Even if you don't consider his status as a veteran of 132 films and probably the definitive actor of film noir, Robert Mitchum was a hell of a guy. Ex-con and calypso singer, pothead and poet, barroom brawler and ladies' man, hobo and horse breeder, champion drunk and literary connoisseur, screenwriter and steelworker.
Yet, in life and onscreen, he was known for a certain laid-back, understated style—which has led many to feel he wasn't much of an actor at all (a critic once derided one of his performances as an exercise in "stunned lethargy"). But Mitchum's subtle style still looks remarkably modern today—we never catch him acting. And if he was so dull, why did so many fine directors want to work with him? John Huston, Martin Scorsese, Elia Kazan, Josef von Sternberg, Jim Jarmusch, David Lean and Howard Hawks were among those who held his talents in high regard.
This month you can make up your own mind, as Turner Classic Movies spotlights Mitchum with a week of his films, running through October 8.
Mitchum's trademark, both on- and offscreen is a sort of "so what?" fatalism. There's the world-weary, cynical man drawn to his doom by the femme fatale in Out of the Past and Angel Face, men finally sucked down into the evil they've always know was all around them, hardly kicking at the quicksand until one final, noble gesture, usually involving going to their death, but going knowing they've somehow righted at least one wrong. In Out of the Past, Mitchum sacrifices not only his life, but his good memory, a death-after-death that makes Humphrey Bogart waving good-bye to the plane in Casablanca more like a guy who's given away his last cigarette.
Then there's the halfway decent guys who tumble into bad situations and figure they'll just have to deal with it, preferably with a bone-dry sense of humor, like the bemused drifter Mitchum of
Macao and His Kind of Woman, wisecracking with Jane Russell when not brawling with henchmen and Nazis. Then there's the grizzled, war-weary hero of The Story of G.I. Joe and Crossfire, men who try to stick to their code even though they know the rest of the world will not. Or there's the roles that combine the three, like his turn in the underrated rodeo flick, The Lusty Men.
Mitchum was known for proudly proclaiming that he had been arrested 37 times—he even served time on a Georgia chain gang during his youth. And escaped from it. But his most notorious run-in with the law was his 1949 marijuana bust, which would have ended anyone else's career, but it only heightened his reputation as a Hollywood bad boy.
Still, despite his badass credentials and the fact that he got his start as a black hat in Hopalong Cassidy serials, he rarely played the bad guy. Yet he is best-known to many for his terrifying, psychopathic turns in Cape Fear and The Night of the Hunter. In the remake of the former, Robert DeNiro's tattooed maniac was horror-movie ridiculous, while Mitchum's oily good ol' boy is even more frightening; his account of his kidnapping, beating and rape of his ex-wife is as chilling as realizing the guy sitting next to you on the bus is a serial killer. The Night of the Hunter may be Mitchum's greatest performance—the homicidal preacher, Harry Powell, with "LOVE" and "HATE" tattooed on his knuckles—is an icon of villainy, and the diseased heart of a brilliant, unsettling film, unfortunately the only one the great actor Charles Laughton directed.
Thunder Road was Mitchum's most personal film—he wrote, produced and starred in the tale of North Carolina moonshiners that became a cult classic, with his speed demon 'shine runner as another of his glacially cool anti-heroes.
Another project that was dear to him was Calypso is Like So, his calypso album, which should be an embarrassing oddity that turns up between William Shatner and Jack Webb on an anthology of celebrity musical mistakes. But it's not bad—so not bad, in fact, that I know people who still refuse to believe it's actually him singing. But Mitchum's ear for a tune (he played saxophone and bongos) and facility with accents (he was known as a wicked mimic) make for an entirely pleasant and quite convincing album.
For a man who seemed to do so little, Robert Mitchum did a lot.
And did it incredibly well.