With the
Chuck Norris meme done to death by the fact that Chuck Norris is a
psycho right wing conservative, it's time for a new hero to replace him. Who better to fill the shoes than Chuck's superior officer in Delta Force... Lee Marvin?!
For those of you who only recognize the name from Reservoir Dogs, I suggest renting "The Big Red One", "The Dirty Dozen", "The Wild One", "Hell In The Pacific", "Gorky Park", "The Killers", "Cat Ballou", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance", "Emperor Of The North" or "Point Blank".
Lee was a hard drinking, tough as nails biker, hitman, soldier, and cowboy in his films. He had on-screen fist fights with Marlon Brando and John Wayne, shot Ronald Reagan dead in "The Killers", liberated a death camp with Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) in "The Big Red One", and shared a woman (and some goofy musical numbers) with Clint Eastwood in "Paint Your Wagon".
In real life, Lee was a WWII veteran who was wounded in the Battle of Sai Pan (shot in the ass), directly related to George Washington, and won an Oscar for playing a cowboy whose horse was drunker than he was. There is also a secret society called
The Sons of Lee Marvin that counts Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave and Jim Jarmusch among its members. For these reasons (among many others), I was inspired to put together a custom action figure of Lee's character Walker from the movie Point Blank:
