Robert Mitchum: Solid, Dad, Crazy. (original) (raw)

Books By Damien Love (London: B. T. Batsford, 2002)
Pages 208
Illustrated
Paperback
ISBN: 978-0713487077
$17.80Review by Dr. Kirk Bane,
Central Texas Historical Association
January 4, 2023

He certainly lived a full life. Hobo, womanizer (though married to the same woman for fifty-seven years), hard drinker, dope smoker, convict, singer, and actor— "an outsider who built a career playing outsiders"—Robert Mitchum appeared in more than one hundred films over a fifty-year career. Born in Connecticut in 1917, the iconic Hollywood tough guy died of lung cancer at the age of 79 in California. Although praised by such directors as Howard Hawks, Charles Laughton, and John Huston, Mitchum coolly belittled his profession, declaring, "This is not a tough job. You read a script. If you like the part and the money is O.K., you do it. Then you remember your lines. You show up on time. You do what the director tells you to do. When you finish, you rest and then go on to the next part. That's it." Moreover, he shrugged when it came to his own ability, asserting that, "I have two acting styles: with and without a horse." And Mitchum also nonchalantly claimed, "Movies bore me; especially my own."

Despite his dismissive comments, the American Film Institute ranked him number 23 on the list of the Greatest Male Stars of Classic American Cinema. Over such a lengthy career, Mitchum starred in motion pictures with a host of Hollywood luminaries, including John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, Rita Hayworth, Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck, Jane Russell, Lee Marvin, Charlton Heston, Olivia de Havilland, Henry Fonda, and Deborah Kerr. In addition to Hawks, Laughton, and Huston, such important filmmakers as Arthur Penn, Don Siegel, Nicholas Ray, David Lean, Otto Preminger, Sidney Pollack, William A. Wellman, Edward Dmytryk, Vincente Minnelli, Henry Hathaway, Raoul Walsh, Stanley Kramer, and Fred Zinnemann directed him. Mitchum's motion pictures include WE'VE NEVER BEEN LICKED (1943), THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO (1944), 1945's THE STORY OF G.I. JOE (for which he received his sole Oscar nomination), WEST OF THE PECOS (1945), OUT OF THE PAST (1947), CROSSFIRE (1947), THE BIG STEAL (1949), MACAO (1952), THE LUSTY MEN (1952), RIVER OF NO RETURN (1954), TRACK OF THE CAT (1954), THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955), NOT AS A STRANGER (1955), HEAVEN KNOWS, MR. ALISON (1957), THUNDER ROAD (1958), THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY (1959), HOME FROM THE HILL (1960), THE SUNDOWNERS (1960), CAPE FEAR (1962), THE LONGEST DAY (1962), EL DORADO (1966), RYAN'S DAUGHTER (1970), THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973), FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1975), and the miniseries epic THE WINDS OF WAR (1983).

Cinema scholar and journalist Damien Love has perceptively examined the man and his key films in the superb study, ROBERT MITCHUM: SOLID, DAD, CRAZY. Love divides his book into four major segments: Noir Movies, War Movies, Weird Movies, and Westerns. He also provides a chronology of Mitchum's life, considers his singing career (which includes a "rollicking calypso album" from 1957), and discusses the actor's infamous 1948 marijuana arrest. "Mitchum's bust," Love contends, "could have, should have, wrecked his career. That it didn't, that the American public didn't allow it to, shows how deeply, perhaps unconsciously, they understood and responded to Mitchum's persona, his utterly detached cool."

Love argues that Mitchum possessed "a disaffectedness surpassing Bogart's and a maverick strain to equal Brando's." He also points out that fabled music critic Lester Bangs viewed the actor as a forerunner of punk. According to Love, "Bangs, who functioned as poet laureate and messed-up Pepysian chronicler of the American punk scene, placed Mitchum among a pantheon of figures responsible for the genesis of punk, tracing a line from Iggy Pop back through Lou Reed, Gene Vincent, James Dean and Marlon Brando to Mitchum." And VANITY FAIR magazine described him as, "The original dreamy bad boy, the dope-toking, hard-drinking womanizer who went from hobo to Hollywood."

Cinema buffs will appreciate Love's entertaining and insightful study. It's solid, dad, crazy!

Note One: Mitchum fans should also read Lee Server's terrific ROBERT MITCHUM: "BABY, I DON'T CARE" (2002). According to Server, "Mitchum's powerful presence and simmering violence combined with hard-boiled humor and existential detachment to create a new style in movie acting: the screen's first hipster antihero-before Brando, James Dean, Elvis, or Eastwood-the inventor of big-screen cool."

Note Two: Several of the aforementioned Mitchum films take place in the Lone Star State, including WE'VE NEVER BEEN LICKED, WEST OF THE PECOS, THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY, and HOME FROM THE HILL.