You can read all the self-help and how-to-succeed books you want, but sometimes success comes down to how you get on with other people.

The English director John Boorman had only directed one (flop) film, the sub-Beatles Dave Clark Five flick Catch Us If You Can, when he met Lee Marvin to discuss working on a film together. Marvin was at the top of the tree having just won several awards (including an Oscar) for his performance in Cat Ballou. The actor was in England working on his latest feature The Dirty Dozen when he had a discussion with Boorman about the possibility of making a film together based on Richard Stark’s novel The Hunter. There was a script, but neither Marvin or Boorman liked it much, both preferring Stark’s hard-edged loner Parker from the book, or as he was renamed in the screenplay, Walker.

For whatever reasons, the novice film director and the experienced actor hit it off, and Marvin agreed to appear in Boorman’s film—there was only one thing, he just didn’t want that script. In an interview between Boorman and Steven Soderbergh, the director recalled how the actor called a meeting with the film company’s head of studio, the film’s producers and himself, where Marvin asked if he had script approval? They told him, he did. Then Marvin asked if he had approval of the main casting? Again he was told he did. Then Lee Marvin did something extraordinary:

He said, “I defer all those approvals to John.” And he walked out. So on my very first film in Hollywood, I had final cut and I made use of it.

This is how John Boorman was able to make Point Blank the way he wanted to make it. The film established him as a powerful and visionary director, while his movie Point Blank was hailed by critics as a masterpiece, which has grown in reputation over the years, and is now listed as one of those [Pick a number] Movies You Must See Before You Die.

Success comes not from any dime store self-help book but from who you are and what talent you have, and sometimes from the people who like you.

This selection of seldom-seen photographs come from the wrap party given for Point Blank at the Zoo club in Los Angeles, 1967.
 

Inside Zoo before the party started—the Carnaby Street sign marks Boorman’s table.
 

The man of the moment Lee Marvin arrives with drink and cigarette to hand.
 

Lee Marvin, an unfeasibly young John Boorman and Michelle Triola in what looks like a spacesuit. She would later (unsuccessfully) sue Lee Marvin for palimony.
 

Lee watches as Boorman kisses Triola.
 

Steve McQueen dancing with then wife Neile McQueen (short dark hair), while beside them, Burt Reynolds cuts a rug.
 

 

Charles Bronson meets and greets actor Roy Jenson.
 

Maybe Bronson was on the door—looks like Jenson’s been frisked.
 

Marvin and Warren Oates share their interest in alcohol and tobacco.
 

Marvin and Boorman horse around with Keenan Wynn.
 

Marvin and Wynn still clowning around.
 

And then the police arrive…
 
Via the Edit Room Floor