Robert Mitchum C/D, S/D

i really really need this in my life
http://www.317x.com/albums/m/robertmitchum/enlargement.jpg

Deep down, Robert Mitchum is a wanderer, and he probably would have got to Trinidad anyway, but actually it was Hollywood that sent him there, "on location" for two feature films... to Port of Spain, a colorful and sunlit place where people have come from many corners of the earth, mingling accents and spilling out their hearts in a unique musical idiom called Calypso.

In Trinidad, the sharp Mitchum ear was quick to hear the subtle coloration of word and melody that gives this native song its special sound. And, expert mimic that he is, he was quick to give it voice, in every characteristic detail.

For ten months of the kind he likes best, Mitchum followed his Calypso trail, listening acutely to local champions like Lord Melody and Mighty Sparrow, memorizing newer and more intricate lyrics in some small native bistro, absorbing the rhythmic excitement of such festivities as the great annual Jump Up Carnival.

Returning to the States, he was happy enough merely to spread the gospel of the Calypso style among the entertainment fraternity. But show-wise listeners soon recognized the quality of the Mitchum demonstrations, and insisted Bob record the songs himself.

The result: this album.

Not all the songs he sings here are absolutely as he first heard them (the censor wouldn't stand for it). A couple of the tunes are already well known; a couple are even newly written for the occasion. But every one has the authentic flavor, the beat and the vitality of the real Caribbean thing. All are products of great talent and great enthusiasm. Calypso, Robert Mitchum says with considerable authority, is like so...

So search above all:

Pursued - a beautiful movie, essentially a noir Western

Out of the Past - a noir movie with incredible pacing; it starts out slow, languorous, and picks up very gradually. Incredible.

The Lusty Men - Mitchum's best movie? Life in the rodeo. Directed by Nick Ray.

Angel Face - Another contender. A concentrated, completely perverse noir with Jean Simmons. Mitchum basically plays a slightly dim hunk of beef here. Directed by Otto Preminger. Hard to find.

River of No Return - A really elegant, if none too intense, Western with Marilyn Monroe. A supremely relaxed Mitchum. Another Preminger film. Astonishingly fluid long takes.

Night of the Hunter - Well duh. Has Mitchum singing "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms."

Thunder Road - The ultimate Mitchum movie. (The Bruce Springsteen song was named after it.) He wrote the story about a indie moonshiner battling the mob. It isn't fancy at all, and cuts to the quick. Kind of a miracle.

El Dorado - Pretty awesome Howard Hawks movie with both Mitchum AND John Wayne underplaying. Also James Caan. A Man's movie.

Other films of interest:

Gung Ho! - a mostly terrible WWII film which is insanely racist. But it features a very young (and almost skinny!) Mitchum in a tiny part.

Crossfire - a pretty good film noir, Mitchum is a police sergeant

Macao - directed by Joseph von Sternberg. Not Sternberg or Mitchum's best, but pretty good. Nice to look at.

Track of the Cat - a very weird Freudian psychodrama (with a touch of allegory) set in the frontier. With Teresa Wright (yes!) and Tab Hunter (huh?). Pretentious but fascinating.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison - A great Cinemascope film. An unusually moralistic film for Mitchum. He falls in love with a nun played by Deborah Kerr.

HOme from the Hill - Sort of a family melodrama set in Texas, in a mode not entirely dissimilar from Written on the Wind but much less angsty and perverse. Pretty good.

The Sundowners - Yay! Kerr and Mitchum again, as a family of Australian sheep herders!

The Grass Is Greener - a drawing-room comedy with Cary Grant and Kerr again. Grant and Mitchum seem to be in alternate universes. Pretty good.

Cape Fear - The movie as a whole isn't quite up to its reputation, but Mitchum is fearsome.

Ryan's Daughter - Mitchum cast against type. Wearing glasses no less! This is an English picture. It's pretty great, actually, in a overripe way.

James Agee hated him, thought he looked comatose, as I recall. His acting style is really modern, I suspect it looks even better today than it did at the time. Nicholas Cage would be nothing without his example!

One thing that's sad is when you think how much cigarettes contributed to his mystique, and then realize that he died of lung cancer.

Also: he wrote an oratorio! (Not a calypso oratorio though.)

That picture of him during the sentencing for his marijuana bust is priceless.

ha, see a recent item by me on Freaky Trigger (Do You See section) giving another angle on this.

http://www.westworld.com/~mmw/rm/price/western.gif

"I kill you with muzzleloaders"

"Years ago, I saved up a million dollars from acting—a lot of money then—and I spent it all on a horse farm in Tucson. Now when I go down there, I look at the place and I realize my whole acting career adds up to a million dollars worth of horseshit."

Yes, but his head is cocked! Where is that covered in his harsh taxonomy?

Where are you getting this quotes, TH?

in Angel Face with Jean Simmons

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http://members.aol.com/PJaySin/mitchum2.jpg

in River of No Return with Marilyn Monroe

"Somebody says, 'We really want you to do this script.' And I say, 'I'd need an awful lot of money in front to do that one.' And that never seems to be a problem. The less I like the script, the higher my price. And they pay. They may pay in yen, but they pay. Not that I'm a complete whore, understand. There are movies I won't do for any amount. I turned down 'Patton' and I turned down 'Dirty Harry.' Movies that piss on the world. If I've got $5 in my pocket, I don't need to make money that fucking way, daddy."

One of the things Dean Martin used to say was, who gives less of a shit, Kotto, or Mitchum? And I think Mitchum kind of outdid me. We had these bungalows together, right next door and I went to get him one night to go eat. I go over there and knock on the door. He said, "Who the hell is it?" and I said "Kotto." And I go in, and he's just sitting there on the edge of the bed, and I notice that the room is dark, and it's cold. And I said, what are you doing here in the dark, and he said, there's no lights. I said why is it so cold, and he said, there's no heat. So I said, Bob, why don't you get someone to turn on the heat? Why don't you get someone to turn on the lights? And he just sat there on the edge of the bed, and said, "Fuck em." He would have gone on right that way. That's how much he didn't care.

"I've been called a cynic, which I surely can't deny because I am a cynical-style girl. I happen to believe a certain amount of cynicism is inherent in the beast. But there's a little romanticism in there, too. And more than a little hedonism. You can use this to sum it all up: I know what I'm doing is bullshit. But I've got to admit, it's also a pretty good ride."

"The Big Steal" is a great film, with William Bendix and Jane Greer. He calls Greer "chiquita" during the whole movie. Very nice.

"Calypso Is Like So" is awesome, I just got a brand-new Mitchum CD with that entire work on it. Also, Robert Mitchum, for what it's worth, did the best-ever version of "Sunny."

One of the greatest all-rounders ever. The deodorant works good too.

still haven't watched Ryan's Daughter!

The Sundowners is a lot of fun, yeah. Feels like a live action Disney movie at times.

roundup of pieces tied to centenary

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4995-the-daily-nyff-2017-robert-mitchum

I ordered River of No Return from interlibrary loan.

I have the Macao DVD out right now -- I'm p sure I've seen it? -- which also has Robert Osborne's TCM joint interview with RM and Jane Russell.

watched Farewell, My Lovely last night - v solid, good cast, suitably grotesque at various points (helps that the general color palette of the movie is all lurid greens and reds)

Jack O'Halloran in a speaking role!

Sylvia Miles has basically done that character in NYC nightlife for the last 40 years.

I found it a little strange that one of the book's male characters was turned into a lesbian madam (whose receipt of a punch, then demise, we get to applaud).

also Sylvester Stallone in a nonspeaking role xp

I found it a little strange that one of the book's male characters was turned into a lesbian madam (whose receipt of a punch, then demise, we get to applaud)

yeah I noticed this too, p stupid

the nervous-nellie queer who gets offed was Chandler's creation, that was enough

surprised Miles got an Oscar nom out of that! She was good but I didn't think it was *that* nuanced a role or anything.

soused women in crime and/or lowlife circles often got nominated

(plus she was familiar to them from Midnight Cowboy)

soused women in crime and/or lowlife circles often got nominated

aka Susan Tyrell during the same period

yeah

Sylvia Miles' two Oscar nominated roles = total 14 minutes onscreen

btw Mitchum's sole nomination: The Story of G.I. Joe, one of his earliest 'A picture' roles

so eff the AAs

well yeah

Best supporting actress in the '70s was even more scattershot (and happily so, imo) than best actress.

"Sure I was glad to see John Wayne win the Oscar … I`m always glad to see the fat lady win the Cadillac on TV, too.”

lmao

Checked the Server bio out of the library; I'm pleased to see that his prose is better than the average star biographer's.

What'd you expect?

Crap.

Man, "The Wonderful Country" is something else. Up there for me with "One Eyed Jacks" as one of the great ugly duckling '50s Westerns.

Mitchum's scene where he turns down his assignment from Pedro Armendariz is great

Yes. And he got some nice new threads out of him before splitting :)

man I'd forgotten the hype around The Winds of War. The end of the epic TV movie era came witth a bang.

Even at the very height of my Mitchum obsession I saw a DVD box of that and thought "life's too short".

https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/film-comment-podcast-robert-mitchum/

River of No Return, wasn't nuts about that one.

― s1utsky (slutsky), Monday, August 18, 2003 5:29 PM (

agreed

Liked a few moments but yeah

Notable Mitchum character names from the 1940s:

Quentin 'Horse' Gilford
Tate Winters
Henchman Randall
Dirk Mason
Panhandle Mitchell
Ben Slocum
Trigger Dolan
Henchman Rip Austin
Seaman Chuck Ryan
Mickey Halligan
Dying Soldier - 'I'm All Right'
Nick Drago
'Pig-Iron' Matthews
Jim Lacy aka Nevada
Pecos Smith
Jeb Rand

The Winds of War was a miniseries, right? i'm sure Bob snored through it.

when he wasn't freezing his ass off and getting eaten by ticks during the year (!) of filming, according to the bio

And that presumably doesn't include War and Remembrance.

I do recall David Letterman was tickled when TWOW won an Emmy and the producer gruffly thanked the network for "ponying up the dough!"

speaking of those I can't believe Herman Wouk is still alive.

Dan Milner: Whenever I have nothing to do and I can't think, I always iron my money.
Lenore Brent: What d'ya do when you're broke?
Dan Milner: When I'm broke, I press my pants.

video essay

https://filmkrant.nl/video/thinking-machine-29-english/

30 of his films on Criterion right now.

Enjoyed the Lusty Men. He’s great in it

Yeah, like that one too.

Just watched the two films he did with director John Farrow:

Where Danger Lives a simple but very good noir, featuring Faith Domergue. Mitchum is semi-zonked for much of the film after getting brained by Claude Rains.

His Kind of Woman an odd 2-hour long film that starts as straight noir and then Vincent Price's ham actor character hijacks it and turns it into a comedic spoof. Has some cool interior design.

And then watched Track of the Cat which is florid and awkward and oh-so-1950s. Not for me.

Also watched Angel Face which is a little nutty but I liked seeing Jean Simmons in the bad girl role, it seems to go against character.

*against type I mean

Watched out of the past oh Saturday. Absolute stone cold classic. Five bags of popcorn and a bunch of cigarettes for Bob Mitchum to smoke

Feel like I live-blogged a stretch of His Kind of Woman once, maybe upthread.

Robert Mitchum C/D, S/D

Howzabout the, um, sequel to Out of the Past, The Big Steal?

I highly recommend Pursued which is not in the CC series

His Kind of Woman an odd 2-hour long film that starts as straight noir and then Vincent Price's ham actor character hijacks it and turns it into a comedic spoof. Has some cool interior design

I posted almost exactly this earlier this morning on the noir thread! I saw this movie eons ago, 1980s I believe, and in the intervening years I forgot the title, the plot, and the stars. All I could remember was the fantastic mid-mod set design of the Mexican lodge, and that the action later moved to a boat. Finally tracked it down last night! Allegedly it was Howard Hughes' meddling and reshoots that led to the incoherent combination of violent hypodermic attacks and shipboard slapstick in the finale.