Trivia / Marathon Man

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Roy Scheider received a copy of of the novel of Marathon Man while filming Jaws. He read the book in a day, and when he was asked his opinion, he said he thought it was a great book, but was disappointed that his favorite character, Henry "Hank" Levy, died at the halfway point. A year later, he was approached for the part, and immediately accepted it.
• Career Resurrection: John Schlesinger has not had a major success since Midnight Cowboy.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: William Goldman envisioned Laurence Olivier as Dr. Christian Szell.
• Dawson Casting: Although he was playing a graduate student, Dustin Hoffman was actually 38 years old at the time of filming.
• Deleted Scene: A sequence running at 8 minutes and 30 seconds was shot with Doc fighting some men who kill a spy colleague of his. It was later cut. William Goldman speculated it was cut because it was violent. He felt it was a grievous excision, one to the detriment of the film. With the scene missing, Doc's character seems less flawed than he really is. It also gives details as to why Doc goes such an incredible distance with a serious mortal wound to get to Babe's apartment. He wants to die with the person who loves him.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Dustin Hoffman lost 15 pounds for this role. He ran up to four miles a day to get into shape for playing the role. He would never come into a scene and fake the breathing — he was really out of breath in the scenes where he was shown running.
• Fake Nationality: Christian Szell, a German, is played by the English Laurence Olivier.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • Marc Lawrence, who plays one of Dr. Szell's Nazi thugs, was Jewish.
  • Ben Dova, who played Klaus Szell who dies in a freak (but mundane) accident in the opening, was a former vaudevillian and daredevil known for his death-defying stunts. In fact, he managed to escape the Hindenburg disaster by clinging to the side and performing a safety roll as it crashed.
  • Elsa, who's German passing herself off as Swiss (and exposed as such by "Hank"), is played by Marthe Keller, who is Swiss in real life.
• Method Acting:
  • Dustin Hoffman decided to stay up for three nights to look the part during the final act, to which Laurence Olivier reacted with the amusing line: "Try acting, dear boy, it's much easier". Olivier, one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century, thought Method Acting was bollocks and never used it.
    Hoffman was the first person to tell this story on himself, but he says that everyone leaves out Olivier's final remark, which was "Of course, I'm not one to talk!" (referring to leaping off balconies during Hamlet).
  • During the scene where the heavies try to drown Hoffman in the bathtub, Hoffman insisted upon being made to stay underwater as long as possible to make it real. Several takes were done and Hoffman insisted on being kept down longer in the water. By the end of the scene, he had to be given oxygen. In his own words:
    I said, "Don't press on my Adam's apple but try to really hold me under. Let me see how long I can stay under. Let me see if I can fight you. Let me see what happens".
• Money, Dear Boy: Laurence Olivier was suffering from cancer at the time and took the role so that his family would be well off in the event of his death. Thankfully, his cancer went into remission and he made film appearances for a further 13 years until his passing in 1989.
• Self-Adaptation: William Goldman adapted his own novel.
• Sequel Gap: Not in the case of the film, but more than a decade after the release of the novel of Marathon Man, William Goldman wrote a sequel novel called "Brothers". The book reveals that the agency was able to save Hank Levy/Scylla from dying, and has left him on a deserted island to recuperate and train, and he's brought back and sent on a mission by the agency. Hank Levy is the main character this time around, though his brother Babe is a key character and also appears throughout the novel. The book is a trippy ride, like a rejected James Bond movie plot, with Hank as the James Bond stand-in, attempting to stop assassinations by explosive robot children. It's also the last novel Goldman ever wrote.
• Uncredited Role: Robert Towne did an uncredited rewrite, mostly on the ending (the original ended like the book, with Babe shooting Szell. Hoffman said that as a Jew his character would never pull the trigger (although he shoots both Janeway and Karl earlier in the film). Goldman hated the new ending and felt it was weak.)
• What Could Have Been:
  • Robert Shaw was considered for Peter Janeway.
  • John Schlesinger had envisioned the film starring Al Pacino, Julie Christie, and Laurence Olivier. Producer Robert Evans balked at having Pacino as the lead and Christie turned down the part (even though she had worked with Schlesinger before). But at least Schlesinger got Olivier.
  • Richard Widmark auditioned for Szell.
  • Charlotte Rampling was considered for Elsa Opel.

---