There have always been two basic routes to movie stardom - the overnight success (rare and unpredictable) and the long, slow trail (the more usual way, by far). Katharine Hepburn was one of the "overnights," zooming to star status in her film debut; same with Jack Lemmon, Gene Kelly, Barbra Streisand and Lauren Bacall. By contrast, Walter Matthau, Anthony Quinn, Bette Davis, Jack Nicholson and 99 percent of their peers spent many a year toiling in small parts, often in clunker movies, before becoming the equivalent of a klieg light. Lee Marvin, our TCM Star of the Month, was one of the s-l-o-w builders. He gravitated towards acting after spending time in the Marines and, at age 27, made his first film, 1951's U.S.S. Teakettle. That movie, with that title, even with Gary Cooper as its marquee bait, did no business; so, in mid-release, it was renamed You're in the Navy Now - and still did no business. Lee, however, did. From then on he never stopped working, doing one supporting part after another, easily cast because of his rugged persona and tough-guy looks. (One critic wrote "his face resembles an aerial photo of Vietnam, after a skirmish.")

All this month we'll have examples of Marvin, the commanding supporting player, as he bikes with Brando in The Wild One, goes to medical school with Mitchum and Sinatra in Not As a Stranger, keeps a suspicious eye on Tracy in Bad Day at Black Rock and menaces Stewart and Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Then came 1965; after 15 years and 34 films, the defining big break was his. Kirk Douglas was offered the lead(s) in the comedy Western spoof Cat Ballou, but was committed elsewhere. Douglas did a pass, giving Marvin the chance to hilariously play a pair of twins in the Old West, one an outlaw, the other a bleary-eyed boozer with a horse who loves the sauce as much as his rider. He delivered a triumphantly funny tour de force performance and, soon after, was holding an Academy Award® in his hands, acknowledged in polls as a top box-office draw and one of Hollywood's Main Men.

We'll be showing Cat Ballou, uncut and commercial-free on TCM Monday, July 7th, at 8:00pm(ET). We'll also have a sampling of some of the Marvin movies in which he later starred - including The Dirty Dozen, Ship of Fools and one of the great guilty pleasures, Paint Your Wagon, in which both Lee and Clint Eastwood sing, noted a reviewer, "If singing is what one dare label it."

Towards the end of Marvin's life (he died of a heart attack in 1987 at age 63), it seemed as if the headlines he was making - with wild drinking escapades and the gaudy "palimony" legal suit brought against him in 1979 - might overshadow his legacy as a performer. I hope not. But there's no question our Lee Marvin festival will help underscore what many of us have known for a long time; he was at once powerful, multifaceted, unique, unexpectedly witty, quite irreplaceable and, above all, one hell of an actor.