Master of the sleepy style
Jeremy Clarke
ROBERT MITCHUM: BABY, I DON'T CARE by Lee Server Faber, f20, pp. 589, ISBN 0571209947 Reporter: 'Mr Mitchum, do you think you will become a cult hero, say, in the 1990s, like Bogart in the 1960s?'
Robert Mitchum: 'What year is it now, Jack?'
Interesting fellow, Robert Mitchum. Used to be a hobo before he went into films. Kept a hobo's heart till he died, too. Hated cops. Liked a fight. Apart from being always on the side of the little guy, didn't give a shit. Favourite comment to overbearing producers, importunate fans was 'You want to suck what?' Smoked cannabis all his life, too. Grew it in flowerpots in his back garden. Claimed that when he was riding the rails he could tell which part of the US a marijuana joint came from at a single toke, blindfolded.
Mitchum was happiest boozing and smoking joints after work with the gaffers, the stuntmen and the extras, rather than with co-stars and directors. He enjoyed telling stories and doing impressions. His Rasta Man, his Camp Gay and his Blockheaded German had the boys in stitches. Even after he accidentally became a movie star with the big house beside the ocean and silly money rolling in, he always claimed he was only 'here between trains'.
Just another 'macho fuck-up' (a typical Server colloquialism) then? Not according to his huge. but, thank the Lord, slickly written and hugely entertaining biography, anyway. When it came to working, Mitchum was a real pro. Even when tackle out drunk the night before, he'd always be on set the next morning, word-perfect and happy to oblige. And in spite of his ironic attitude to the whole business of making films, and his dogged preference for lowlife company, Robert Mitchum had the electrifying presence, on screen and off, of a real movie star. The last of the Gary Coopers. And cool, man: just so damn cool the word could have been invented for him.
Just how good an actor Mitchum was is of course open to debate. There are those who say that all he did was point his raincoat at people. Director John Huston reckoned he was capable of playing King Lear. Mitchum's sleepy nihilistic style made the French think they were looking at an existentialist and they loved him for it. If pressed, Mitchum himself would modestly say he had two acting styles, 'with and without a horse'. I'd push forward my own view on his acting abilities here, only the social circles I move in are so entirely artificial I can't distinguish good acting from bad.
Server loves his subject extravagantly and his book is none the worse for that. He recounts episodes of Mitchum's irreverent behaviour, particularly the fights, with undisguised admiration and humorous gusto. Mitchum's father was said to have killed a chap in a brawl at a place called Hellhole Swamp, and son Bob liked to wade in swinging too. He had a 'wonderful, sloping right hook' apparently. Of the fights detailed in this biography, Mitchum's record is won 7, drawn 4, lost 2. Some of these took place on set, others in bars and at charity dinners. The best fight story in this book, however, is an account of a scrap between Frank Sinatra and Broderick Crawford during a take of Not as a Stranger. Tired of Sinatra's constant needling, Crawford suddenly flips, jumps on Sinatra and starts battering him. He's on top of Sinatra, flailing away, then he rips off 01' Blue Eyes' hairpiece and eats it. Mitchum intervenes, Sinatra has it on his toes, Crawford picks up Mitchum and throws him through a stage window. The technical adviser rushes on and orders Crawford to vomit up the wig because it's the only one they have.
Hollywood film buffs will enjoy Server's comprehensive but never oppressive knowledge of the American film industry. For the rest of us the book is loaded with barely credible stories about the antics of directors, moguls (RKO boss Howard Hughes in particular) and Mitchum's leading ladies. And by the end Server has made the serious point that, owing to his laid-back, minimalist, stoned, acting style, Robert Mitchum was (and still is) seriously underrated as an actor. Of the 120 films he appeared in, many were rubbish. (Mitchum never went to see any of them. 'They didn't pay you to watch 'em,' he said.) But when he rose to the occasion, as he did in films like Out of the Past, Crossfire, Angel Face and Night of the Hunter, he was, perhaps, one of the best there was.
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