Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor, author, composer and singer. He is #23 on the American Film Institutes list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time. Mitchum rose to prominence for his starring roles in several major works of the film noir style, and is considered a forerunner of the anti-heroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. He may be best-remembered for his roles in such films as The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), Crossfire (1947), Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955), and Cape Fear (1962). Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut into a Methodist family. His mother, Ann Harriet Mitchum (née Gunderson), was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captains daughter, and his father, James Thomas Mitchum, was of Scots-Ulster descent and was a shipyard and railroad worker. A sister, Annette, (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career) was born in 1914. James Mitchum was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919, when his son was less than two years old. After his fathers death, his mother was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. She returned to her family in Connecticut, and married a former Royal Naval Reserve officer, Lieutenant Hugh Cunningham Morris RNVR, who helped her care for the children. In September 1919 a second son, John, was born. Ann and the Major also had a daughter, Carol Morris, who was born July 1927 on the family farm in Delaware. When all of the children were old enough to attend school, Ann found employment as a linotype operator for the Bridgeport Post. Throughout Mitchums childhood, he was known as a prankster, often involved in fistfights and mischief. When he was 12, his mother sent Mitchum to live with his grandparents in Felton, Delaware, where he was promptly expelled from his middle school for scuffling with a principal. A year later, in 1930, he moved in with his older sister, in New Yorks Hells Kitchen. After being expelled from Haaran High School, he left his sister and traveled throughout the country on railroad cars, taking a number of jobs including ditch-digging for the Civilian Conservation Corps and professional boxing. He experienced numerous adventures during his years as one of the Depression eras wild boys of the road. At age 14 in Savannah, Georgia, he was arrested for vagrancy and put on a local chain gang. By Mitchums own account, he escaped and returned to his family in Delaware. It was during this time, while recovering from injuries that nearly cost him a leg, that he met the woman he would marry, a teenaged Dorothy Spence (Although he had numerous affairs throughout his marriage, he remained with wife Dorothy Mitchum for nearly 60 years). He soon went back on the road, eventually riding the rails to California. Mitchum arrived in Long Beach, California, in 1936, staying again with his sister Julie. Soon the rest of the Mitchum family joined them in Long Beach. During this time he worked as a ghostwriter for astrologer Carroll Righter. It was sister Julie who convinced him to join the local theater guild with her. In his years with the Players Guild of Long Beach, he made a living as a stagehand and occasional bit-player in company productions. He also wrote several short pieces which were performed by the guild. According to Lee Servers biography (Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Dont Care), Mitchum put his talent for poetry to work writing song lyrics and monologues for his sister Julies nightclub performances. In 1940 he returned East to marry Dorothy Spence, taking her back to California. He remained a footloose character until the birth of their first child, James Mitchum, nicknamed Josh (two more children would follow, Christopher Mitchum and Petrine). Mitchum then got a steady job as a machine operator with the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. A nervous breakdown (which resulted in temporary blindness), apparently from job-related stress, led Mitchum to look for work as an actor or extra in movies. An agent he had met got him an interview with the producer of the Hopalong Cassidy series of B-westerns; he was hired to play the villain in several films in the series during 1942 and 1943. He continued to find further work as an extra and supporting actor in numerous productions for various studios. After impressing director Mervyn LeRoy during the making of Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Mitchum signed a seven-year contract with RKO Radio Pictures. He found himself groomed for B Western stardom in a series of Zane Grey adaptations. Following the moderately successful western Nevada, Mitchum was lent from RKO to United Artists for the William Wellman-helmed The Story of G.I. Joe. In the film, he portrayed war-weary officer Bill Walker (based on Captain Henry T. Waskow), who remains resolute despite the troubles he faces. The film, which followed the life of an ordinary soldier through the eyes of journalist Ernie Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith), became an instant critical and commercial success. Shortly after making the film, Mitchum himself was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving at Fort MacArthur, California. At the 1946 Academy Awards, The Story of G.I. Joe was nominated for four Oscars, including Mitchums only nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He finished the year off with a western (West of the Pecos) and a story of returning Marine veterans (Till the End of Time), before filming in a genre that came to define Mitchums career and screen persona: film noir. Mitchum was initially known for his work in film noir. His first foray into the genre was a supporting role in the B-film When Strangers Marry, about newlyweds and a New York City serial killer. Undercurrent, another of Mitchums early noirs, featured him playing against type as a troubled, sensitive man entangled in the affairs of his brother (Robert Taylor) and his brothers suspicious wife (Katharine Hepburn). John Brahms The Locket (1946) featured Mitchum as bitter ex-husband to Laraine Days femme fatale. Raoul Walshs Pursued (1947) combined western and noir styles, with Mitchums character attempting to recall his past and find those responsible for killing his family. Crossfire (also 1947) featured Mitchum as a member of a group of soldiers, one of whom kills a Jewish man in an act of anti-Jewish hatred. It featured themes of anti-Semitism and the failings of military training. The film, directed by Edward Dmytryk, earned five Academy Award nominations. On September 1, 1948, after a string of successful films for RKO, Mitchum and actress Lila Leeds were arrested for possession of marijuana. The arrest was the result of a sting operation designed to capture other Hollywood partiers as well, but Mitchum and Leeds did not receive the tipoff. After serving a week at the county jail, (he described the experience to a reporter as being like Palm Springs, but without the riff-raff) Mitchum spent 43 days (February 16 to March 30) at a Castaic, California prison farm, with Life magazine photographers right there taking photos of him mopping up in his prison uniform. The arrest became the inspiration for the exploitation film She Shoulda Said No! (1949), which starred Leeds. The conviction was later overturned by the Los Angeles court and District Attorneys office on January 31, 1951, with the following statement, after it was exposed as a setup: After an exhaustive investigation of the evidence and testimony presented at the trial, the court orders that the verdict of guilty be set aside and that a plea of not guilty be entered and that the information or complaint be dismissed. Whether despite, or because of, his troubles with the law and his studio, the films released immediately after his arrest were box-office hits. Rachel and the Stranger (1948) featured Mitchum in a supporting role as a mountain man competing for the hand of Loretta Young, the indentured servant and wife of William Holden, while he appeared in the film adaptation of John Steinbecks novella The Red Pony (1949) as a trusted cowhand to a ranching family. He returned to true film noir in The Big Steal (also 1949), where he again joined Jane Greer in an early Don Siegel film. One of the lesser-known aspects of Mitchums career was his forays into music, both as singer and composer. Mitchums voice was often used instead of that of a professional singer when his characters sang in his films. Notable productions featuring Mitchums own singing voice included Rachel and the Stranger, River of No Return and The Night of the Hunter. After hearing traditional calypso music and meeting artists such as Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader while filming Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison in the Caribbean island of Tobago, he recorded Calypso — is like so ... in March 1957. On the album, released through Capitol Records, he emulated the calypso sound and style, even adopting the styles unique pronunciations and slang. A year later he recorded a song he had written for the film Thunder Road, titled The Ballad of Thunder Road. The country-style song became a modest hit for Mitchum, reaching No. 69 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart. The song was included as a bonus track on a successful reissue of Calypso... and helped market the film to a wider audience. Mitchum is regarded by critics as one of the finest actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Roger Ebert called him the soul of film noir. Mitchum himself, however, was self-effacing; in an interview with Barry Norman for the BBC about his contribution to cinema, Mitchum stopped Norman in mid flow and in his typical phlegmatic style said, Look, I have two kinds of acting. One on a horse and one off a horse. Thats it. He had also succeeded in annoying some of his fellow actors by voicing his puzzlement at those who viewed the profession as challenging and hard work. He is quoted as having said in the Barry Norman interview that acting was actually very simple and that his job was to show up on time, know his lines, hit his marks, and go home.[17][18] Mitchum had a habit of marking most of his appearances in the script with the letters n.a.r., which meant no action required, which critic Dirk Baecker has construed as Mitchums way of reminding himself to experience the world of the story without acting upon it.[19] Interviewer Larry King stated on a number of occasions that Mitchums interview was his most challenging. Mitchum, a man of few words, tended to answer simply Yes or No to many of Kings questions. Mitchum was in poor health while filming The Winds of War (1983), and once again there was talk of retirement. He filmed Marias Lovers (1984) despite suffering from a solid case of pneumonia. He claimed his famous eyes were the result of a combination of injuries from his boxing days and chronic insomnia, which he suffered from throughout his life. Although Mitchum continued to appear in films throughout the 1990s, such as Tombstone, Jim Jarmuschs Dead Man, and appeared in contrast to his role as the antagonist in the original, a protagonist police detective in Martin Scorseses remake of Cape Fear, the actor gradually slowed his workload. His last film appearance was a small but pivotal role in the television biopic, James Dean: Race with Destiny playing Giant director George Stevens. His last starring role was in the 1995 Norwegian movie Pakten. Mitchum died on July 1, 1997, in Santa Barbara, California, due to complications of lung cancer and emphysema. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea by wife Dorothy Mitchum and neighbor Jane Russell. At Mitchums insistence, no memorial service was held.his ashes scattered at sea. He was survived by his wife of 57 years, Dorothy Mitchum (died April 12, 2014, Santa Barbara, California, aged 94),[15] and actor sons, James Mitchum, Christopher Mitchum, and daughter Petrina (Trina) Mitchum. His grandchildren, Bentley Mitchum and Carrie Mitchum, are actors, as was his younger brother, John, who died in 2001. Another grandson, Kian, is a successful model.
Posted on: Wed, 28 May 2014 23:02:29 +0000
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