Lee: A Romance

Actor Lee Marvin's widow has written a touching book that concentrates on their years together, though she mentions nearly every performance, from his coffee-throwing hoodlum in The Big Heat through his Oscar-winning gunslinger in Cat Ballou and beyond. Pamela Feeley and Lee Marvin fell in love in 1945, when she was 15 and he was a 21-year-old veteran; they parted in 1948 when he left Woodstock, New York, to pursue his acting career. In 1970, both divorced with children, they met again and married. Instead of the usual "and then he starred in" chronology, Marvin offers chapters on the couple's mutual passions, like fishing and Australia, plus 200 pages on the infamous 1979 palimony suit filed by ex-girlfriend Michelle Triola (who, unsurprisingly, comes across as a vengeful nut). Peculiar though this structure is, it works. As the author moves backwards and forwards in time--opening with Marvin's 1987 burial in Arlington National Cemetery with full marine corps honors, and zigzagging from their youthful romance to their marriage, his war service, the palimony trial, and the final years of ill health--a moving portrait emerges. She is frank about Marvin's drinking and other peccadilloes, but her loving account stresses his generosity, loyalty, and old-fashioned sense of honor. --Wendy Smith