Mitchum, Robert (1917-1997)

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Mitchum, Robert (1917-1997)

With his athletic build, heavy-lidded eyes, insolent smirk, and insouciant charm, Robert Mitchum became one of the post-World War II era's most popular and enduring actors despite, or perhaps because of, his reputation as a Hollywood bad boy. Arrested for possession of marijuana in 1948, Mitchum served jail time while the press tolled a death knell for his career; instead, Mitchum emerged a hot commodity. As Richard Schickel has noted, Mitchum "helped define cool for postwar America." A leading man to Ava Gardner, Jane Russell, Deborah Kerr, and Marilyn Monroe, Mitchum was also capable of creating unforgettable characters such as the murderous preacher in The Night of the Hunter (1955) and the vengeful and sadistic ex-con in Cape Fear (1962). A durable icon, Mitchum worked well into the 1990s, a complex actor who gave his audiences many simple pleasures.

The troubled childhood of Robert Mitchum would forever inform his adult life and career. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Robert was the second child of a railroad worker who died when Robert was 18 months old. A few weeks after her husband's death, Robert's mother, Ann, gave birth to her third child. Unsure how she would be able to support her family, Ann and her three children moved back in with her mother and, by working full time, the family just scraped by. Robert's reaction to his difficult childhood without much parental supervision was to lash out, and he soon developed a reputation as a bright but defiant boy. Although a prankster and a fighter, Robert also wrote poetry. When the nine-year-old's work was published in the local paper, Robert was interviewed and photographed. He would later say, "This small spotlight on our material impoverishment inspired in me an introspection ever at odds with my desire for expression."

Despite his obvious intelligence, Robert was soon regarded as a troublemaker. When his mother married a British newspaperman, the family moved to New York. There ten-year-old Robert went to school in Hell's Kitchen, where he fought almost daily. But he was also a loner, who spent long hours reading Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Joseph Conrad. At 14, he ran away from home and began what would become an almost legendary five years of itinerant travel. Lying about his age, Robert first worked as a sailor. When the captain found out the boy was underage, he was fired. He returned home briefly only to leave for California a few days later. Hopping trains, Mitchum traveled the country, taking odd jobs where he could find them. After making it to the West Coast, he continued to ride the rails, seeking adventure where he could find it. Shortly before his sixteenth birthday, he found more than he bargained for in Savannah, Georgia, where he was arrested for vagrancy. Forced to serve on a chain gang, Mitchum managed to escape after only a week. But his ankles were covered with infected wounds from the manacles, and it took the 16-year-old, who almost succumbed to starvation, months to reach home.

When he finally made it to a hospital, doctors wanted to amputate one of Robert's legs. But he was determined to save it, and hobbled around on crutches for months. While recuperating at home, his brother John introduced Robert to a pretty 14-year-old girl named Dorothy. The two fell in love, and even after Robert left home again, he promised Dorothy he would return for her.

For the next two years, Robert again traveled the country, going from job to job, even briefly earning a living as a boxer. He finally ended up in California, where his sister Julie was working in the theater. She encouraged her brother to audition for her company, and soon he was acting, writing, and directing. But although he did all three well, it was his writing which first caught the attention of Hollywood. With the promise of steady work writing for movies, Robert proposed to Dorothy. She agreed and the young couple permanently settled in Southern California, where Dorothy gave birth to their first child. But when Robert proved unable to support his family with his writing, he took a job as a sheet-metal worker at Lockheed, continuing to act on the side.

In 1943, a Hollywood producer of Westerns heard that Mitchum could break horses and called the actor in for an audition. In fact, Robert had only helped out with horses on his grandfather's farm. Nonetheless, he bluffed his way into the job and ended up on the set of a Hopalong Cassidy movie. But first he had to break a bucking bronco that had killed the last actor who had tried to ride it. After three tries, Mitchum tamed the horse and played his first movie role—a minor villain killed by Hopalong Cassidy. In 1943, he would go on to act in eight Hopalong Cassidy pictures, as well as nine other movies, in a variety of character roles. A year later, he was signed by RKO.

In 1944, Mitchum was tapped for a lead role in a Gary Cooper picture, The Story of G.I. Joe. His superb performance led to an Academy Award nomination and Robert Mitchum became Hollywood's newest leading man. Starring opposite Katherine Hepburn and Greer Garson, Mitchum quickly rose up the ranks. In 1948, however, he walked into a Hollywood sting operation and was arrested for marijuana possession. Mitchum himself told the press, "I'm ruined. I'm all washed up in pictures now, I guess." But Dorothy, RKO, and the actor's fans all stood by him, and after serving jail time, the popular actor returned to work.

After Howard Hughes bought RKO in the late 1940s, Mitchum became, along with his good friend actress Jane Russell, one of the reclusive producer's two favorite actors. Throughout the 1950s, Mitchum, who referred to himself as "the teacher's pet," consistently found work in RKO's top pictures and his reputation as an actor continued to grow. He always seemed to attract rumor and innuendo, however, and the press would dog him throughout his life, alleging infidelities, brawls, and drug charges. But Mitchum's bad boy persona only added to his audience appeal.

In 1962, he starred opposite Gregory Peck in Cape Fear, a film that would become his most famous. But though the actor continued to work steadily throughout the 1960s, the roles he was offered varied in quality. During the 1970s, Mitchum underwent a kind of renaissance, turning in superb performances in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), The Last Tycoon (1976), and The Big Sleep (1978). And by the late 1980s, he had become a living legend, making cameo appearances in Scrooged (1988), the remake of Cape Fear (1991), and Tombstone (1993).

As his biographer, Mike Tomkies, has written, "Robert Mitchum is probably the most complex character in the entire international film world. He has always seemed to be engaged in perpetual battle with himself. It has produced a fascinating iconoclast." The embodiment of Hollywood cool, Mitchum was a man of many faces—a sensitive poet, a discerning intellectual blessed with a photographic memory, a practical joker, a rebel unwilling to subdue his spirit, and a talented actor devoted to his profession.

—Victoria Price