Lee Marvin Was an Oscar-Winning Actor, Not a Pop Singer — Then His One Hit Kept The Beatles From No. 1

By 1969, Lee Marvin had already built the kind of career most actors could only dream about.

He had played soldiers, gunfighters, criminals and hard men with a face and voice audiences instantly recognized.

He had won the Academy Award for Cat Ballou.

He had starred in The Dirty Dozen and Point Blank.

Nobody was waiting for Lee Marvin to become a pop star.

Then Hollywood put him in a musical.

The film was Paint Your Wagon, an enormous screen adaptation of the 1951 Lerner and Loewe stage musical.

Marvin played Ben Rumson, a rough prospector wandering through the California Gold Rush.

His co-star was Clint Eastwood.

There was one unusual problem.

Neither man was famous for singing.

Yet instead of surrounding Marvin with polished pop vocals, the film used the quality that made him distinctive in the first place.

That voice.

Deep.

Weathered.

Rough around the edges.

One of Marvin's numbers was “Wand'rin' Star,” a song originally written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe for the stage version of Paint Your Wagon.

The lyrics could almost have been written for Marvin's screen persona.

The narrator is a man who cannot settle down.

He belongs on the road.

Home is temporary.

Wandering is permanent.

Marvin did not perform it like a traditional Broadway singer.

He almost seemed to talk his way through parts of it, his low voice carrying the weight of someone who had already traveled too far to pretend life was simple.

The movie itself was an expensive production that struggled to justify its enormous cost.

But something unexpected happened to Marvin's song.

“Wand'rin' Star” was released as a single in Britain.

And British listeners loved it.

The record entered the UK chart in February 1970 and kept climbing.

Then, in early March, Lee Marvin reached No. 1.

Not for one week.

For three.

Official Charts records “Wand'rin' Star” as Marvin's only UK chart hit — but it spent three weeks at the very top.

Then the story became even stranger.

On March 6, 1970, The Beatles released “Let It Be.”

This was not just another single.

The Beatles were approaching the end of their career together, and “Let It Be” was one of Paul McCartney's defining compositions.

Surely it would become another British No. 1.

It didn't.

When “Let It Be” entered the UK chart, Lee Marvin was still sitting at No. 1 with “Wand'rin' Star.”

The Beatles debuted at No. 2.

A week later, Marvin was still No. 1.

Official Charts shows “Wand'rin' Star” holding the top position while “Let It Be” remained below it; the Beatles single ultimately peaked at No. 2 in Britain.

Think about how unlikely that was.

One of the biggest bands in history had released one of its most famous songs.

And the man blocking them from No. 1 was not Elvis Presley.

Not The Rolling Stones.

Not another major rock group.

It was Lee Marvin.

A 46-year-old Hollywood actor singing a song from a Western musical.

The irony becomes even better when you look at Marvin's recording career.

There really wasn't one.

Official Charts lists only one UK Top 40 hit for him.

One Top 10.

One No. 1.

“Wand'rin' Star.”

He effectively arrived on the British pop chart, reached the summit, held off The Beatles, and disappeared from pop stardom again.

But Marvin's story was already remarkable long before that record.

Before becoming an actor, he had served as a U.S. Marine during World War II and was wounded in combat in the Pacific.

That experience later gave unusual authenticity to the soldiers and hardened men he portrayed on screen.

Then Hollywood made him a star.

An Oscar followed.

And somehow, in the middle of that career, music gave him one of its strangest footnotes.

In March 1970, record buyers could choose from The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, The Jackson 5, John Lennon and some of the biggest names in popular music.

For three weeks, Britain chose Lee Marvin.

“Wand'rin' Star” never turned him into a conventional singer.

It did something far more memorable.