Profile of Robert Mitchum on Famous Like Me

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor and singer. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Mitchum is largely remembered for his starring roles in several major works of the film noir genre, and is considered a forerunner of the antiheroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 60s.

Background

Mitchum's father, James Thomas Mitchum, was born in Lane, South Carolina. He was a soldier and barroom brawler of Scots-Irish ancestry on his father's side and Blackfoot Indian descent on his mother's. Robert's mother, Ann Harriet Gunderson, was a Norwegian immigrant and a sea captain's daughter. During his childhood, Mitchum frequently went out of his way to get into trouble. Throughout his life, he was famous for fabricating fantastic tales about his past, claiming to have once worked for a Georgia chain gang, escaping after six days.

Mitchum was expelled from Haaren High School in Hell's Kitchen, New York City as a teenager and wandered the country during the early years of the Great Depression, taking on such roles as a workman and professional boxer. He finally settled down in Long Beach, California in 1936 with his sister, Julie, who convinced him to join her in the local theater guild. In 1940 he married his boyhood sweetheart, Dorothy Spence, in Delaware. The Mitchums had two sons, Jim Mitchum and Christopher Mitchum, both actors; and a daughter, Petrine.

Career

His first major role was a bit part in the Hopalong Cassidy western Hoppy Serves a Writ (1943). After several more minor parts, he was signed to a contract by RKO Radio Pictures.

Though Mitchum had his first breakthrough for his supporting performance in Story of G.I. Joe (1945), for which he received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, he achieved his greatest success in the gritty, low-budget crime dramas that would become known as film noirs. He was best known for playing characters whose poor decisions caused them to engage in endeavors that skirted the line between right and wrong, such as the cynical, hard-edged private eye in Out of the Past (1947), a disturbed artist in The Locket (1946), and a shady gambler in His Kind of Woman (1951). With his imposing physical presence and rumbling voice, he was particularly well-suited to play menacing figures, but he was quite successful in tempering this with an underlying aspect of raw intelligence.

In 1948, he and a starlet named Lila Leeds were arrested in her apartment on charges of drug possession. The subsequent conviction and short prison sentence for marijuana possession sidetracked his career for a few years in the early 1950s, but he survived the scandal, in part because of his image among his fans as a rebel and an outsider. He continued to receive praise in his later career for roles such as the murderous preacher in The Night of the Hunter (1955), a sympathetic marine in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), an Australian sheep drover in The Sundowners (1960), a vengeful convict in Cape Fear (1962), an aging petty hood in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), detective Philip Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely (1975), and the stoic patriarch of a Navy family in the television miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988).

Music

Few people who have watched his films have noticed that Robert Mitchum also was an accomplished singer, providing songs for Rachel and the Stranger, The Night of the Hunter, and others.

Decca recorded Mitchum singing six songs from Rachel and the Stranger in longer and more elaborate versions than appear in the film; the company released two on a 78 at the time, and the full set was published much later on CD.

In March 1957, he recorded the calypso album Calypso — Is Like So . . .. After meeting such artists as Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader while filming on location in Trinidad, Mitchum successfully pitched the concept of this album to Capitol Records. Mitchum opted for an "ethnic" sound, the result sounding like (in the words of his biographer Lee Server) "equal parts Belafonte, Martin Denny, and karaoke bar".

In 1967 he recorded That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings for Monument Records, for the most part older pop and country pop songs (notably "Little Old Wine Drinker Me", which had inspired him), plus his own "The Ballad of Thunder Road" and "Whippoorwill".

Death

Robert Mitchum died in his sleep on July 1, 1997 of lung cancer and emphysema, at the age of seventy-nine. His The Big Sleep co-star James Stewart died the next day.

Filmography

• The Magic of Make-Up (1942) (documentary)
• The Human Comedy (1943)
• Hoppy Serves a Writ (1943)
• Aerial Gunner (1943)
• Border Patrol (1943)
• Follow the Band (1943)
• The Leather Burners (1943)
• Colt Comrades (1943)
• We've Never Been Licked (1943)
• Lone Star Trail (1943)
• Beyond the Last Frontier (1943)
• Corvette K-225 (1943)
• Bar 20 (1943)
• Doughboys in Ireland (1943)
• False Colors (1943)
• Minesweeper (1943)
• The Dancing Masters (1943)
• Cry 'Havoc' (1943)
• Riders of the Deadline (1943)
• Gung Ho! (1943)
• Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944)
• Mr. Winkle Goes to War (1944)
• When Strangers Marry (1944)
• Girl Rush (1944)
• Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
• Nevada (1944)
• Story of G.I. Joe (1945)
• West of the Pecos (1945)
• Till the End of Time (1946)
• Undercurrent (1946)
• The Locket (1946)
• Pursued (1947)
• Crossfire (1947)
• Desire Me (1947)
• Out of the Past (1947)
• Rachel and the Stranger (1948)
• Blood on the Moon (1948)
• The Red Pony (1949)
• The Big Steal (1949)
• Holiday Affair (1949)
• Where Danger Lives (1950)
• Hollywood Goes to Bat (1950) (short subject)
• My Forbidden Past (1951)
• His Kind of Woman (1951)
• The Racket (1951)
• Macao (1952)
• One Minute to Zero (1952)
• The Lusty Men (1952)
• Angel Face (1952)
• White Witch Doctor (1953)
• Second Chance (1953)
• She Couldn't Say No (1954)
• River of No Return (1954)
• Track of the Cat (1954)
• Not as a Stranger (1955)
• The Night of the Hunter (1955)
• Man with the Gun (1955)
• Foreign Intrigue (1956)
• Bandido (1956)
• Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)
• Fire Down Below (1957)
• The Enemy Below (1957)
• Thunder Road (1958)
• The Hunters (1958)
• The Angry Hills (1959)
• The Wonderful Country (1959)
• Home from the Hill (1960)
• A Terrible Beauty (1960)
• The Sundowners (1960)
• The Grass Is Greener (1960)
• The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961)
• Cape Fear (1962)
• The Longest Day (1962)
• Two for the Seesaw (1962)
• The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) (Cameo)
• Rampage (1963)
• Man in the Middle (1964)
• What a Way to Go! (1964)
• Mister Moses (1965)
• El Dorado (1966)
• The Way West (1967)
• Villa Rides (1968)
• Anzio (1968)
• 5 Card Stud (1968)
• Secret Ceremony (1968)
• Young Billy Young (1969)
• The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969)
• Ryan's Daughter (1970)
• Going Home (1971)
• The Wrath of God (1972)
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
• The Yakuza (1975)
• Farewell, My Lovely (1975)
• Midway (movie) (1976)
• The Last Tycoon (1976)
• The Amsterdam Kill (1977)
• Matilda (1978)
• The Big Sleep (1978)
• Breakthrough (1979)
• Agency (1980)
• Nightkill (1980)
• That Championship Season (1982)
• The Ambassador (1984)
• Maria's Lovers (1984)
• Remembering Marilyn (1987) (documentary)
• Marilyn Monroe: Beyond the Legend (1987) (documentary)
• Mr. North (1988)
• Scrooged (1988)
• John Huston: The Man, the Movies, the Maverick (1989) (documentary)
• Waiting for the Wind (1990) (short subject)
• Believed Violent (1990)
• Cape Fear (1991)
• The Seven Deadly Sins (1992)
• Woman of Desire (1993)
• Tombstone (1993) (narrator)
• Backfire! (1995)
• Dead Man (1995)
• Waiting for Sunset (1995)
• Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1996) (documentary)
• James Dean: Race with Destiny (1997)

Discography

• Calypso — Is Like So . . . (1955)
• That Man, Robert Mitchum, Sings (1967)

Further reading

• Server, Lee (2001) Robert Mitchum: "Baby, I don't care, New York: St Martin's. ISBN 0-312-26206-X

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