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