ROBERT MITCHUM?

[Belkin]

Watched a movie the other night. It was THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. A one off directed piece by the wonderful actor CHARLES LAUGHTON. The main role was played by ROBERT MITCHUM. STUNNING! If any of you have never seen it, I recommend you beat a passage to the nearest store and rent  or rob a copy!
I got to thinking, after one does, after several pints of Guinness, who could play INDIO? MITCHUM sprang to mind. AND THEN, after several more pints of Guinness, I got to thinking, who is the ONLY American actor with the ball's, under Mr. Leone's direction to play THE MAN WITH NO NAME.....ROBERT MITCHUM! Think about it!!!!!
Next day, I went to WATERSTONES, and found a copy of MITCHUMS lifestory called BABY I DON'T CARE! A wonderful read. He was truely.....THE MAN WITH NO NAME!!!!!

[cigar joe]

Yea Mitchum was great in Night of the Hunter and also Cape Fear, check that one out too.

[Belkin]

Yea Mitchum was great in Night of the Hunter and also Cape Fear, check that one out too.

Classic, Cigar Joe!

[KERMIT]

R/M wrote, produced, composed, and sang the title to THE archetype hot-car-moonshine film "thunder road"
co-staring his real life brother jim mitchum.
http://www.univie.ac.at/Anglistik/easyrider/data/Thunderr.htm

i wonder how mitchum would have handled the role of frank ?

[mortimer]

Very creepy role in Night of the Hunter. Even more so than Cape Fear (original). Both highly recommended.

[Tim]

  Reviving an old post here, but if you want to see Mitchum in a pretty decent western check out Five Card Stud.  He plays a revenge-seeking preacher, so basically his Night of the Hunter character.

  And you get to hear Deano sing.  How can you go wrong?

[Tucumcari Bound]

Robert Mitchum was great in everything as far as I'm concerned. By far one of my favorite actors of all-time. A true film legend!

[Ben Tyreen]

  He's a great movie star, not always acting, maybe playing himself a lot but he was pretty cool.  I saw Thunder Road for the first time this summer and loved it.  Mitchum plays a whiskey bootlegger who has the local mob and the police chasing after him, but he keeps doing his thing.

  Mitchum made his fair share of good westerns too, El Dorado with the Duke, Five Card Stud, The Wonderful Country, Bandido, The Wrath of God (one of my favorite lesser-known westerns ever), The Way West with Richard Widmark and Kirk Douglas, and probably a bunch of other ones I'm missing.

[cigar joe]

He's great in Villa Rides, check it out if you can

[Franks Harmonica]

"Out of the Past" is one of the greatest films ever made, so netfix it if you havent seen it.

[Tucumcari Bound]

"Out of the Past" is one of the greatest films ever made, so netfix it if you havent seen it.

I agree. Robert Mitchum is brilliant here as he always was.

[drinkanddestroy]

Sunday, August 6, 2017, was Robert Mitchum's 100th birthday.

Article in WSJ

The Versatile Robert Mitchum - WSJ
Peter Tonguette
July 31, 2017 3:48 p.m. ET
Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich once asserted that movie stars were not far removed from the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology. “They were no longer actors playing parts,” Bogdanovich wrote in his 2004 book “Who the Hell’s in It,” “because all their roles merged into one definitive character, one special folk hero, similar to but not necessarily identical with the original mortal.”

Stars usually displayed a finite series of easily identifiable attributes—not unlike Greek deities who stood for particular virtues or vices. Think of Cary Grant’s breezy poise or Jimmy Stewart’s sputtering sincerity, qualities that neither performer deviated from too often.

Similarly, when we contemplate the career of Robert Mitchum (1917-1997), his undemonstrative countenance and fearsome physique come to mind. The native of Bridgeport, Conn., who would have turned 100 on Aug. 6, claimed that he concurred with a producer who compared his appearance to “a shark with a broken nose.” But—with his brawny build, large eyes hidden by pendulous lids, and shock of hair—it may be more accurate to say that he resembled an overworked stallion. To mark his centennial, the actor is the subject of a number of commemorations around the country and on TV.

In several of his most striking films, Mitchum leaned on his sturdy yet grizzled looks—as well as an insatiable relentlessness—to terrify and tyrannize. In Charles Laughton’s 1955 classic, “The Night of the Hunter,” Mitchum plays a pernicious preacher doggedly trailing an on-the-run brother and sister (in possession of money he covets). In one famous passage, Mitchum belts out the hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”—whose gentle words do not match the actor’s cavernous baritone—as a way of reminding the children that he is right behind them. The boy asks: “Don’t he never sleep?”

Mitchum also displayed superhuman stamina throughout “Cape Fear,” the potent 1962 thriller directed by J. Lee Thompson that provided the actor with his single most memorable part. As newly freed felon Max Cady, Mitchum makes a dark art of hounding his character’s bewildered former lawyer, Sam Bowden ( Gregory Peck ). “Don’t mind me, counselor,” he says after encountering Bowden and his clan at a bowling alley. “I’m just getting a gander at the rest of your family.” Few moments in American cinema are as delirious as when the Bowdens’ daughter runs from Cady on sight—and few actors have the force to make such a scene plausible.

Yet the continued popularity of both films—not to mention the actor’s sullen disposition during several television interviews—might lead some to conclude that Mitchum was a one-note performer. To the contrary, his aloof cussedness was adaptable to many genres, including film noir (“Out of the Past”), westerns (“El Dorado”) and even a Christmas comedy (“Holiday Affair”). In the last film, as he wooed Janet Leigh from Wendell Corey, the actor adeptly crafted a domesticated variant of his untamable image. An equally surprising—and humbling—transformation came in David Lean’s magisterial 1970 epic “Ryan’s Daughter,” in which he believably adopted the persona of an earnest, milksop teacher who drives his young spouse ( Sarah Miles ) to discontent and adultery. Astonishingly for an actor of Mitchum’s authority and range, he failed to receive even a single Academy Award nomination as Best Actor; he was nominated only in the Supporting Actor category (for 1945’s “Story of G.I. Joe”).

In his crowning achievement, the crime drama “The Friends of Eddie Coyle ” (1973), Mitchum played a cousin to the miscreants of “The Night of the Hunter” and “Cape Fear,” but with the depth he had subsequently developed. Mitchum appeared as Eddie Coyle—who also goes by Eddie Fingers—a soon-to-be-incarcerated Boston gunrunner compelled to work with the authorities as a squealer. Eddie is a wastrel, but one who does his own grocery-shopping, fervently embraces his frumpy wife, and enthuses over the Boston Bruins’ Bobby Orr. In a dozen tiny ways, Mitchum communicates the indignities of advancing age and decreasing fortunes, eliciting a sympathy unimaginable for Max Cady. At the start of the film, director Peter Yates’s camera lingers on Mitchum’s knotty fingers as they slide a tray across a cafeteria line, and he expresses ineffable sadness when he nods his head and makes a one-word request: “Coffee.”

Not long after the success of “Eddie Coyle,” Mitchum was given the plum role of Philip Marlowe in fresh versions of “Farewell, My Lovely” (1975) and “The Big Sleep” (1978)—a part he could have played in his sleep. In fact, Mitchum’s legacy is in his versatility—his ability to give life to both scoundrels and also-rans.

—Mr. Tonguette writes about the arts for numerous publications, including the Columbus Dispatch, the Weekly Standard, and National Review.

[dave jenkins]

https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2017/daily/robert-mitchum-retrospective-set-for-nyff55/

Great to be able to finally see such hard-to-find titles as Blood on the Moon. Of course, just being able to see something like Farewell, My Lovely on 35mm film is also a treat.