LEE MARVIN TOUGHER Than the Rest

THE ACTOR PLAYED A LOT OF FEARSOME BIG-SCREEN BAD GUYS, BUT HE WASN'T AFRAID TO LAUGH AT HIMSELF

- Ron Kelly, Fortune Benatar

On screen and off, Lee Marvin was a force to be reckoned with. The Dirty Dozen star ran away from home at 4 ("I wasn't having too much discipline even then," he quipped), was expelled from a few boarding schools (once for hurling a classmate from a second-floor window), and dropped out of another in 1942 to enlist in the Marines. "I wanted to prove how tough I was," shared the big-screen baddie.

"Let's put it like this," Dwayne Epstein, author of Lee Marvin: Point Blank, tells Closer: "He could handle himself in a fight." Epstein recalls an incident at a bar when the actor asked a banjo player to quiet down. "The guy played louder and faster, so Lee lost his temper, grabbed the banjo and broke it over his head!"

While not a shining moment for the hard-drinking, cigarette-chewing son of closet alcoholics, Lee did earn a Purple Heart for his service during World War II. As a scout sniper, Lee's he stormed 21 Pacific islands before taking machine-gun fire to his backside, which severed his sciatic nerve. After being discharged due to injuries, he landed back home in Woodstock, N.Y., digging septic ditches as a plumber's apprentice before a twist of events led him to a local community theater and a career as a performer.