Marvin's mission is two-fold: first turn his dozen prisoners into a fighting unit and then turn them loose on a French chateau occupied by partying German officers. His crime-minded charges include John Cassavetes as a chronic malcontent, Telly Savalas as a ready-to-blow psycho, Donald Sutherland as a lame-brained lummox, and Charles Bronson and then-just-retired NFL superstar Jim Brown as a couple of clutch performers. 

The first half of the film allows the colorful cast of character actors to have their fun as they get their tails whipped into shape and develop shaky bonds with their commander. The second part is all action, as the culprit commandos wreck havoc and then run for their lives. Despite the fact that few of the "heroes" survive the bloodbath, the message here isn't that war is hell. Rather, it seems to be: war can be a hell of a good time... if you've got nothing to lose.

The prematurely white-haired character star who began as a supporting player of generally vicious demeanor, then metamorphosed into a star of both action and drama projects. Born in New York City to Lamont Marvin, an advertising executive, and his wife Courtenay, a fashion writer, the young Marvin was thrown out of dozens of schools for incorrigibility. His parents took him to Florida, where he attended St. Leo's Preparatory School near Dade City. Dismissed there as well, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines at the beginning of World War II. 

In the battle of Saipan in June 1944, he was wounded in the buttocks by Japanese fire which severed his sciatic nerve. He was invalided home and got menial work as a plumber's apprentice in Woodstock, New York. While repairing a toilet at the local community theatre, he was asked to replace an ailing actor in a rehearsal. He was immediately stricken with a love for the theatre and went to New York City, where he studied and played small roles in stock and Off-Broadway. He landed an extra role in Henry Hathaway's U.S.S. Teakettle, and found his role expanded when Hathaway took a liking to him. 

Returning to the stage, he made his Broadway debut in Billy Budd, and after a long succession of small TV roles, moved to Hollywood, where he began playing heavies and cops in roles of increasing size and frequency. Given a leading role in Eight Iron Men, he followed it with enormously memorable heavies in The Big Heat and The Wild One. 

Now established as a major screen villain, Marvin began shifting toward leading roles with a successful run as a police detective in the TV series 'M Squad'. A surprise Oscar for his dual role as a drunken gunfighter and his evil, noseless brother in the Western comedy Cat Ballou placed him in the upper tiers of Hollywood leading men, and he filled out his career with predominantly action-oriented films. A long-term romantic relationship with Michelle Triola led, after their breakup, to a highly publicized lawsuit in which Triola asked for a substantial portion of Marvin's assets. Her case failed in its main pursuit, but did establish a legal precedent for the rights of unmarried cohabitors, the so-called "palimony" law. Marvin continued making films of varying quality, always as a star, until his sudden death from a heart attack in 1987. 

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