25. A Tough Guy Hollywood Star Who Was a Tough Guy in Real Life
Hollywood star Lee Marvin was a prolific actor who appeared in about seventy films between 1951 and 1986. He won an Oscar for Best Actor in 1965 for his role in the Western comedy Cat Ballou, but he is probably better known for his roles in The Dirty Dozen and Hell in the Pacific, as well as the NBC television series M Squad. Born in New York City in 1924, Lee Marvin was a problem child and teenage delinquent who liked to hunt and drink – sometimes both simultaneously. He was expelled from numerous schools for misconduct that ranged from smoking cigarettes to throwing schoolmates out of second-story windows.
Marvin eventually dropped out of high school to become a US Marine during World War II and stormed beaches in the Pacific for a few years. He was promoted to corporal at some point, only to get busted back down to private for misconduct. He was seriously injured in the Battle of Saipan, first when he got hit by machine-gun fire, then when a sniper shot him in the foot. It took Marvin a year to recover from his wounds, at which time he seems to have done some self-reflection. He came out of the war a calmer and less wild young man.