From the S&S archives: Lee Marvin's not dodging reality of war

TOKYO — Actor Lee Marvin isn't making antiwar flicks, no matter what the public relations men may be saying..

Marvin, here to attend the Tokyo world premiere of his latest release Hell in the Pacific, with a two-man cast of Marvin and Japan's Toshiro Mifune, wasn't buying the "protest movie" idea earlier suggested by some press releases as he and Mifune fielded reporters' queries Thursday at Tokyo's Haneda Airport.

"The dead of World War II are not to be disregarded," said the former Marine Marvin, named Best.Actor for his Performance in Cat Ballou. "But even under the duress of the war, the behavior of these two men was considerate of human life. What these two went through — it could have happened."

Both actors know how things were in the South Pacific's bloody days of 1944 that frame the film's plot. Both served their countries there at the time — Marvin as a private in the 2nd Marine Div. and Mifune as an NCO in the Japanese army.

Marvin saw action at Kwajalein, Eniwetok and Saipan, catching a blast from a Japanese machine gun in the last campaign. It hospitalized him for 18 mouths.

Now, in this resurrection of those days, the only actors are Marvin, portraying an American pilot downed an a barren Pacific island, and Mifune, a Japanese naval officer already marooned there.

"If we'd added a third man to the story, the film wouldn't have got past the second frame," Marvin commented. "The emotions were what the two felt with nobody else present,

"The theme does say that war is a futile thing," said the Oriental star of Seven Samurai and Rashomon. "But it shows more how two people under the most trying conditions will think and act."

Some newsmen, reporting from the set on one of the Palau Islands in the western Carolines of Micronesia, had mentioned conflicts which arose because of the mixed Japanese-American film crew and the movie's World War II plot.

"The conflict," said Marvin, "was between everybody and the idea of the story ... the conflict was the reason for the picture."

Marvin made clear that it was the movie's financial backers, far away in New York, and not he (as had been reported), who for commercial reasons tried but failed to get a violent end to the script. "I couldn't let the picture cop-out on itself," Marvin said.

After the premiere here Friday, coinciding with the film's first U.S. public showing in Hollywood, Marvin and his wife, Michelle, intend to see the Japan he missed on his first trip to Tokyo in October, 1967, when he only had time for script discussions with Mifune.

"The premiere will give me a chance to see the Japanese presentiment, love or hate, of the pic ... then I'll have some free time to enjoy you (Japanese)," Marvin said.