Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care (20 page)

Undercurrent
and
Desire Me
were oddly parallel projects. Both were planned as plush vehicles for Metro divas, Katharine Hepburn in the first and Greer Garson in the latter, each one playing an anxious married lady torn between two men. The male leads went to Robert Taylor in
Undercurrent
and newcomer Richard Hart in
Desire Me,
while Mitchum—though given costar billing—would play much smaller—though crucial—roles, characters more talked about than actually seen on-screen. Both projects offered Mitchum the kind of high-priced glamour and distinguished castmates his home studio could not readily provide, and they would give him exposure to the worldwide audiences in Metro’s vast theater chain. To RKO, still figuring out what to do with their boy, a loan-out was not only profitable but served as a promotional campaign for Mitchum, with a rival studio picking up the tab.

Undercurrent
derived from a magazine serial in
Woman’s Home Companion,
the story of a plucky New England spinster who marries a charismatic millionaire gradually revealed to be a murderous paranoid with an obsessive hatred for his missing—possibly murdered—brother. The plot cobbled together elements from
Rebecca, Suspicion,
and
Gaslight,
with a few moments from
Woman of the Year
and
Philadelphia Story
thrown in for good measure. Directing the overheated but undercooked proceedings was Vincente Minnelli—it was the first of his string of neurotic melodramas—providing the film with a characteristic visual elegance and sheen but unable to provide much in the way of real suspense or interest.

In the role of the mad millionaire, Robert Taylor was resuming his career after several years in the navy. He looked middle-aged now, and his jet black, brilliantined hair and moustache seemed from another era, particularly in contrast to Mitchum’s sleek, vigorous appearance as Michael, the mysterious rival sibling, decked out in a formfitting turtleneck sweater and leather aviator jacket. Still, the role was no plum for the younger Bob, physically present for not more than ten minutes of the nearly two-hour running time, excluded from the big climax (his
horse
gets to save Kate’s life), and unconvincing as Hepburn’s Brahms Fourth Symphony-loving aesthete soul mate at the final fade-out.

Mitchum’s lack of on-screen chemistry with Katharine Hepburn extended beyond camera range. The actress had a pronounced superiority complex, loved to bait others, but did not take well to jokes at her expense. She seemed to turn a cold eye on the sleepy-lidded Mitchum from the start, and the chill only increased when he began entertaining the crew with an imitation of the actress at her most lockjaw affected. Such impudence. She told his stand-in he really must do something better with his life than work “for some cheap flash actor like Mr. Mitchum.” When a take went poorly, she read her costar the riot act. “You know you cahn’t act. If you hadn’t been good-looking, you would never have gotten a picture. I’m
tired
of playing with people who have nothing to offer . . .
rahlly I am.”

Mitchum gave the big shrug. He began referring to the movie as
“Under-drawers.”

If
Undercurrent
proved disappointing, Mitchum’s other MGM assignment was a disaster. An assortment of writers worked on the script before and throughout the production of
Desire Me,
trying unsuccessfully to make something coherent, if not convincing, from the story. Set in a Brittany fishing village, it concerns a woman who wrongly believing her husband has been killed in the war is drawn into a romance with a mysterious stranger, who as it turns out had secretly betrayed her husband during a prison camp escape. Mitchum was cast as the scheming stranger, with Robert Montgomery as the missing husband. Then Montgomery dropped out, and producer Arthur Hornblow decided to make Mitchum the husband and give the role of the mysterious
stranger to a little-known Broadway actor named Richard Hart, leaving Mitchum not only without the better part but now playing second fiddle to an unknown (perhaps Montgomery had noticed this as well). It was a confused, inauspicious start for the project, and things never did get better.

Mitchum, coming to work with a chip on his shoulder over the casting switch, chose to find the whole MGM ambience too damn refined for his tastes. They all wore their tradition-of-quality consciousness on their sleeves, and there was a rigid caste system in place. “L. B. Mayer would lick the floor clean at the approach of Greer Garson,” Mitchum said. “I was always an outsider and I wasn’t subjected to that caste system, so I’d speak to anyone. But there were definite demarcations in the hierarchy.” He began to appreciate the “democratic” style at RKO, where the bosses were barely distinguishable from the grips.

There was nothing like an aura of elitism to bring out the vulgarian in Bob. He took to calling Miss Garson, Metro’s stately queen of the lot, “Red,” and claimed to have come to their kissing scene after a robust lunch full of onions and Roquefort cheese, making the great lady’s eyes roll to the back of her head. He had no rapport with director George Cukor, who—perhaps having conferred with his friend Kate Hepburn—seemed to treat the young RKO loan-out condescendingly, as mere beefcake. Mitchum worked up an imitation of him, too, all puffy lips and lisping effeminacy.

“The two did not get along much, clash of personalities I suppose,” Metro research librarian and Cukor friend Elliott Morgan said. “But the whole thing was a disaster, you know.” Shooting on location at Victorine Ranch in Monterey, Garson was doing a scene on the rocky shoreline when she was hit by a sudden ten-foot wave that mashed her against the jagged stones and then washed her out to sea. The cameraman jumped in and saved her, but she suffered numerous scrapes and bruises. Taking stock after seeing how she had nearly sacrificed her life in the making of a stinker, Garson began demanding what proved to be impossible improvements in the amorphous script. There were long delays while the queen of the lot remained in her dressing room awaiting the rewrites and refusing to speak to Cukor. “Things have come to such a pass,” wrote a visiting reporter, “that when the director wishes to speak to her, he tells his assistant; the assistant tells Miss Garson’s maid; the maid delivers the message, then comes out again and tells the assistant director, who tells the director. Everybody is in a state.” Mitchum’s good graces mattered little to an MGM house director like Cukor, but Garson’s growing displeasure was another matter. He assessed the situation, said, “Oh dear,” and called in sick.

With Cukor out for the duration, the studio recruited Mervyn LeRoy to fill in. LeRoy tried to make sense of the various script revisions, worked for some
weeks, and then disappeared, replaced by Victor Saville, Jack Conway, and anyone else with some free time on their hands. Shooting and reshooting continued into the summer, followed by months of editing and reediting. All the fiddling ultimately left the film with a free-floating, dispossessed sense of time and space, the narrative assembled as if at random out of flashbacks within flashbacks and multiple voice-overs. Cukor refused to have his name on it, LeRoy followed suit, and
Desire Me
would become the first Hollywood feature released without a director credit. As Mitchum said of the experience, “Nobody desired anybody.”

Central casting had tossed up a standrin for Bob Mitchum named Boyd “Tyrone” Cabeen. It was a lowly job—you stood on a hot set during lighting setups so the star could relax in his dressing room—but to watch Cabeen in action you might have thought he’d been cast for the lead in
Hamlet.
He had matinee idol good looks, an impudently charming personality, an assortment of little-exploited talents from sketch artist to fashion designer, and was a demonic, dedicated womanizer, boozer, and hell-raiser. He and Mitchum got along like gangbusters and soon became inseparable drinking buddies and mischief makers. “Mitchum would say anything and do anything—he didn’t give a shit,” said James Bacon, the Hollywood reporter and columnist. “And Tyrone was worse! He was crazy, this guy. You never knew what the two of them might do. Tyrone thought nothing of seeing some girl he didn’t even know and going under her skirts and giving her head, in public. One time I was sitting with Bob at a place called The Coach and Horses over on Sunset, and we’re watching Tyrone, he’s got this broad he just met and he’s screwing her at the bar. And she’s loving it. And at one point there he stops long enough to pick up her drink off the bar and he dips his cock in it and stirs it around!”

Cabeen suffered along with Mitchum as the production of
Desire Me
became mired in delay and confusion. While he still labored on the film, director Cukor and assorted script doctors came up with new scenes and revised old ones, and shooting dragged on month after month. Added to this uninspiring work were days of retakes for
Undercurrent.
Mitchum would report to the MGM soundstages in Culver City at 9
A.M.
and shoot with Minnelli and Hepburn until noon, then be flown directly up the coast to the
Desire Me
set in Monterey, returning in the evening. Sometimes he would be required to do a third session as well, working at night back at the studio. It was after one of these morning-to-midnight shifts that Bob and Tyrone perpetrated their legendary hairdryer-and-hairpiece heist.

Already drunk in the evening when they were at last dismissed—and with
another 9
A.M.
call for the next morning—the pair drove off to a barroom where additional alcoholic refreshments served to fan the flames of their resentment. A few hours before dawn, they drove back to the Culver City studio and were admitted and signed in by a half-awake guard. Mitchum and Cabeen staggered around the lot, ending up in the studio makeup department where they proceeded to ransack the place and remove anything that wasn’t locked up, from towels and brushes to custom-molded head forms and Lucille Ball’s wig. Mitchum grabbed a big Turbinator hair dryer, thinking it a good present for his tried-and-true wife, then returned with Cabeen for a couple more of them, thinking they might also make good presents for some girlfriends.

The next day the burglary and vandalism were reported. Studio investigators quickly determined that the two heavily intoxicated men witnesses had seen roaming the lot were in fact Robert Mitchum and his stand-in, Boyd Cabeen. MGM’s private police chief, A. Q. Hodgett, had Cabeen hauled in while Bob, working on the set, was reached by phone. Both admitted to participation in what they described as a “gag.” Hodgett, Cabeen, and some studio policemen then went to retrieve the stolen property from the two miscreants’ residences. According to a report found by author George Eells, the recovered loot included: one bottle of spirit gum, one Sunbeam shaver, twenty-five sable brushes, three small towels, one eyelash curler, one plaster mask of Henry Hull, and one bundle of hair. As it is told, the studio police arrived at Mitchum’s house just at the moment when the long-suffering Dorothy Mitchum was placing her wet head under the lovely professional hair dryer her husband had given to her that morning.

MGM raged at RKO for the behavior of their employee and threatened to have Mitchum prosecuted for grand theft. In the end, of course, with two of their own pictures set to star the accused, Metro decided to let bygones be bygones, merely billing RKO for damages incurred.

At Dorothy’s persistent urging they began looking for a house to buy—Robert would have lived in the seedy, rented shack in West Hollywood until the owner threw them out for all he cared about where they called home. They settled on a four-bedroom place near Universal Studios at 3372 Oak Glen Drive. The price tag was $12,500. Even with his contractual pay raises, Mitchum was still crying poor and so asked RKO to loan him $5,000 toward the purchase of the house. The family moved in that summer. It was a modest place, a world away from the movie star mansions of Beverly Hills. But it was theirs—once that RKO loan had been paid off—their first home. Dorothy was pleased. Bob said, “At least now the bums who visit won’t have to sleep on the floor.”

That year Mitchum had been drawn into the activities of a group of local actors and stage folk and surprisingly agreed to invest in and assume the presidency of—and most importantly, perform with—a new acting company to be called the Theatre Production Guild. The members had grand ambitions to build it into a western equivalent of New York’s legendary Theatre Guild. Their first scheduled production, starring Mitchum, would be an original play called
The Gentle Approach
by John O’Dea, a slightly risque comedy about a returning serviceman eager to resume his sex life and a wife who would prefer to take things more slowly. Harold Daniel directed the production, and the cast included Jacqueline DeWitt and Marcy McGuire. It was a showcase production, scheduled to be performed for a weekend apiece in Long Beach and Santa Barbara. It was a modest enterprise, not likely to make him any money; but Bob had a lingering affection for his nights on the boards, and it was also a chance to show audiences, including perhaps his Hollywood employers, that he could do a comic part as well as he did his taciturn tough guys. Mitchum was focused and disciplined throughout the few weeks of rehearsals and performance, showing a personal interest in all aspects of the enterprise.

Instead of the scheduled Santa Barbara performances, the production was moved to the resort island of Santa Catalina, a weekend getaway for Southern Californians. Dorothy and the kids came along to make a holiday of it. They chartered a small cruiser for the twenty-six-mile voyage. To publicize the production, fan magazine writer Jane Wilkie and a photographer were invited to accompany them. It was a rough crossing, the sea filled with whitecaps. Mitchum stood at the helm with the captain, while most of the other passengers, including the photog, hung over the railings throwing up. Wilkie got her bearings sufficiently to sit near the cockpit and ask a few questions of the notoriously circumspect movie actor. “He could be garrulous once prodded into speech,” wrote Wilkie, “spewing anecdotes that curled the hair. . . . But he was not prone to let anyone penetrate so much as a crack into his wondrous psyche.”