Trivia / Cat Ballou

• Acting for Two: Lee Marvin plays the washed-up gunfighter, Kid Shelleen, and the hired killer Tim Strawn.
• Contractual Obligation Project: Jane Fonda reportedly didn't understand the film when she read the script, but because she was under contract to Columbia Pictures at the time, she had no choice but to take the role of Cat Ballou.
• Hostility on the Set: While Lee Marvin's drunken antics kept most of the cast and crew laughing, it didn't make a fan out of Jane Fonda, who had the job of playing her character straight while the others got to ham it up, and took her role very seriously. Too seriously for Marvin, who according to Dwayne Hickman, was always trying to joke with her and make her lighten up. Hickman recalls that Fonda was "less than enthusiastic about the movie. She wanted to do more serious work and playing straight man to a bunch of crazy characters wasn't her idea of great filmmaking." Marvin's efforts to loosen her up were met with annoyance from Fonda. It didn't help their relationship either that Marvin insulted her French husband Roger Vadim while he was visiting the location set in Colorado. "When he was drunk," said Vadim in his 1986 memoir Bardot, Deneuve, Fonda, "he would tell me that he hated the French. 'But,' he would add, 'I like you because you're half Russian, even though I hate Russians also.'"
• Mid-Development Genre Shift: In 1956 the film was originally announced as a musical to star Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis as the brothers.
• Multiple Languages, Same Voice Actor: As she was sharing time between France and Hollywood at the time, Jane Fonda dubbed herself in the French-speaking version.
• Playing Against Type: Lee Marvin both plays against type and according to his normal Typecasting in the film, giving a comic and heroic performance as the alcoholic Kid Shelleen in contrast to his usual villainous performance in the smaller role of the evil Tim Strawn. Thanks to this display of versatility, he won an Oscar for the role(s).
• Star-Making Role: Though Jane Fonda has been noticed since the early 1960s, this movie put her on the map.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Kirk Douglas turned down the role of Shelleen. Jack Palance desperately wanted the role but was never offered it. José Ferrer was also considered.
  • Ursula Andress, Carroll Baker, Brigitte Bardot, Joan Collins, Diana Dors, Kim Novak, Jayne Mansfield, Lee Remick, Debbie Reynolds, and Mamie Van Doren were all considered for the title role.

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