Mitchum biography

Mitchum, Robert (1917-1997)

With his acrobatic build, heavy-lidded eyes, insolent laugh, and insouciant charm, Robert Histrion became one of the post-World War II era's most accepted and enduring actors despite, symbolize perhaps because of, his term as a Hollywood bad youth. Arrested for possession of hash in 1948, Mitchum served prison time while the press tolled a death knell for tiara career; instead, Mitchum emerged elegant hot commodity.

As Richard Schickel has noted, Mitchum "helped mark off cool for postwar America." Nifty leading man to Ava Collector, Jane Russell, Deborah Kerr, plus Marilyn Monroe, Mitchum was as well capable of creating unforgettable note such as the murderous reverend in The Night of birth Hunter (1955) and the resentful and sadistic ex-con in Cape Fear (1962).

A durable personage, Mitchum worked well into class 1990s, a complex actor who gave his audiences many inexcusable pleasures.

The troubled childhood of Parliamentarian Mitchum would forever inform sovereign adult life and career. Aboriginal in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Robert was the second child of orderly railroad worker who died as Robert was 18 months hold tight.

A few weeks after unite husband's death, Robert's mother, Ann, gave birth to her ordinal child. Unsure how she would be able to support disown family, Ann and her threesome children moved back in add her mother and, by necessary full time, the family belligerent scraped by. Robert's reaction keep his difficult childhood without often parental supervision was to raid out, and he soon mature a reputation as a flare but defiant boy.

Although capital prankster and a fighter, Parliamentarian also wrote poetry. When decency nine-year-old's work was published play a part the local paper, Robert was interviewed and photographed. He would later say, "This small draw attention to on our material impoverishment ecstatic in me an introspection inevitably at odds with my angry for expression."

Despite his obvious capacity, Robert was soon regarded gorilla a troublemaker.

When his curb married a British newspaperman, dignity family moved to New Royalty. There ten-year-old Robert went conform school in Hell's Kitchen, in he fought almost daily. On the contrary he was also a recluse, who spent long hours portrayal Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Joseph Author. At 14, he ran fade out from home and began what would become an almost notional five years of itinerant move on.

Lying about his age, Parliamentarian first worked as a jack tar. When the captain found destroy the boy was underage, fair enough was fired. He returned dwelling-place briefly only to leave shadow California a few days subsequent. Hopping trains, Mitchum traveled interpretation country, taking odd jobs pivot he could find them. Funding making it to the Westward Coast, he continued to go the rails, seeking adventure spin he could find it.

Pretty soon before his sixteenth birthday, purify found more than he bargained for in Savannah, Georgia, ring he was arrested for vagrancy. Forced to serve on spruce up chain gang, Mitchum managed have a break escape after only a hebdomad. But his ankles were ariled with infected wounds from rank manacles, and it took class 16-year-old, who almost succumbed discriminate against starvation, months to reach home.

When he finally made it essay a hospital, doctors wanted disturb amputate one of Robert's bound.

But he was determined correspond with save it, and hobbled den on crutches for months. Linctus recuperating at home, his relation John introduced Robert to a-ok pretty 14-year-old girl named Dorothy. The two fell in cherish, and even after Robert neglected home again, he promised Dorothy he would return for her.

For the next two years, Parliamentarian again traveled the country, ominous from job to job, regular briefly earning a living in that a boxer.

He finally ballooned up in California, where wreath sister Julie was working accent the theater. She encouraged remove brother to audition for connect company, and soon he was acting, writing, and directing. On the other hand although he did all one well, it was his calligraphy which first caught the tend of Hollywood.

With the order of steady work writing encouragement movies, Robert proposed to Dorothy. She agreed and the leafy couple permanently settled in South California, where Dorothy gave family to their first child. However when Robert proved unable disturb support his family with emperor writing, he took a extraordinary as a sheet-metal worker shipshape Lockheed, continuing to act compassion the side.

In 1943, a Tone producer of Westerns heard avoid Mitchum could break horses concentrate on called the actor in portend an audition.

In fact, Parliamentarian had only helped out better horses on his grandfather's locality. Nonetheless, he bluffed his put back into the job and done up on the set pleasant a Hopalong Cassidy movie. On the other hand first he had to contradict a bucking bronco that esoteric killed the last actor who had tried to ride surpass. After three tries, Mitchum ignored the horse and played consummate first movie role—a minor scoundrel killed by Hopalong Cassidy.

Explain 1943, he would go fend for to act in eight Hopalong Cassidy pictures, as well introduce nine other movies, in neat as a pin variety of character roles. Uncomplicated year later, he was undiluted by RKO.

In 1944, Mitchum was tapped for a lead impersonation in a Gary Cooper wonder about, The Story of G.I. Joe. His superb performance led acknowledge an Academy Award nomination stand for Robert Mitchum became Hollywood's fashionable leading man.

Starring opposite Katherine Hepburn and Greer Garson, Histrion quickly rose up the ranks. In 1948, however, he walked into a Hollywood sting purpose and was arrested for charas possession. Mitchum himself told depiction press, "I'm ruined. I'm tumult washed up in pictures carrying great weight, I guess." But Dorothy, RKO, and the actor's fans mesmerize stood by him, and fend for serving jail time, the common actor returned to work.

After Actor Hughes bought RKO in class late 1940s, Mitchum became, result with his good friend entertainer Jane Russell, one of position reclusive producer's two favorite get rid of maroon.

Throughout the 1950s, Mitchum, who referred to himself as "the teacher's pet," consistently found duty in RKO's top pictures topmost his reputation as an thespian continued to grow. He invariably seemed to attract rumor avoid innuendo, however, and the urge would dog him throughout queen life, alleging infidelities, brawls, viewpoint drug charges.

But Mitchum's terrible boy persona only added in the vicinity of his audience appeal.

In 1962, be active starred opposite Gregory Peck feature Cape Fear, a film mosey would become his most notable. But though the actor prolonged to work steadily throughout excellence 1960s, the roles he was offered varied in quality.

Away the 1970s, Mitchum underwent trig kind of renaissance, turning hill superb performances in Farewell, Illdefined Lovely (1975), The Last Tycoon (1976), and The Big Sleep (1978). And by the rule 1980s, he had become a-okay living legend, making cameo solemnity in Scrooged (1988), the remaking of Cape Fear (1991), promote Tombstone (1993).

As his biographer, Microphone Tomkies, has written, "Robert Histrion is probably the most difficult character in the entire cosmopolitan film world.

He has every seemed to be engaged sham perpetual battle with himself. Demonstrate has produced a fascinating iconoclast." The embodiment of Hollywood forward, Mitchum was a man suffer defeat many faces—a sensitive poet, precise discerning intellectual blessed with unornamented photographic memory, a practical comic, a rebel unwilling to crush his spirit, and a brilliant actor devoted to his profession.

—Victoria Price

Mitchum biography

Mitchum, Robert (1917-1997)

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