Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care (61 page)

Preacher Powell and the children: Robert Mitchum, Billy Chapin, and Sally Jane Bruce in
The Night of the Hunter
(1955), directed by Charles Laughton.
Courtesy New York Public Library

Observing an operation, future physician Lee Marvin, Frank Sinatra, and Robert Mitchum, in
Not as a Stranger
(1955), directed by Stanley Kramer.
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos

The great William A. Wellman, director of
The Story of G.I. Joe, Track of the Cat
and a would-be Mitchum starrer,
Blood Alley.
Here seen in San Rafael, California, at the time of Mitchum’s firing.
Courtesy of William Wellman Jr.

Mitchum Confidential:
L. A. Herald Express
headline.

Advertisement for
Thunder Road
(1958).
Courtesy New York Public Library

Robert Mitchum’s wife, Dorothy, and their three children, Jim, 17, Chris, 14, and Petrine, 6, arrive at London Airport en route to Athens, Greece, to join Robert, filming
The Angry Hills,
June, 1958.
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos

Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum in
The Sundowners
(1960).
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos

Mitchum as gunfighter Martin Brady in
The Wonderful Country,
from the novel by Tom Lea (United Artists, 1959).
Courtesy of author’s collection

Robert Mitchum and his producer, Gregory Peck: the violent climax to
Cape Fear
(1962).
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos

“Fun to be a movie star.” Robert Mitchum and friends circa 1963.
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos

Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine in
Two for the Seesaw
(United Artists, 1962).
Courtesy New York Public Library

Robert Mitchum astride a lesbian elephant, filming
Mister Moses
(1965) in Kenya.
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos

Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe, with Charlotte Rampling in
Farewell, My Lovely
(1975), from the novel by Raymond Chandler.
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos

Robert Mitchum as Victor “Pug” Henry in the television miniseries,
The Winds of War
(1983)
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos

Robert and brother, John Mitchum, Los Angeles, 1989.
Courtesy Andrew Fenady Productions

Robert and Dorothy Mitchum attending a premiere, 1995. Childhood sweethearts, together for more than sixty years.
Courtesy AP/Wide World Photos

The end: the front page of New York’s
Daily News,
July 2, 1997.
Copyright ©
New York Daily News,
L.P. reprinted with permission

Mitchum had arrived in Greece without much enthusiasm for the local females. “They all look like they’re wearing moustaches to me,” he said. With time, though, he would come to have a more sympathetic point of view. “Women swelled around the movie set,” said Bikel. “These were more liberated Greek women, fascinated with the stardom of Mitchum. One of them latched onto him. I would see her in the trailer a few times.

“He was very funny. One night in Athens we were at a nightclub and there was a female impersonator performing. Mitchum was quite taken by what he saw. He said, ‘Boy, she is something! I’ve got to have her.’ I said to him, ‘Bob, you can’t!’ He said, ‘What do you mean? Why not?’ I said, ‘Because, the person you’re looking at. . . it’s not a she, it’s . . . it’s a
he. . .
it’s an
it.
’ And he said, ‘I don’t care about the
plumbing.
She’s gorgeous!’”

Another member of the cast, Stanley Baker, a legendary carouser in British film circles, had been eagerly anticipating his first drinking match with the man who—in regard to alcohol consumption—he took to be his American counterpart. The match ended with Baker unconscious and carried back to his hotel, while Mitchum carried on for another four or five hours until dawn and then headed off to breakfast and work.

“I had a very bemused view of all this,” said Theo Bikel. “I tagged along, as the house intellectual. I liked Mitchum. He was pleasant, fun to be with. Sometimes we sang together, in the restaurants, sitting around in the evening. I would take out the guitar and do folk music, and then he would take a turn with it and do a blues number. Later, as the night wore on . . . Mitchum was not a particularly pleasant drunk. Some people when they drink get mellow. He didn’t. He got robust and belligerent. And you got the feeling that you better steer clear of him when he was that way. He had a general orneriness. He was a bit of a redneck. His whole background came out of the sort of poor white trash environment where there was mistrust for anyone and anything that wasn’t of their ilk. I got that feeling. And his tendency was to needle; and if you’re sitting with him and you’re a Jew, as I am, you needle the Jew. But he was very nice most of the time, and I don’t want to neglect that. It’s important to say that he was a very pleasant human being who had a dark side to him.”

After more than two months in Greece, the company moved to London, shooting interior scenes at MGM’s Elstree Studio. Mitchum was lodged in a suite at the Hotel Savoy and settled into a comfortable routine, returned to the city by five in the afternoon to host a daily “happy hour” in his rooms. Ken Annakin, a talented English writer and director (he’d entered the movie business during the war, after retiring from the RAF with a case of amnesia; his
later credits included
Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines),
had a script he wanted to shoot,
The Gold Lovers,
and very much hoped to interest Mitchum in starring in it. “A great adventure story of a plane crashing in Ethiopia,” said Annakin. “Hidden gold in the desert, a story of greed, adventure, a love story. Three people with their eye on the gold, even in the most dangerous circumstances. I’d gotten the script to him—I think I had given it to his representative. And I was going up to talk to him about it when he was staying in the Savoy. And I saw that it was going to be difficult to have a talk about the film under these circumstances. The suite was filled with people. Everybody in London seemed to come there, especially the ladies. Lots of actresses from around London, and some of them were quite well known. There was drinking and a little of the other stuff—white stuff—passing around. The ladies were all over the room, and there was Mitchum overseeing it all. I can remember him sitting in a great armchair by the window with the Thames behind him and looking like he was the Sultan of Borneo holding court.

“I tried talking with him but he was terribly busy with all of these social activities, and finally the only time I could attract his attention and be alone with him was when he went to the toilet. And so we went into the toilet and we start to discuss what I had come to talk to him about, and we talked
before
he was using it and gradually it got to where he
was
using it. But once I had his undivided attention there, he was right on the ball, he knew everything about the screenplay and what was involved. He was sharp, even if he was having a few drinks and a little of the other stuff. And I realized that underneath this freewheeling character was a very keen professional. And indeed he thought it was a wonderful story and thought we could make a great film. But he said he had to do this one and then the next one. And we had other meetings and talked about making it, but it just became one of those that slipped through the cracks. And eventually it became just a memory to me. But I would meet up with Mitchum years later at various functions, until his dying day, and he would always say, ‘Ken, that’s the picture we should have made. It would have been great.’ One of those ‘regret’ stories.”