Marvin R., better known in Seattle A.A. circles as Starvin' Marvin and Marvelous Marvin, is a flamboyant product of the restaurant business, a cult and alcohol.

It was the restaurant business which gave him his start in life. His parents founded Rosand's Seafood on waterfront Ballard and built it into one of the 10 best eateries in Seattle. Born in Ballard in 1936, Marvin grew up in the business, working as dishwasher and busboy, then advancing to salad maker, waiter and finally host. The restaurant, one of the best-known in Seattle, is now Ray's Boathouse. The family sold it many years ago.

All the time he was scouring those pots and pans, Marvin dreamed of becoming an actor. His mother was his inspiration. A devoted movie fan, she took her young son to hundreds of movies as he was growing up. His first acting gig was in the first grade. He has a hazy memory of playing "some kind of fairy godmother."

He was on the stage all through his high school days at Ballard High, and later in the navy in Bremerton and San Diego. He has fond memories of San Diego's famous Globe Theater, where he appeared in "Tea and Sympathy" and "some sort of Shakespeare thing." He's not a great fan of the bard, however. "The language, to tell you the truth, turns me off. We're living in today. We ought to use today's language."

Acting is the career which has sustained him all his life, though he worked as a salesman much of the time to keep body and soul together, and to support his wife and three children. It might have been all acting except for the old demon rum. Just before he was discharged from the navy, he was on the verge of signing a contract with Twentieth Century Fox when he got drunk and blew the deal.

He came back to Seattle and enrolled in the University of Washington's School of Drama, but that didn't last long. He returned to Hollywood, where he stayed off and on for several years. He was able to get work there in TV and on the stage, but "Seattle was my home," so he eventually came back to stay.

Drinking, meanwhile, was becoming an ever-more important part of his life. He'd started when he was about 12 years old, and drank all through high school and his subsequent years in the navy. Question: when did you drift into problem drinking? Answer: "It was always a problem." But by the late '60s, he was drinking till the bars closed, and sometimes never got home at all. "I never lost any jobs, but I certainly should have."

Naturally, this had a serious impact on his family life, and Marvin, who describes himself as a "real family man," tried to get a handle on his drinking. He was also tired of sleeping on the couch, to which his wife exiled him whenever he came home drunk. "She made life unbearable."

One night in early 1972,when he came home drunk, his wife threatened to divorce him. Marvin, the actor, put on his best act of contrition, crying and begging for forgiveness. No soap. A relative, a new recruit to A.A. himself, came and took him to his first meeting. "I couldn't get out of it, but I had an instant conversion. I loved the program. I may have been dragged in by the ear, but I enjoyed it and kept on going."

He stayed sober for five years, but then his marriage finally collapsed and he began drinking again. That continued for five long years-"I even chaired one meeting while I was drunk"-until he finally had his last drink on Feb. 18, 1983.

In the meantime, before his divorce, his family fell under the spell of another member of the fellowship. He still seems to have mixed feelings about the way in which this man and his wife took over his family's life.

As Marvin describes this part of his history: "We became friends with this other family. As a member of A.A., he put a lot of demands on us, especially me. He called it spirituality and humbling. There was a period there when I had no identity. Really weird, but there was a lot of growth too. It was good for us to have a strong faith in God, but his interpretation was not quite right. Eventually, he took over my car and made me give up my driver's license, but again, it was good for us to be humble.

"The good part was, he took me through the Big Book sentence by sentence. Sometimes, we'd go all night. Then we went on to the Bible, same way."

The cult leader believed in matriarchy, requiring him to do whatever his wife demanded. Once, while he was watching television, his wife demanded that they talk. When he explained that watching TV was incompatible with talking, she whopped him upside the head. The two families were practically joined at the hip, even eating their meals together.

"It was very weird. I still ask myself how all that ever happened," Marvin said.

On the up side, he had not been drinking during those cult years, but eventually, he'd had enough and quit both the cult and his marriage. His wife told him, "this way or the highway," so he left. For the next five years, he was in and out of sobriety. "I probably got more coins than anybody in A.A.-60 days, 90 days, six months. I was full of antics in those days. My meetings were at old Fremont. Remember that long table that ran down the middle of the room? I used to get up on it and prance from one end to the other. I was famous for my signoff at meetings: 'I'm off the air!'"

His antics made him famous, as did his bypassing of A.A.'s "No cross talk" rule. "I was always an outspoken character, but when I interrupted somebody, I always did it in a nice way. That prohibition doesn't mean much to me."

Marvin finally sobered up for good when he had a sudden hemorrhage from his throat. "I'd never thought of my drinking as dangerous till then," he said. "I'd had a couple of DWIs and a few nights in jail, but those were just part of life."

But the hemorrhage scared him enough to keep him sober long enough to get a sponsor and keep him off the bottle long enough for permanent sobriety to set in. It helped, too, that "I'd always had a strong faith in God."

In his younger days, Marvin was a salesman when he wasn't acting, but he has long since made acting his only career. Does he keep busy? "Not busy enough," he acknowledged. Just now, he's doing his second anti-smoking commercial for the Washington State Department of Health. "You won't recognize me. I'm wearing a blond wig." He's still trying to quit himself.

The highlight of his acting career was his work with John Wayne in the 1974 film, "McQ." He played a police officer in the property room. "He was good to work with, nice, polite. I still get residuals from rebroadcasts. It's on all the time."

Marvin is on good terms with his three children and his grandchildren. He has never remarried, "but I'm open to it."

Meanwhile, he goes to three or four meetings a week and tries "to help people when I can. A.A. means life to me, and I want the same for others."

Interviewed and written by Dick S.