innocent killing
of some of the people at the end of the film.
(09:08):
You know the Nazis, yes, but also they were there
with their concubine women whatever. And it's open to question
exactly how innocent and a woman is who hangs up
with a Nazi.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
But that's another subject.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Guilty by association, dude, I mean it happens all the time.
You know, we took out a whole wedding and a
Yemen just for one guy, right with Lee Marvin didn't
have a problem with that.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Lee Marvin actually said, look, war is hell, and let's
be honest with each other. You know, innocent people died
more all the time, and he cited the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
A lot of innocent people died. That happens in more
and that's one of the points in the film. Matter
of fact, the way they die at the end was
(09:49):
really kind of parallel. And Robert Aldridge did this on
purpose to you know, the blowing up of the chateau
at the end of the film. He considered it parallel
to the use of napalm Vietnam and as well as
the ovens during World War Two in the concentration camps.
It wasn't an accident, and it wasn't did they mean
this or did they mean that? It was clear what
(10:10):
they meant. It was very symbolic. And like I said,
Lee Marvin didn't have a problem with that, and he
liked it. He also loved playing the character of John Reichman.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, he held it pretty well. You know. You'd see
him walking in the courtyard as he's like, you know,
looking at his dirty dozen, you know, and he just
kind of walked with a nice walk, and he really
held it well. I enjoyed that movie. I grew up
with it. I was born in the seventies, you know,
I'm forty six, so it's been around. You know, a
lot of Lee Marvin has been in my life. I
didn't realize it until looking up Lee Marvin. Really how
(10:39):
much more Lee Marvin there was? And all the Delta Forces,
right you do you know the first one, Well, he
was like the main guy. He's like the guy that
put him all there. He's like, I need you all
to do this, Chuck Norris, you need to go on
this mission point blank. Huh you talk about that? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
That was a book that took me twenty years to
get pub and in the twenty years I did a
lot of research. The twenty years were a little kind
of off and on because in between both my parents
got ill and we had to take care of him
a little bit until they passed away. And the guy
most responsed to people are most responsible for me being
able to get that published one was my agent, wonderful,
(11:19):
wonderful human being who passed away a few years back,
named Mike Hamilberg. Mike Hamilberg believed in this project more
than anybody other than myself, and he finally found a publisher,
a gentleman by the name of Tim Schaffner of Schaffner
Press out of Tucson, Arizona. And we had gotten rejection
from pretty much every publisher there is.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Now this is just real quick aside.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
When the book came out and it became an ebook,
it made number four on the New York Times Bestsellers list,
rare thing for a film biography of a gentleman who
had gone since nineteen eighty seven. And because we had
gotten turned down by everybody, Tim had gone to a
conference of other independ to publishers and they all came.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Up to him and I went, Wow, great job.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
But the Lee Marvin book boy, I wish we would
have published it, to which you know, I could say,
you had your chance, man, you blew it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly,
a little you know, pat on the back there. And
it did well and I I'm very proud of it,
and it also won a couple of publishing awards too.
But I came to Killing Generals via my new agent,
(12:24):
a gentleman by the name of Lee Sobol, who is
a go get her as you can get man.
Speaker 4 (12:28):
You talk about a hustler. He's amazing.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
He contacted me asking me if I need an agent,
and I said, yeah, but you know agents don't contact writers.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Writers look for.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
Agents, and he's said, yeah, he goes, why a writer
so cynical? We could work this out. So we started well,
first I checked him out to make sure he was legit,
and he was, and then we started talking about a
project and he asked me, well, he said to me,
I loved your Lee Marvin book. How would you like
to write a book about one of only Marvin's films?
I said, yeah, that would be great, and he suggests,
(13:00):
point blank the John Borman film, which is what I
subtitled my bio on And I told him, you know what,
I liked that movie I don't love it. You want
to know my favoritely Marvin movie, that would be The
Dirty Dozen. I've always loved that movie ever since I
was a kid. And he say, tell you what, put
together a proposal. I'll shop it around and we'll see
what we can do. And I did, and he did,
(13:21):
and it wred.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That's amazing, you know, for a writer out there, you
know you just I want you to. I want them
to hear that. You just kept to it. You didn't stop.
You said, this is a twenty year in the making.
So by the time you had putten this altogether in
the beginning, you know, twenty years had gone by, you
were still trying to get it published, right, right.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
I came close a few times. It was a lady
at Penguin, one of the editors there, who really really
wanted to do it. But you see, I don't know
if most people know how these things are done, but
they're done by conference, you know, once a week or
once a month. Everybody in the editorial staff get together
and pitch ideas, straw out ideas, and they have to
(14:03):
have a majority vote in order to get the okay
to go with it. She didn't get it, and she
was very frustrated. I was working another job. I was
at a day job, working at a I was the
managing editor at a publisher for children's books.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
Believe it or not.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Anyway, she would contact me periodically when I was there,
and she would say, if I don't get to get
this book published, I'm gonna cut my throat. And I said, Hillary,
don't do that. That doesn't help anybody, and just keep plugging.
And ultimately it was a Penguin. I believe they turned
it down, and Mike Hamilberg knew that because he was
the one who got her in touch with me. And
(14:40):
Mike just said, keep plugging. We can do this. We
just can't give up. And I didn't. And don't get
me wrong, there were indeed times where I can't close
where I was like, why am I spending my wheel?
Why am I wasting my time? I could be doing
the something else with my life. But Mike didn't give up,
and I didn't give up, and it came to pass.
Funny thing is there was a period there, like I said,
(15:00):
when my parents were ill, where I didn't have any
contact with Mike anymore. I mean for a while, like
five six years, I think and then when I got
back in contact with him, first of all, I didn't
even know if he was still alive.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
And right, things are changing, right, right, I'm sorry, I said,
I said, things change, you know, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
And when I got back in contact with him, I said,
are you still are you still running your agency? And
he went, oh, yeah, I'll never quit. I'm semi retired.
I'm not taking on any any more new clients. But
and then he goes, what do you got And I said,
let me re ramp them Lee Marvin book, and you
tell me what your proposal and you tell me what
you think. And he said, do it and I did,
(15:38):
and he liked it even more because in the interim
I was able to find out a lot more information.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
So we got to really just crack that egg open
on Lee Marvin and just get more. And then you
could just you know, just edit your book and just
make it even more, uh you know Lee Marvin?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Right, he had said too. One of the ways he
encouraged me. I love this, he said, because people publishers
were saying, you know, he's been gone on too long,
people don't remember him. Who cares about Lee Marvin? And
Hammelberg said, look, you just keep plugging at this. I
guarantee you the Marvin fans are going to come up
behind the curtain once they know this exists, because they're
there and excuse me, he was right, He was absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Oh it's true. And I know my listener and the
folks on SOFTFRA know Lee Marvin. And if they haven't,
they need to know Lee Marvin. Just like a new
pop singer will do another rendition of a classic song
and old timers get upset at that new guy breaking
it out right, how dare he redoce somebody else's song?
But yet he's now just exposed that same that artist
(16:40):
through his rendition to his fans. Absolutely right, you know right,
And so I have to just say, you know again,
Lee Marvin. Right, let's let's talk about Lee Marvin Marine
Corps right, the United States Marines. He would be one
hundred years old. So we're filming this in February, you
and me and I usually posted up about a week
or two later, so it'll be his one hundredth birthday,
(17:00):
right February nineteenth.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I actually like to say, you know, President's Day is
an important day in our history and calendar.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
But it's every year.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Ali Marvin Centennial once and that's it, and this is
and that's when you got to celebrate. And it is
on Monday, February nineteenth because he was born February nineteenth,
nineteen twenty four.
Speaker 4 (17:23):
And I'd love to see him.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
More in the media for that and and you know,
have more conversations about his films, about his work, about
his life, mostly his legacy, which would be you know,
his films exactly.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
And like you said, he wanted to leave something of himself,
you know, and also for his buddies or those that
didn't make it back. I really like that sentiment that
you know, he would put into his acting. But I
also I loved him and I owned this movie growing up.
I'd watch it all the time. Was cat Balloo right
where he is this just like sixth sense, shit cowboy,
(18:01):
he just needs to sober.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
Up, right And he also you know, he played that character.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Yes, it was a comedy and he won the Oscar
for it, by the way, which is extremely rare for
comedy performances to win an Oscar. But he played that
character with a sense of poignancy. He has several speeches
in that movie where it's kind of like, what do
you do with a burnt out gunfighter, And Marvin had
commented that he thought of him as like an old boxer.
(18:28):
What do you do with a boxer who's passed his
prime and burnt out? Do you give him one more shot?
Maybe let him kill himself in the process, or what
I mean, what transpires for him? And there's a wonderful story.
I got to interview the late director Elliott Silverstein, who
directed the movie. He said, one of the first scenes
we shot was the scene where he has this really
long speech where in the speech he's, you know, he's
(18:52):
drinking from a flask and he keeps getting drunker and
drunker until I think it's I think it's Michael Callen's
character who says, I've never seen him and get through
a day so fast because he's getting drunk and drunk
un till he's falling down. But in the scene he
talks about what it's like to be an old gunfighter.
And they had to shoot it seven times before they
(19:14):
got it right. And it was the first thing they did,
and Marvin, of course was nervous, and Elliott Silverstein kept
coming up to Lee and he goes, try it this way,
try it that, way, and the producer of the movie
was on the set, a guy named Harold hecked, and
he was ready to fire Marvin on the spot because
he didn't like what he was seeing.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
And so on the.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Eighth take, Elliott Silverstein walked up to Lee and he went, look,
I know you can make me laugh.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
You're making me laugh. That's fine. I want you to
make me cry.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
See if you can do this where it's just so
poignant you feel for this guy. Elliott Silverstein had been
a director on a TV show called Naked City, and
a lot of the characters in Naked City, you know,
it's all about New York and people who are wanted
by the cops for a crime of this, and they're
all kind of desperate and downtrodden.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
And he goes, think of it as a he told Lee,
think of it as.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
A Naked City character, but you're in the Old West,
and Lee, Marvin being Lee, Marvin would go, gotcha, buddy,
right on, And then he did the scene and he
goes and then Elliott Silverstein said, I named my yacht
take eight because we got it.
Speaker 4 (20:21):
We nailed it on the eighth take. So I thought
that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (20:24):
That is pretty cool, you know't Lee Marvin has the
eyes that can just squint and just look in the camera.
And you know when you watch him in that movie,
he seems like a dirty, drunk cowboy. He just seems
like he smells and you know, you're just like, you know,
they're dragging him along and just like you know, he's
dragging his boot.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
He you know, the thing about his eyes.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
A famous scene that psych gag of him and the
horse drunk leaning against the wall and one of the
characters comes up to him, the Indian, and says.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Kid, look at you what look at your eyes?
Speaker 3 (21:01):
And Lee Marvin goes, what's wrong with my eyes? And
the kid goes, they're all red? And Lee Marvin goes.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
You ought to see him from my side? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, he's looking out of him man. Right, he was great, Yeah,
he was. He was. He was rip to Lee Marvin,
you know, and the legacy that he'll leave, and well
we're going to capture that here on softwarep And as
long as this website gets its bills paid, it'll stay
out there as long as the Internet can hold it,
I'm sure. So that's more you know of us talking
about Lee Marvin, and you know, his legacy and his kin.
(21:36):
You know, Like just recently I saw that John Wayne's
grandson is in The Mandalorian as he and he's the
way it's the way he walks. So the Mandalorian is
John Wayne's grandson dressed up with Pedro as the voice. Okay,
so there's three people that play the Mandalorian in this movie, right,
(21:58):
So I mean John Wayne's families out there still doing stuff.
I'm sure Lee Marvins got lineage out there. Did he
have grandkids and kids like that? Like he had?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
He had four children, two of which are still alive.
And the one I spoke to the most was his
was his son Christopher. Christopher became a drummer. He played
on Tom Waite's album Mule Variations and a few other things.
And he had three daughters.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
Now.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
One of his daughters, his oldest daughter, Courtney, was a
film editor. She worked on that Got Awful Kevin Costa
water World. Yeah, she was one of the main cutters
on that.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
And his other daughter.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Oh gosh, darn it, they all have c names, not Cynthia.
She was the baby she passed away. Courtney. It'll come
to me anyway. She is a wardrobe dresser for TV
and movies. So they're kind of in a roundabout way,
got what you call it in the industry, somewhat.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Yeah, they're still working in Hollywood, still doing working in
film and television and theater.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
Now, as far as grandchildren goes, it kind of works
like this. Lee was married twice and he had that
infamous relationship resulting in the palamony case with Michelle Triola.
But they never married and they never had children. But
Pam Peely Lee's last wife, his widow, no, his widow.
She had a bunch of children from previous marriages, and
(23:23):
several of them are still to this day trying to
break into the business. Well, not her children, her grandchildren
trying to break into the business. One of them is
I think, trying to be a stunt man. I think
his name is Joe King. I'm not sure. But in
any event, Oh, and Marvin did have a grandson. His
name is Edward Michael or something like that. His daughter,
(23:44):
once again, whose name I don't remember, she had a son,
and I think he's in his thirties.
Speaker 4 (23:50):
Now, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I asked him if he remembers his grandfather, and he said, yeah,
one time he told me to get my feet out
of the pool.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
That's all I remember.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Get your feet out of the pool. Kid, there's an
alligator in there. Or he just tried to warn the pool.
Let's see. Claudia, Courtney, and Cynthia that's it.
Speaker 4 (24:14):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
Claudia was the one who died, Okay. Cynthia, that's the one.
She's the one who works in the wardrobe department of
different studios. Courtney was the one who was an editor.
I don't know if she still is anymore.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
I haven't had Courtney Lee. Yeah, it says here. Marvin
married Betty Evely in April of nineteen fifty two, and
together they had four children, a son, Christopher Lamont and
three daughters, Courtney Lee, Cynthia Luis, and Claudia Leslie. Well,
shout out to your father. All right, if you guys
happen to stumble on this podcast and you're still around,
so shout out to your father. We're keeping him going,
(24:49):
all right, rock and roll.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Did you notice the story the way they were named
first name with the sea, last name of an l Oh, Yeah,
uh they did. Yeah. I got to know Betty Marvin
very well. She was a wonderful wonderful person.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Well, they gave they gave Courtney. His middle name is
his first name, Lee. Yeah, they gave that, which is
actually my middle name. They gave Christopher, Lee's father. Christopher's
middle name is Lee's father's first name, Lamont Marvin Okay,
so Lamont is Lee's original is his first name.
Speaker 4 (25:22):
No, Lee's Father's first name.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Oh, I see, I see. So they kind of kept
that whole family in there. I got you right.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
I asked Betty about the names, and she said it
was ridiculous. It was like we were naming orangutangs. She
was a trippy chick. He said such great things to me.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I named all my kids after bridges. We named my
daughter Brooklyn, and then we named my daughter. My name,
my daughter Sydney. And then we try to think of Alexander,
but we just went with He made the Silk Road.
So that's a bridge between economies. Right there, you go,
that's cool. I always liked what that think Ron Howard
did with his kids. He named all of his kids
(26:01):
in the hotels that were conceived in. He has a Marriott, but.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
His daughter, who's an actress, Bryce Howard. There was a
Bryce Hotel and.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
There o mg Ron Howard, I'm gonna I'm doing this.
I'm looking it up right now. Ron Howard who played
Opie on Andy Griffith and is a huge director nowadays.
He did Doctor Seuss.
Speaker 4 (26:30):
Uh Rich, Richie Cunningham on Happy Days.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Richie Cunningham on Happy Days. Bryce so Paige and see,
we'll have to find out. Yeah, he does have a
Bryce stylest. That is funny. That funny enough. Wow, his
kids are my age.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
It's just something I thought about. Yeah, getting back.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
To Lee Marvin. Yeah, as you know or may not know,
I'm assuming you do or not. Doesn't matter that I
know everything.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
I'm sorry, I said I know everything.
Speaker 4 (27:01):
It takes all the mystery out of life.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
And yeah, he was in the Marines and he did
twenty one landings during the Marines island hopping campaign in
the Pacific, and he saw some things and he did
some things that were pretty horrific that stayed with him
the rest of his life. I didn't say it in
specifics because I didn't know for sure, but when I
(27:24):
was working on the book, it seemed to me he
suffered from post traumatic stress disorder, and I hinted at
it when I wrote at it and I didn't find
out specifically until I talked to a friend of his,
the lifelong friend of his, who said, almost definitely he
had PTSD. You could see it, and he knew he
had it, but he didn't find out until the end
of his life. I would find out in talking to
(27:45):
all the people he knew that he was close to.
I found out if there were ten symptoms of PTSD,
he had eight of them. But in truth he had
all ten. The alcoholism, screaming nightmares, and attraction to violence,
loud noises would make him jump ten feet in the air,
you know, things like that.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
Those are the only ones I can think of off
the top of my head.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
But his wife, his first wife, his brother, his son,
they all told me that he had screaming nightmares when
he came back from the war.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
And it even quotes you. Honestly, I just googled. Here's
what I did. I just looked up Lee Marvin USMC PTSD,
and it says a World War Two veteran and former marine,
Marvin was in some of the bloodiest battles of the
Pacific Theater. He suffered from post traumatic stress disorder most
of his life. Epstein says, they had to slug through
jungles for days just to gain yardage, and he was
(28:39):
wounded on Saipan. Right, this is just a this is
the first thing that pops up when you type that
in for Lee Marvin. So, yeah, for sure, if he's
in all these bloody battles, he's gonna have just you know,
he's gonna see it.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
I don't know how strong a stomach you were, your
audience has.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
But strong it's weak. Their stomach weak. Let's hear it.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Okay, great, let's be good and sadistic. He used to
tell this story to test people about whether they can
handle anything he tells them in terms.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
Of his experience.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
And it was shortly after he landed, and I think
it was either enerwe talk equation in one of the
Japanese islands, Japanese held islands.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
That and it was early on.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I think it was like nineteen forty three, and he
joined in late forty two. Anyway, they trained real quick
so they could get sent overseas. He was in the
fighting forth the fourth Marine Division. And once they landed,
he saw a pregnant woman, a Japanese pregnant woman with
a dead baby in her arms, and she was crying, okay,
(29:43):
and one of the Marines in his outfit stepped up
and said, drop that baby. She was crying, she said,
you know, and I don't even know if she understood
what he was saying, right, And she just kept crying
and shaking her head, and he asked her one more time.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
She refused.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
He took his he took his knife out, cut her
belly open, disemboweled her. The fetus fell out, put the
knife back, and, as Lee Levin would tell people, it
was at that moment he realized what war was said,
it wasn't anything like I ever thought it would be. Now,
granted that might have been considered a war crime, and
it probably is, but it happens, happens all the time
(30:22):
in any gracuation.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Dude, Yeah, it's you know, I talked to a lot
of folks right that have gone through a lot of
the rigamoose of war and combat, and they all have
some type of a kind of like a hollow voice
stare when they're talking about certain things, and you know,
you just kind of let it, let it go, you know,
(30:44):
let him, let them talk. And then at the end
of it, I'm like, you're home, Johnny, You're a home. Yeah,
welcome back, you know, welcome back from nom And he's like,
but I went to Afghanistan. It's like, yeah, I know, bro,
welcome home. Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
See, I do war games, and I'm sure you're totally
aware of that, but I do large scale wargames as
like as a commander of a unit and everything like that.
We have guys with night vision and we go out
to the west deserts of Utah and we get together
and we fight each other till from like ten in
the morning till about two in the morning. So we
go into the night and we go late into the night.
And I had a friend of mine come home from Afghanistan.
(31:24):
And the first thing he did was he came straight
off the plane. He got a ride out to the
desert right to where we were, and he got dropped
off by whoever, and he's like, hey, I'm back. We're
like yes. Everyone put their plate carrier on him and
gave him an extra rifle and gave him his night vision.
As soon as they put that night vision on him,
and he had just gotten home and he's now not
in Afghanistan. As soon as they put that night vision
(31:44):
on and we started moving out. He just had to
sit down. He's like, I can't do this, and he
kind of just melted right there. And you know, he
had just been wearing night vision and just doing all
of that, and what he thought he was missing out
on here he had already. It was just too much,
too soon. And so I can only imagine, you know,
somebody who has been through twenty one of the bloodiest
(32:08):
battles of island hopping along Japan and Saipan and all
these different places as a young mareen.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
You know, the thing is what you just described that
gentleman went through is very typical. He just gets off
the plane and he wants to go back into a
war game, and then he freezes that paradox that irony is.
Did you ever see the movie The hurt Locker, Yes, Yeah,
kind of like that. He's lucky to get back from
(32:37):
the war and he's standing in a grocery store and
he can't focus and he can't concentrate, he can't think
of anything except being there, and he goes back right
right that PTSD. The whole time, You're like, I want
to go home.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I want to go home and start my motel on
a river that's in this forest area and then it's
been mowed down and turn into a mall. And then
you're like, I'm gonna go back to thes or the
military because they'll take care of me. And it's just like,
you know, the the transition that our troops have to do.
What Lee Marvin did was transitioned successfully from civilian. I
(33:12):
think a boxer didn't need box too. As a young man,
he is in box No, I'm not a boxer.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
No, he played he played a boxer on TV until
you like, from a movie.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
That's what I'm thinking of. That's what I'm thinking. So
what I'm getting at is he started as a young man,
went to the Marine Corps and got out and had
to transition into something that all a lot of my
listeners who are veterans, they always say, what's next for
me after I get out of the military. Well, this
dude became an actor, right.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah, Well what happened with Lee was when he came
back his parents lived in upstate New York. They lived
in Woodstock, and uh, the same place before the concert, Right,
They lived in Woodstock, and there was a kind of
a little artist colony in Woodstock. There always had been.
And when he got back, his father knew some people
in town. He was fairly well known, and he got
him a job as a plumber's assistant. And that's what
(34:01):
he wanted to do. He wanted to be a plumber,
he said. It was the best thing he could do
at the time. It was therapeutic, It made him not
have to think about things, and it was good exercise
for his back, he said.
Speaker 4 (34:14):
And then this is a.
Speaker 3 (34:15):
Great story about There were like three or four different
versions of this story about how he became an actor.
The one that was the true story is probably the best.
And I won't even tell you the story he made up.
This is the real story. He became really good friends
with a guy named Ian Valentine, who would later go
on to.
Speaker 4 (34:34):
Create Valentine Books.
Speaker 3 (34:36):
And Ian Valentine's wife was Betty Valentine, and they were
having a party at Ian Valentine's parents' house for his birthday. Now,
Ian Valentine's father was a gentleman, Teddy Valentine, and he
ran or co ran this place called the Maverick Theater
in Woostock, New York. Now, for such a small community,
there are actually three or four live theaters there, which
(34:59):
is kind of interesting. But that night at the party,
everybody's getting swapped everybody. That was the word that Lee used.
And there was an actor and a play they were
about to do. The play was called Roadside, which would
later become musicalized as Oklahoma Anyway. So the actor that
was supposed to play this character called Texas was sick
(35:21):
and in excuse me, Teddy Valentine shouted from across the room, Hey, Lee,
we need a loud mouth drunk. Can you play a
loudmouth on stage? He was drunk, he said yes. Now
the next morning he was hungover, I mean I really hungover,
and he was kind of like, oh what did I do?
Speaker 4 (35:40):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
So Betty Valentine, and she was the one one of
the people who told me the story. Betty Valentine said,
I stayed up with him all day, you know, sobering
him up, learning the lines, and she goes, but in truth,
he never really learned the lines. How could he. He
had one day. So what happened was when he made
his entrance. I loved this story. Back East, they have
(36:02):
dry storms where you know, I don't know, say almost
fire whatever, and there's lightning and thunder, but there's no rain.
When he made his entrance, all six foot two and
a half inches of him in those big boots, cowboy hat,
and gun belt. There was a thundercrack when he came
out on stage with that presence of his and he
was like, that's it. I know what I'm doing with
(36:24):
the rest of my life and there's no holding me back.
I want to be an actor. And he joined the
American Theater Wing, which was an organization that was created
under the GI Bill for returning vets in order to
learn to be an actor. And the interesting thing is
they didn't do like Stanislavsky or the Royal Academy or
anything like that. What they did was they taught these
(36:45):
guys how to get jobs, how to do an audition,
how to.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Audition, yes, audition and audition and cold reads, and how
to audition against dathells yes.
Speaker 3 (36:55):
Which is an art in and of itself. Now, the
funny thing is he didn't tell his father he was
going to do that. His father thought he was gonna
apply to the GI Bill as a what you call it,
a bricklayer, betrayed a sprint player.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
But what he did was he used the money from
the GI Bill to get into the.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
American Theater way. Yes, and it worked and why not.
His father was very pissed off at him. But and
it's interesting he had Robert his brother told me that
when his when Monte Lamont Marvin found out that Lee
was going to be an actor, he hit the roof
and Robert told me, he goes. My father said to him,
(37:35):
don't ever expect any help from me. You're on your own,
you know, if you're if you're gonna do this crazy thing,
no help from me. Well, apparently I found Lee Marvin's
check book from that time.
Speaker 4 (37:46):
Go oh.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
I stayed at the Marvin home because that's where Robert
was living. And I was there for about two weeks
and I was able to find all contragreat stuff. And
I found Lee Marvin's checkbook and his father's checkbook, and
apparently his father.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Lent him money for a winter coat. He paid his
phone bill one month. He yeah, he's a dad. That's
exactly exactly.
Speaker 2 (38:09):
You know, you gotta believe in your kid. Who went
to World War two?
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Bro right, By the way, so did Monte Marvin. He
was in World War One and he was in World
War Two. He was in both. He was a lieutenant
in World War One and in World War Two he
resigned his commission and was just like, you know, a
death sergeant.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
But wow. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
His brother Robert was also in World War Two. He
was in the Army Air Force. He was in the
ground What the hell was the word. He's the guy
with the lights to go like this, you know where
the plans you're coming in?
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Sure? Sure, yeah, like a runway guy on the tarmac
that crodded ground crew. Sure.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
Yeah. So all of it, all of them.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
His dad was in World War One and World War Two. Yeah,
because they were like not that far apart, like seventeen
twenty one, see nineteen eighteen, nineteen thirty.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Yeah, seriously, Yeah, you know, it's funny. Marvin had a
very complicated relationship with his father. He loved his father dearly,
but he was always disappointing his father. And at the
same time, Monty was a very cold and somewhat unemotional man.
And Lee used to tell the story about his father.
He said, I know a lot of people think that
(39:21):
my father was unemotional, but when he was in World
War One, he was in command of a cavalry platoon,
you know, horses, And he said, when they got hit
with mustard gas. He said, they had gas masks on,
but they didn't have it for the horses. And he said,
and he goes, and when he saw all those horses
bodies getting twisted and mangled, he goes, he cried just
(39:43):
in me telling it, and he goes. He can be
emotional depending on what it was about. So it's kind
of interesting.
Speaker 4 (39:49):
You know.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
I always cry when the horse gets killed and not
the cowboy too. Right in a movie, right what not?
Speaker 4 (39:56):
The horse.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Out to horse.
Speaker 3 (40:01):
I remember one time, and this is one of the
reasons why I was always proud of my mother. Do
you remember the movie sounder Paul Winfield Cecily Tyson. Great
movie She's Got a Black share cropping family in the
nineteen thirties, And we saw the movie in the theater.
I was like ten or eleven years old, and we
saw the movie in the theater. And there's a scene
in the movie when the father played by Paul Winfield,
(40:23):
the family is so desperate for food they're apparently making
any money. He breaks into a local market and steals
some food. Okay, so the cops come and get them,
and they're carrying them away, and everybody in the family
is in tears. It's like, don't take daddy right, understandably right.
And as they're taking them away their dog the title
of the movie, Sounder gets shot. Sounder gets shot chasing
(40:47):
Paul Winfield. And when that happened in the theater, everybody's like.
Speaker 4 (40:52):
Oh no, not the dog. My mother turned around. Does
the whole theater have went? How's the matter with you people?
He's going to jail. You can crying for the stupid dog.
I just got my way to go.
Speaker 2 (41:04):
Oh that's like old yeller. Yes, you know, you just
don't don't want it to happen. But I liked that
my mother's sentiment was in the right place. Hey, you
know in your book, you know, the Dirty Does in
the best World War Two iconic film, you have like
(41:24):
a special thanks page in there, right, there's a Barbara says.
It says special thanks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so there's let
me speak up just a little bit for you, my friend.
It says, like, you know, to my friend, maybe Barbara,
you know, why do you want to explain why?
Speaker 4 (41:41):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (41:42):
What I wrote was this? Okay? Where is it? Yeah?
For Mike, he knows why. And to Barbara she knows why. Okay,
Barbara is my girlfriend and she's right across the apartment
now and I love her.
Speaker 4 (41:58):
She's the love of my life.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
No ship together over almost almost twenty five years now.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
The interesting part.
Speaker 3 (42:05):
Is Mike, Okay, my landlord's name is Mike Peterson. And
he read the book and he went, hey, man, thanks
for naming for dedicating the book to me. And I
was like, it's not dedicated to you, morohnes the matter
with you?
Speaker 4 (42:17):
Why would I dedicated to my landlord? Okay.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
One of my best friends growing up was a guy
named Mike Barrow now Mike Barrow and I used to
watch The Dirty Dozen constantly, every single time.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
It was on TV.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
When they used to show it in two parts, we'd
watch it together. When it first came out on VHS,
we would I got it first, he got it later.
But because I got it first. If there was nothing
going on, this is when we were in our teens
in twenties, there was nothing.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
Going on in our lives.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
He would call me up and say, you got anything
going on tonight? And I said no, and he would go,
you want to watch a Dirty Dozen? I said yeah,
And it got to the point I'm not making this up.
It got to the point I reminded him of this
late recently. We're still friends. He would go, he'd call
me up and it was it was it was before
call caller ID. So I hear the phone ring, I
pick it up and he would go shoot and I
(43:09):
would go, okay, come on over.
Speaker 4 (43:10):
And watch it the theme song. So that's why it's
dedicated to Mike.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
I love that.
Speaker 4 (43:18):
I love you for to do that either, which was
really cool. He was blown away.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
That's the best thing, you know. That's so awesome. I'll
tell you I have a similar kind of blowing my
friends away kind of nice thing is I have a
warehouse outside a Hill Air Force Base where I run
indoor war games. And they got these big windows on them,
and uh, me and my business partner were like, well,
let's just put our homies up that we play war
games with on the windows, like show it's a community environment.
(43:45):
And so we went and got all these pictures that
I had taken over the years, and I was like,
which one I'm gonna put and we put them up
on the windows and the guys never knew it, and
they showed up to see the shop and they saw
themselves on the windows. And they're like, yeah, they're all
like standing like like Captain Morgan's like pointing themselves the window.
You know what They're like, that's me, you know, take
a picture and you know. It's the simple things that
(44:06):
make us love one another in a relationship, right, It's
the small things, dude, That's right. It's the littlest things memories.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
And that's usually what's so funny. That's usually what you
remember most. You don't remember well, you know, I remember friends'
weddings and stuff like that. But for the most part,
it's those little moments in life that take precedence, you know.
Speaker 4 (44:26):
That's what you're always have to do. Mike and I
have a lot of As matter of fact, there's a
group of us. I don't know I'm telling you this,
but I'm gonna tell it anyway.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
We call ourselves the Movieland Rat Pack because when we
were teenagers, Me, Mike, Brett, and Greg the four of us,
we all worked at movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park
and we bonded. We bonded really tight, and we still
are friends today. And once a year we haven't done
it in a while, but once a year we used
(44:54):
to have what we called the movieland rat Pack Summit,
where we would all meet somewhere for the longest time.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
You always want d up being Vegas.
Speaker 2 (45:01):
You know, sir. Of course everything's in Vegas. Let's see
to Vegas.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
We had gone to San Diego, we had gone to
San Francisco, and when we couldn't think of what which
way to go back to one of them again or whatever,
it was Vegas, Vegas.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
And we had a ball. We had so one time
when the Sands was about to close, when they were
about to demolish it at the Sands Hotel, we went
there and we decided, because every year we would do
something weird and wacky, and we decided, this year, we're
all gonna rent tuxedos and we're going to walk around
Vegas and tuxas and try to look cool.
Speaker 3 (45:34):
And we did, and we went to the Sands and
the act that was on stage it was one of
the last times, was Alan and Rossi.
Speaker 4 (45:43):
Remember Alan and Rossi from the old Ed Sullivan Shows.
Speaker 3 (45:46):
A matter of fact, Yeah, with Steve Rossi and Marty Allen,
you know Marty Allen with a big wild hair, Hello Dad,
And we came in we got in a little late.
Marty Allen couldn't help but notice us, and he sees
us and he goes, look, it's the White Molls brothers, and.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
Which was actually kind of funny.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
And here's the way we After the show, we got
to go backstage to the dressing rooms of the Old
Sands and I and I asked, I said, is this
for Sinatra stage before he came on stage? And Marty
Allen said yeah. And I looked and I went, a
bitch of Dean Martin threw up in that toilet.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
I'm best. Sammy Davis put in his eyeball on that
out right right from the mirror, right right there. You
got a baby, Oh yeah, baby.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
And then when the show was over, we're going back
to our room, and in the parking lot out comes
Marty Allen. We kind of crossed paths, and he remembered us,
talked to us a little bit somewhere.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
I got, well, I'm not gonna look for it.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
But anyway, he tells us a joke and he goes,
let me ask you boys a question.
Speaker 4 (46:53):
Who's a really hot sectionmber right now?
Speaker 3 (46:55):
And we thought for a minute. At that time, I said,
we said Pam Anderson, and he went okay, guy's on
a desert island all by himself, been there for years.
Then a giant wave washes over and on the wave
is Pam Anderson and she lands right on the island. Okay,
and as luck would have it, she was doing Baywatch
at the time, but anyway, she goes exactly yeah, and
(47:18):
Pam Anderson tells the guy, thank you for saving my life.
Is there anything I can do for you? And the
guy says, yeah, what do you think? And so after
about the four or fifth time, she she goes, wow,
that was incredible. That's the best sex I ever had.
Anything I can do for you, and the guy says, yeah,
do me a favor. Put it on this hat and coat,
(47:40):
man's man's trash coat, trensh coat in a fedora.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
She puts it on and the guy looks around and
he goes like this. He puts his.
Speaker 3 (47:46):
Arm around Pam Anderson goes, did you know I'm stopping
Pam Anderson.
Speaker 2 (47:51):
To this guy. He wanted to let this guy know.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
For Fuddy Ola told us that joke. We all fell apart,
and then he just walked way.
Speaker 4 (48:00):
It was so cool. It was like, you know, Batman
or something.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
That guy. Yeah, he just had it up here, that
rollodex of those jokes.
Speaker 4 (48:07):
You bet you anyway.
Speaker 2 (48:11):
Well that's great, No, I love that and the fact
that you were able. You were like, did Dean Martin
throw up in that bucket or that toilet? I bet
he did? I bet he did.
Speaker 3 (48:20):
He? Actually, this is so stupid. We actually took a
vote about who was who. My buddy Brett because she
was the shortest, was Sammy Davis Jr. My buddy Mike
because we always thought it was so cool, he was
Dean Martin. And my buddy Greg Fry, who was very fastidious,
very uh cognizant of how he dresses or whatnot, he
was Peter Lawford, and I was Frank sat.
Speaker 2 (48:43):
Of course I got. Of course we actually took I
want to be Johnny Carson. Well, what's the joke. Left
one in the room is Joey Bishop. Well, Well that's
the show tonight, ed. Well listen you have I've had
(49:04):
you for almost an hour of your time talking Lee Marvin,
talking about his lineage, talking about the book that you
wrote as an author, as a respected author, you can
find Killing Generals, the Making of the Dirty Dozen, the
most iconic World War Two movie of all time written
by my new friend Dwayne Epstein. It's out everywhere, right,
we can find this on the internet at bookstore and.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Born and Noble and wherever find books are sold. And
this is still very much in print and still selling.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Lee Marvin's point blank. Dwayne Epstein. Yeah, we will put
that in the description of this episode, so when people
are looking at soft rep dot com they can just
read about what we kind of talked about and click
on it and possibly go find your book. So, you know,
let's make sure that Anton, my producer, gets a link
from your bio so we can share that because we
(49:52):
would love to put that out there and probably in
the book club.
Speaker 4 (49:56):
And I was that last part again, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
We could try to get in the book club.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
Oh, that would be terrific. Thank you, And if you
need to, I can email you the Amazon link for
both books.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
Oh yeah, that's perfect, and we'll just give it to
Anton and the guys and they'll just go ahead and
do a dissertation and they'll put that all linkage in there.
So really, I just want to say thank you for
the working through all the technical difficulties these last two
three days to get together and it's really been worth it.
Speaker 4 (50:25):
Yeah, and thank my neighbor Shannon. She's a sweetheart.
Speaker 2 (50:27):
Oh, Shannon, you're a sweetheart. Huh hey, no problem, Thanks Shannon.
We appreciate you absolutely.
Speaker 4 (50:32):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
And if you want to Barbara and Barbara, we appreciate Barbara. Yes.
Speaker 4 (50:36):
And if you want to cut out that movieland rat
pack stuff, that's fine by me.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
Oh we're not. We're not even done yet, brother, nothing's
getting cut. No, we're still going strong, bro. You go ahead,
keep telling Bishop rad what else you want to confess.
Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
If you want to leave it in. If you want
to leave it in, I could certainly send it to
them and they could.
Speaker 2 (50:55):
Oh yeah, no, oh please, we will. Yes, And we're
going to leave it in there, and that rat pack
is going to exist for the rest of this internets,
at least this payment of this website.
Speaker 4 (51:04):
Right on.
Speaker 2 (51:05):
Cool Now, listen, I'm gonna wind this down, and I'm
gonna say it's been a pleasure to have you on
the show, Dwayne, and I'd love to have you again
as a guest or commentary about anything Lee Marvin or whatever.
If you have another book coming out man, you have
a welcome welcome position.
Speaker 4 (51:18):
Here, coolness.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
I'm working on a few things actually, and when they
come to fruition, I will certainly let you know about it.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
It'd be my honor to have you back on the show,
and I'm sure our guests would be stoked to have you.
And with that said, I want you to go out
and check out soft reap dot com and check out
our book hyphen Club okay, and the merch store. Keep
supporting us. And thank you so much to my guest
Dwayne and to his significant other Barbara. Okay, you guys,
thanks so much. This is rad saying peace.
Speaker 1 (51:53):
You've been listening to self Rep Ladia
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