Robert mitchum

Born on August 6, 1917 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Robert Charles Durman Mitchum had an unhappy childhood. At the age of 2, he was left an orphan after the accident at work suffered by his father, a railway worker. Her mother remarried a man who turned out to be an alcoholic and ended up abandoning her and her children.

With an independent and lonely character, during his adolescence he did not stop getting into trouble. He ended up running away from home at the age of 14, at the height of the Great Depression, when he went from one city to another, aimlessly, as a stowaway on the first train he caught. He ended up confined for a season in the reformatory.

After reuniting with his mother, he firmly intends to regenerate himself and lead an honest life by exercising various jobs. He ended up in Long Beach (California), where he got a job at an aeronautical company. At that time he joined his sister in a theater group, Players Guild, where he discovered that he had a future as an actor because of his physical appearance, his great height (he was 1.85), and his undeniable acting talent.

According to some rumors, he debuted as an uncredited extra in Sabotage (1942) , by Alfred Hitchcock (data that is not sufficiently confirmed). The actor originally called himself Bob Mitchum, although as a general rule they didn’t even bother to credit him in most of the numerous films he shot in the early 1940s.

His first role of some relevance was one of the soldiers who intend to bomb the capital of Japan, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, in 30 seconds over Tokyo , by Mervyn LeRoy . For another war film, We Are Human Beings Too , by William A. Wellman , he won an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Role for playing a lieutenant in the American army during World War II.

Although he did not win the statuette (it went to James Dunn for Human Bonds ), the mere fact that he was eligible for it gave him enormous popularity, which is why his presence began to be required, especially in film noirs, like Return to the Past , by Jacques Tourneur, or Crossroads of Hate , by Edward Dmytryk . He’s also starred in numerous westerns such as Raoul Walsh ‘s Haunted , where he rocks the role of a guy traumatized by the murder of his family when he was a child. It also comes to be a western, although mixed with family drama, The Red Pony , by Lewis Milestone, adaptation of a play by John Steinbeck in which he plays a rancher, father of a restless boy. During the postwar period, Mitchum became one of Hollywood’s highest-grossing actors, but he was always careful not to let star status go to his head. “I maintain the same attitude as when I started. I have not changed anything, except my underwear,” he came to say in an interview.

Married Dorothy Spence in 1940, the couple had two children, James and Chris. Although he never divorced her, Robert Mitchum was not exactly an example of a good husband, as he frequently appeared in the tabloids for his continuous romances, almost always with big screen stars such as Marilyn Monroe , Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth . The actor did not lead a very orderly life, as he was also tried several times for drug possession.

In the 50s, Robert Mitchum continues at the top, with titles such as Bandit , where he plays a mercenary in the middle of the Mexican civil war, or Duel in the North Atlantic , where he plays a soldier. He especially excels in two Otto Preminger titles , the film noir Angel Face and River of No Return , an intense melodramatic western in which he shared the screen with Marilyn Monroe. His work in Only God Knows , John Huston ‘s war drama where the actor becomes a marine trapped with a nun ( Deborah Kerr ) on a deserted island during World War II , can also be described as memorable .

Robert Mitchum ‘s most memorable character is without a doubt the false preacher in The Night of the Huntsman , who chases after the sons of a robber, to find out where he kept the loot from a robbery. It marked the directorial debut of the prolific actor Charles Laughton , who never directed again, discouraged that the film, now considered a masterpiece, was barely successful, receiving lukewarm reviews.

Mitchum does a successful composition of the sinister individual, who has the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tattooed on the knuckles of his hands. “These fingers, dear brothers, are always fighting with each other. The hate of the left hand fights, and it seems that love is going to lose but everything changes, love wins. The hand of love has won and the hate of the left hand has been knocked out”, explains the character in one of the most memorable sequences.

According to the actor’s memoirs, James Agee ‘s script was continually retouched, and he himself improvised most of the dialogue, although this does not seem to correspond to reality, judging by a first version of the script found in 2004, virtually identical to what was filmed. Mitchum also tells that Laughton couldn’t stand child actors Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce, so he had to direct them himself.

Mitchum liked acting challenges, which is why he chooses projects very well , such as Vincente Minnelli ‘s With Him Came the Scandal , where he plays a wealthy womanizer, obsessed with raising his son, whom he believes is not very masculine. He returned to being a chilling psychopath in J. Lee Thompson ‘s Cape Terror , where he hunted down the family of the lawyer ( Gregory Peck ) he claims was responsible for his conviction. In the remake directed three decades later by Martin Scorsese , Cape Fear, both he and Peck had a small appearance. He even managed not to fall short as a vigilante sheriff opposite the quintessential western hero, John Wayne , in Howard Hawks ‘ memorable El Dorado . Perhaps because of chaining one shoot after another, Robert Mitchum was never a fan of cinema. “Movies bore me, especially mine,” he once declared.

Robert Mitchum could not make Humphrey Bogart forget as Philip Marlowe, the famous detective created by Raymond Chandler, whom he gave life to in Private Detective , a deteriorated remake of The Big Sleep , which took the action to Great Britain. But many are the roles of Robert Mitchum of which the good movie fan keeps fond memories, such as the mysterious preacher from The Poker of Death , the war correspondent from The Battle of Anzio , or the ex-combatant who travels to Japan. to help a friend whose daughter has been kidnapped in the memorable Yakuza .

Robert Mitchum’s last great roles include the owner of the studios in The Last Tycoon , where Elia Kazan adapted F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the mature teacher who marries a young girl at the dawn of the Irish revolution, in The Daughter by Ryan , by specialist in mass blockbusters David Lean . But the actor resisted retiring and during the 1980s and 1990s he lavished himself heavily on television series such as North and South and The Winds of War . His last work was the television biopic James Dean: Race Against Fate , where he played the director of Giant , George Stevens .

Robert Mitchum passed away from lung cancer in California on July 1, 1997, one day before another screen great, James Stewart . “He was the last Gary Cooper ,” read one of the obituaries.