Robert Mitchum

Actor

Bio

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor, director, author, composer, and singer. Mitchum rose to prominence for his starring roles in several classic films noir, and is generally considered a forerunner of the anti-heroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. His best-known films include The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), Crossfire (1947), Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955), The Enemy Below (1957), Cape Fear (1962), and El Dorado (1966). Mitchum is rated #23 on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest male stars of Classic American Cinema.

Mitchum made a departure from his typical screen persona with the 1970 David Lean film Ryan’s Daughter, in which he starred as Charles Shaughnessy, a mild-mannered schoolmaster in World War I era Ireland. Though the film was nominated for four Academy Awards (winning two) and Mitchum was much publicized as a contender for a Best Actor nomination, he was not nominated. George C. Scott won the award for his performance in Patton, a project Mitchum had rejected for Ryan’s Daughter. The 1970s featured Mitchum in a number of well-received crime dramas. The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) saw the actor playing an aging Boston hoodlum caught between the Feds and his criminal friends. Sydney Pollack’s The Yakuza (1974) transplanted the typical film noir story arc to the Japanese underworld. He also appeared in 1976’s Midway about an epic 1942 World War II battle. Mitchum’s stint as an aging Philip Marlowe in the Raymond Chandler adaptation Farewell, My Lovely (1975) was sufficiently well received by audiences and critics for him to reprise the role in 1978’s The Big Sleep.

In 1982, Mitchum went on location to Scranton, Pennsylvania to play Coach Delaney in the film adaptation of playwright/actor Jason Miller’s 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning play That Championship Season. He expanded to television work with the 1983 miniseries The Winds of War. The big-budget Herman Wouk story aired on ABC, starring Mitchum as naval officer “Pug” Henry and Victoria Tennant as Pamela Tudsbury, and examined the events leading up to America’s involvement in World War II. He also played a George Hazard’s father-in-law on the mini-series North & South, also aired on ABC. He followed it in 1988 with War and Remembrance.

Mitchum starred opposite Wilford Brimley in the 1986 made-for-TV movie Thompson’s Run. A hardened con (Mitchum), being transferred from a federal penitentiary to a Texas institution to finish a life sentence as a habitual criminal, is freed at gunpoint by his niece (played by Kathleen York). The cop (Brimley) who was transferring him, and has been the con’s lifelong friend & adversary for over 30 years, vows to catch the twosome. In 1987, Mitchum was the guest-host on Saturday Night Live where he played private eye Philip Marlowe for the last time in the parody sketch, “Death Be Not Deadly”. The show ran a short comedy film he made (written and directed by his daughter, Trina) called Out of Gas, a mock sequel to Out of the Past. (Jane Greer reprised her role from the original film.) He also was in Bill Murray’s 1988 comedy film, Scrooged. In 1991, Mitchum won a lifetime achievement award from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Golden Globe Awards in 1992.

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