The Zen of Robert Mitchum Pt.1

Robert Mitchum:Hobo to Hollywood
While riding the rails at the age of 14, Robert Mitchum was arrested in Georgia and sentenced to hard labor on a chain gang. After escaping (with rifle shots whizzing past his head), Mitchum and his brother John began hitching and hopping trains, heading west toward their sister's cottage. In New Orleans, Robert made it onto a box car but John was grabbed by a railroad cop.
"John eventually got to Long Beach [California]," one biographer recalled, "exhausted, dirty, worn out. He got to his sister's cottage and there was Robert, taking a bubble bath, reading a detective magazine, and smoking a cigar. And he looked up at John and said, 'What kept you?'"

The Dead Mans Hat
In 1942, Robert Mitchum appeared in his first feature film, Border Patrol. "One of the cowboys had fallen and been trampled by horses and a stagecoach," one biographer recalled. "Mitchum went over to the wardrobe department and they were scraping some of the blood off the dead actor's cowboy hat and handed it to Mitchum for his first day's work. And he liked to say that's how he started - in a dead man's hat."

Mitchum & Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was not noted for her intellect. One day on the set of River of No Return, Robert Mitchum found the sex bomb poring over a dictionary of Freudian terms and asked her why she was reading it. "I feel one should know how to discuss oneself," she replied. Mitchum asked what chapter she was reading. "Anal Eroticism," she explained. "That's charming," Mitchum drily replied. "And do you think that will come up in a discussion?" Monroe elected to ignore his question and returned to her reading. Some time later, however, she looked up and asked a question of her own: "What is eroticism?" Mitchum explained and she continued reading once again. A moment later, however, she looked up again with another question: "What's anal?"



from http://www.anecdotage.com

The Zen of Robert Mitchum Pt.2

Hollywood Babylon
Robert Mitchum's penchant for drinking and carousing nearly ended his $3,000-a-week career in September 1948, when he and blond starlet Lila Leeds were arrested at her home on charges of marijuana possession. "Well, this is the bitter end of everything," Mitchum told his lawyer, "my career, my marriage, everything."
Mitchum was sentenced to 60 days on an honor farm but emerged surprisingly jolly. "It's just like Hollywood," he declared, "Only a better class of people!"

SEX FIEND
"I started out to be a sex fiend," Mitchum once declared, "but I couldn't pass the physical."

Polish gays, women, midgets
"I think when producers have a part that's hard to cast, they say, 'Send for Mitchum; he'll do anything,'" he once remarked. "I don't care what I play; I'll play Polish gays, women, midgets, anything!"

Take 125
"I gave up being serious about making pictures years ago," Robert Mitchum once recalled, "around the time I made a film with Greer Garson, and she took 125 takes to say, 'No.'"

Mutual forebearance
Having been happily married for thirty years, Robert Mitchum was asked one day what the secret was. "Mutual forbearance," he replied. "We have each continued to believe that the other will do better tomorrow."

Last Call
In 1984, Robert Mitchum's family persuaded him to check into the Betty Ford Clinic and try to quit drinking. "When he got back, I said, 'What did you learn over there, Bob?'" fellow actor Stuart Whitman recalled, "and he said, 'More ice.'"
Defiant to the end, Mitchum died in 1997. "The night he died," his son recalled, "he sat right over there in his chair and there was a stubbed out Pall Mall and an empty glass that reeked of tequila. He got up during the night, knocked off a shot, smoked a cigarette, got in bed, and died in his sleep."

~ROBERT MITCHUM (1917-1999)