Robert Mitchum: I work cheap,” is the actor’s explanation for his career’s longevity

After 35 years of work in more than 100 movies, Robert Mitchum is definitely survivor, a term he sniffs at as sounding “like a standard brand name.” Few acors work as steadily.

“I work cheap,” is the actor’s explanation for his career’s longevity. The whole subject of acting perplexes him, however, because he keeps running into this character people call “Robert Mitchum.” He claims he’s never met the fellow.

The instantly identifiable Mitchum persona was visible even when he was young man just starting out in movies in the early 1940’s. His face already looked older, tough, broody, hardened by experience. A number of incidents in his life helped to fuel people’s imagination: seven days on a Georgia chain gang as 16-year-old vagrant before escaping; riding the rails to California soon afterwards; six months in a work camp in 1948 for his celebrated marijuana arrest; his picture on front pages all over the world when a starlet he posed with at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival suddenly removed the top of her swimsuit; fired off the set of Otto Preminger’s “Rosebud” after vehement arguments with the director—the columnists loved “Bob Mitchum.”

To the actor’s distress, this doppelganger “Bob Mitchum” follows him to nearly every first‐time meeting with people. “I keep looking over my shoulder,” he says, “wondering who it is they’re addressing. They’re speaking to someone who really doesn’t exist. They say, ‘I read it in a bio.’ I didn’t write the biographies. It’s flack fat. All those errors are crystalized now. I find it very awkward.”

What often gets overlooked is that there is a keen self‐mockery underneath the screen “Bob Mitchum,” a clue to the fact that the actor takes neither himself nor his roles too seriously. “There’s very strong faction,” he says, “which insists that I am a comedian. A lot of people say I’m the funniest guy they know. Bogie once said to me, ‘The difference between you and me and those other guys is that we’re funny.’ “

Kirk Honeycutt is a freelance ‘vriter who frequently reports.on the film scene.

On screen the actor projects a laconic, droopy‐eyed heat, a man slow to anger but not to he crossed. He has played the purist of evil, most notably the murderous preacher in the 1955 film “The Night of the Hunter,” but usually his toughness is tempered by a strict moral code. He’s often a cop or adventurer whose scruples put him at a disadvantage for while. Mr. Mitchum’s perpetual air of cynical amusement tends to carry him unscathed through even the shakiest vehicles.

“Halt the time you have to have tun with a role—what else is there to do with it? You develop a facility—and I’ve had it for a long time—or you read dialogue that no one else would really dare read. You just have to clean it off your teeth like hen feathers.” •

Few major film stars wind up with such bad dialogue—and in so many bad or simply mediocre movies—as Mr. Mitchum does, He says he has clone some films just so that others could work. “If I work, they work. I mean, what’s a producer without a production? Other times you come into it and the director has an autocratic paranoia about the script—every word is holy writ. Then I quote Johnny Huston.” Here he slips into a fine imitation of director John Huston. “’We can make bad pictures too, kid. If they want ‘em bad, we can make ‘em bad. Cost a little more, but we can make ‘em.’ So I just do it as badly as they wish,”

The pictures may take their lumps, but the actor keeps dodging like the middleweight boxer he once briefly was. Although Mr. Mitchum insists that his “cheap” price is the key to his resilience through the years, another factor is his “bankability.” The “Bob Mitchum” image has underwritten many a production; yet, at first, Hollywood had difficulty classifying that image.

“When I first went to work, I’d go into casting offices and they’d say, ‘What’s he do?’ Or, ‘Did you ever think about getting your nose fixed or changing your name?’ Then later, not too much later, they’d say, ‘We need a Mitchum type.’ I’d say, ‘What exactly is that?’ I turned out to be the only one, which ensured my longevity. As long as you’re not dependent on youthful beauty and display versatility, you’ve got far greater opportunities.”

Has he ever beenable to define that singular attribute? “No,” he shrugged, “nor has anybody else.” •

While working at Lockheed Aircraft during World War II, Mr. Mitchum joined a theater group in Long Beach, Calif., where his sister was performing. Shortly thereafter an agent got him bit parts in a series of Hopalong Cassidy Westerns. Once he even played the romantic hero when the actor scheduled for the part was drafted.

“I never looked back. I played cowboys, old Chinese laundry women, anything but midgets. My first picture at R.K.O., a Zane Grey western, I was in drag.”

His rise was rapid. In 1945, three years after his first walk‐on, he was nominated for an Academy Award for “The Story of G.1. Joe.” Under contract at R.K.O. Studios, Mr. Mitchum worked steadily in a succession of action movies and thrillers. But in 1948 his career nearly ended. At the time of his narcotics arrest, studio contracts had a morals clause that would have allowed the studio to cancel his contract. Fortunately for Mr. Mitchum, Howard Hughes, who owned and operated R.K.O., had great faith in the young actor and supported him throughout the entire episode.

“There was no evidence. Howard wanted me to go to court and fight it. said no, it would be a three‐ring circus and would damage a lot of people. As soon as I got out, we submitted the court transcript and my record was wiped clean. But the press never printed that.”

Once back to .work, Mr. Mitchum found that screenwriters were beginning to create roles with him in mind. “About half the scripts submitted they claimed were written for me. On a certain percentage of the others they had sort of written themselves into corner—they couldn’t get anyone else. There aren’t too many who can do what I do. I tried to get out of making ‘Cape Fear.’ I told the director I didn’t feel like Continued on Page 32

Mitchum in “The Big Sleep”‐“There aren’t too many who can do what I do.” working. He said, ‘O.K., who then?’ I made all the obvious suggestions, then flew back to Maryland where I was living then, getting in around 7 in the morning. I heard this thumping and came downstairs. The producer had sent a bouquet of flowers, a case of bourbon and a note asking please would I do the film. I called at 6 A.M. Los Angeles time and said, ‘O.K., I’ve drunk the bourbon, I’m drunk, I’ll do it.’ “

“The Big Sleep,” is certainly in the Mitchum mold‐a private eye clinging to his integrity amid murder and corruption. This latest film version transplants the tale from Los Angeles to London. Why?

“Well, because it’s the only place they can practice industrial slavery. I didn’t hive one damn day off. Around 8 or 9 at night I’d say, ‘Isn’t it getting a little late?’ ‘Oh, weren’t you informed,’ they’d say, ‘today is an extended day?’ ‘What’s that?,’ I asked. Turned out to be a day you work until midnight. I pick scripts by the pleasant location, the days off and the greatest return for the minimum effort. Did I miscalculate on this one!”

Mr. Mitchum’s miscalculation on “The Amsterdam Kill,” also shot in Europe, was in doing most of his own stunt work. “I’m not supposed to do stunts. Hell, Vic Mature wouldn’t step off a high curb. Unfortunately, they must have read all that garbage about me, too, and thought that I’d do it. I loused up my leg on a picture in Japan, and since I had a lot of galloping and running to do in ‘Amsterdam Kill,’ they brought this stunt fellow over from England. He finally decided he owed me dinner for two years for my doubling for him all through the picture. I kept telling the director, ‘Look, if my knee goes, it’s going to be a three‐month lunch,’ and he would say, ‘Oh, did they raise your taxes, too?’ He was deaf in both ears. It was always non sequiturs.”

Unlike many of today’s actors, Mr. Mitchum has no desire to create and control his own productions. “Control is marvelous‐you get a white chair with your name on it in lieu of salary. I don’t want control like that. There is a very simple way to get control any time: Just forget your lines. When the cost of scene is up to about $40,000, they come over and say, ‘What’s the problem?’ ‘Oh, I have this idea fixe that it could be better.’ Believe me, they listen. I think it’s a much simpler system than having control.”

PROC. BY MOVIES

By Kirk Honeycutt arhive.