40 Wild Facts About Robert Mitchum, Hollywood's Original Bad Boy

In 2003 the American Film Institute included two of Mitchum’s characters in its list of the Top 50 villains in cinema history. His searing portrayal of Max Cady in Cape Fear was ranked at number 28, while serial killer Reverend Harry Powell from The Night of the Hunter was number 29. It was a fitting tribute to an actor who knew exactly how to get under an audience’s skin.

Speaking of Harry Powell, it was reportedly the part Mitchum most enjoyed playing. Interestingly, he once revealed director Charles Laughton got cold feet about his truly frightening performance, though. He claimed Laughton “didn’t want people to drag their children off the streets every time I passed. The character was too strong for him, but that is what he asked me to begin with.” 

George C. Scott won the Best Actor Oscar for 1970’s Patton. Revealingly, though, Mitchum was approached to play the role first and turned it down. It wasn’t because he didn’t like the material: he thought the script was incredible. Yet he felt the movie needed an actor who could fight the studio to keep the focus on the character, not the battles. He therefore recommended Scott.

Mitchum always told anyone who would listen that he went into acting because he found it easy. Whether this is true or not is debatable, but one thing that isn’t debated is how natural he made it all seem. Perhaps this ease in front of a camera had something to do with how he could look at a script and immediately memorize his dialogue. We’re sure most actors would kill to have that particular talent!

Katharine Hepburn, who worked with Mitchum in 1946’s Undercurrent, was not a fan — and boy, did she let him know it! She reportedly gave him this damning verdict: “You know you can’t act, and if you hadn’t been good-looking you would never have gotten a picture.” Ouch! We reckon most would disagree with her, though.

In a 1969 Roger Ebert interview, Mitchum had a memorable put-down of a fellow Hollywood icon. He quipped, “You’ve got to realize a Steve McQueen performance just naturally lends itself to monotony. Steve doesn’t bring too much to the party.” Arguably a bit rich coming from a man who constantly downplayed his own acting ability with quotes such as, “I have two acting styles: with and without a horse.”

Throughout his career, Mitchum routinely gave off the impression that he didn’t take acting very seriously at all. He once said, “Movies bore me, especially my own.” He would claim he only acted because it was easy work, he was paid well, and he got to meet beautiful women. Still, most believe this was only feigned indifference. 

While he was under contract with RKO, the studio wanted Mitchum to shave his chest and do some shirtless scenes. He was having none of it, though. Amusingly, he once revealed, “They got so they wanted me to take some of my clothes off in the pictures. I objected to this, so I put on some weight and looked like a Bulgarian wrestler when I took my shirt off.”

Mitchum got his start in Hollywood by playing a series of villains in Hopalong Cassidy Westerns in 1943. These were all very small roles, but they gave him a platform on which to build. After two more years of minor parts, he hit it big with The Story of G.I. Joe in 1945. In fact, playing marine Bill Walker landed him his solitary Academy Award nod.

In the ’70s, Mitchum had a late-career revival when he starred in three critically acclaimed crime thrillers: The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Farewell, My Lovely and The Yakuza. Choosing to star in these gritty movies makes it hard to fathom why he turned down the role of “Popeye” Doyle in 1971’s similarly down-and-dirty The French Connection, though. He reportedly found the story offensive, but the decision still seems weird.

For 1958’s Thunder Road, Mitchum approached none-other-than Elvis to play the role of Robin Doolin, his character Lucas’ younger brother. The King was keen, but reportedly one of two things happened, both apparently instigated by the singer’s manager Colonel Tom Parker. He either asked for too high a salary for his client, or vetoed the project because it wasn’t a musical and therefore there was no chance of a tie-in album. Bummer.

For a man with such a carefully maintained tough-guy reputation and devil-may-care demeanor, Mitchum was something of a renaissance man. For instance, he regularly wrote poetry, with co-star Deborah Kerr saying he read pieces to her while they filmed The Sundowners. Believe it or not in 1969 a TV Guide writer even claimed that under Mitchum’s hard exterior lurked “imprisoned the soul of a poet.”

Unlike many Hollywood stars, Mitchum was a one-wife man throughout his entire career. Yes, he had his wife Dorothy by his side for 57 years, right up until his death. Far from being an ideal husband, though, it’s pretty well-known that he cheated on her throughout their marriage. In fact, he allegedly had dozens of affairs, yet she stuck it out till the bitter end.

Mitchum and Dorothy first met when they were teenagers. In fact, Miss Spence originally dated his brother John! They eventually married when he was 23, and his proposal has gone down in Hollywood folklore. According to biographer Lee Server, Mitchum told her, “Stick with me, kid, and you’ll be farting through silk.” Weird turn of phrase, huh?

Legendary movie critic Ebert once dubbed Mitchum “the soul of film noir.” This genre designation was created by French journal Cahiers du cinéma. In the ’40s, Mitchum was the leading star of this wave of dark, brooding crime films, filled with cynical protagonists the likes of which Hollywood had never seen before. Some of his best noirs included Crossfire, Out of the Past and The Big Steal.

Mitchum was always considered “cool,” even when his real-life persona didn’t quite stack up. For instance, in the ’60s he was notably supportive of the Vietnam War, even while public opinion turned against it. Amazingly, this did nothing to hurt his popularity with the youth of America — in 1968 teenagers voted him the coolest celebrity in the country. 

Millionaire Howard Hughes — who would be played by Leonardo DiCaprio in 2004’s The Aviator — took over RKO pictures in 1948. He was a huge fan of Mitchum’s and made sure the actor had a steady stream of pictures. Biographer Lee Server felt Hughes, whom he described as “scrawny, hard-of-hearing, whiny-voiced and paranoid,” saw Mitchum as his fantasy alter ego on screen.

Alongside his acting career, Mitchum diversified into the world of music in the ’50s and ’60s. He released several albums of pop and country songs, and even joined the calypso music craze in ’57 while shooting a movie in Trinidad. As absurd as that may seem, his efforts were far from being vanity projects — Mitchum actually had musical talent and a solid singing voice.

When Mitchum starred in The Last Tycoon, he was struck by the talent of the lead Robert De Niro. But one thing about the fiercely committed young actor tickled him — his method-acting tactic of staying in character as movie mogul Monroe Stahr at all times. Mitchum reportedly nicknamed him “Kid Monroe” and had a good giggle about it with some of the other old hands on set.

The Season Three M*A*S*H episode “Big Mac” revolves around the crew preparing for a great honor — a visit from General Douglas MacArthur. He finally shows up at the end of the episode, looking remarkably like Robert Mitchum. But here’s the thing — the role was uncredited, and to this day it’s never been officially confirmed whether it was Mitchum or not. Weird.

Mitchum was cast in 1978’s The Big Sleep with a notorious Hollywood hellraiser from the other side of the pond: Oliver Reed. By this time Mitchum was 60 years old, but his capacity for boozing was still insane. He allegedly drank an entire bottle of gin in 55 minutes, which impressed even Reed. How he didn’t wind up in the hospital getting his stomach pumped is anyone’s guess.

Mitchum’s older sister Annette was the person who got him treading the boards. When he was 19, he and the family moved to Long Beach, California, and Annette — who later became known by the stage name Julie Mitchum — convinced him to join her at The Players Guild of Long Beach theater company. He worked backstage and did some writing before deciding acting was where his future lay.

A bottle of gin in 55 minutes is pretty obscene, but it’s arguably child’s play compared to what Mitchum was apparently putting away in his younger days. Actor Jack Hawkins revealed in his biography that, while shooting 1963’s Rampage, Mitchum would drink rum before dinner. That doesn’t sound so bad, right? Well, maybe it is if you drink 49 glasses of the stuff like Mitchum supposedly did.

Mitchum was originally cast in the John Wayne/Lauren Bacall picture Blood Alley, but he was fired under mysterious circumstances. Legend has it that, while attending a Coast Guard lunch event in San Francisco, he had a few too many drinks. Then, when filming resumed, he got into an argument with a crew member and — allegedly — hurled them into the river! Mitchum has always denied the accusation, though.

When he lived with his grandparents in Delaware, Mitchum got into a fight at school and was expelled. This mightn’t sound too surprising, considering his “bad boy” reputation. But when you find out he tangled with the headmaster, it takes on a whole new significance! So, in conclusion, yes — 12-year-old Mitchum got kicked out of school for punching his principal. Crazy.

An ageing Mitchum provided the incredible narration in 1993 western Tombstone. Initially, though, he was supposed to play an on-screen character: Old Man Clanton. Unfortunately, prior to the shoot, he fell off a horse and hurt his back. In the ensuing scramble Stephen Lang wound up playing the character, with Mitchum taking on voiceover duties instead. 

Mitchum likely didn’t have any memories of his father, James, who died in an accident when the toddler was only two years old. Tragically, while on military service in South Carolina the railyard worker was crushed between two train carriages. At the time, Mitchum’s mother, Ann, was pregnant with his younger brother, John, leaving her to raise the family on a government pension.

During World War II, Mitchum worked at the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation operating machinery. According to Server, the cacophonous noise of the machines affected his hearing, and he then suffered a nervous breakdown from the stress of the job. This reportedly left him temporarily blind — a condition which these days might be known as “hysterical blindness.”

In 1987 The Equalizer star Edward Woodward — who played Robert McCall in the vigilante show — suffered a heart attack. He was set to recover, but producers had to figure out what to do while their star was on the mend. Brilliantly, they enlisted Mitchum to star in a two-part episode as an old comrade who helps McCall’s son track down his father, who had mysteriously vanished.

Mitchum was famed for his hooded eyelids and sad, sleepy eyes, which set him apart from every other leading man in Hollywood. He was adamant that his eyes looked sleepy, though, because he was sleepy — he suffered from chronic insomnia. The star also said his past as a boxer had left him with astigmatism, a condition which causes light to be reflected at more than one point of the eye. It can cause headaches and blurry vision.

It was an open Hollywood secret that Mitchum smoked marijuana, but in 1948 it became public knowledge when he was busted for possession. When police asked him his profession, he allegedly quipped “Former actor” as he thought the scandal might torpedo his career. He wound up serving 43 days on a prison farm, where he was photographed by Life magazine and said, “I like jail. It’s like Palm Springs, but without all the riff-raff.” Classic Mitchum.

According to Mitchum’s biographer Server, the hot-headed actor lost his temper on the set of Angel Face. Director Otto Preminger reportedly forced Mitchum and Jean Simmons into repeated takes of a slapping scene. Frustrated, and feeling like his leading lady was being mistreated, Mitchum “either slapped Preminger across the face, with just the force the director had been asking for, or very nearly did the same.” 

In 1981 Mitchum was sued by his secretary of many years Reva Frederick. You see, he had closed down his office, and she believed he owed her pension money from as far back as 1961. Unbelievably, it then transpired that she had actually been stealing from him for years — a sum amounting to millions of dollars. She dropped her lawsuit when they worked out a deal, and he didn’t prosecute. 

Reservoir Dogs icon Michael Madsen once told movies website Screen Rant that seeing Mitchum’s performance in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison was life-changing for him. He said, “I just remember sitting on the floor at my mom’s sister’s house, watching that as a little boy on a black-and-white RCA television. I remember seeing that movie and it being the first time it ever crossed my mind to be an actor.”

Mitchum acted until the mid-‘90s yet, amusingly, reports of him claiming to be retired go back several decades. For example, in 1970 he visited his son on the set of Rio Lobo and director Howard Hawks asked him to play the role of El Dorado’s drunk sheriff again. When he said he’d already hung up his boots, star John Wayne remarked, “Mitch has been retiring ever since the first day I met him.” 

Aged 14 Mitchum began traveling the country. While in Georgia, he was arrested for vagrancy and, by the time he got to court, a charge of robbery was also thrown in. He protested his innocence but was placed on a chain gang, where a leg wound got infected. Incredibly, he escaped into the woods, while the guards shot at him, and the future acting legend then hitch-hiked his way to Pennsylvania. A kindly doctor then picked him up and took him home.

Mitchum died on July 1, 1997, from emphysema and lung cancer. The very next day, his The Big Sleep co-star James Stewart passed away from a heart attack. Despite both being Hollywood legends, the difference in their funerals was stark. Mitchum never wanted a memorial service — he was cremated, with his ashes scattered at sea. By contrast, a mind-boggling 3,000 people came to Stewart’s funeral.

In 1991 Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear was released, with Mitchum’s The Last Tycoon co-star De Niro taking over the iconic Max Cady role. Winningly, Mitchum cameoed in the film as a police lieutenant. Interestingly, while some viewers loved De Niro’s livewire intensity as Cady, others missed Mitchum’s characteristic subtlety. An IMDb commenter perhaps summed it up best with, “Robert De Niro acted scary. Robert Mitchum was scary.”

President Dwight D. Eisenhower loved watching Westerns in the White House’s plush movie theater. There was one actor whose movies he would completely refuse to watch, though. Yes, you guessed it: Mitchum. Eisenhower was not amused by the star’s marijuana possession arrest, you see. And if the projectionist ever slyly slipped a Mitchum picture into the rotation, the President would reportedly get up and leave!

Mitchum was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1945 and served from April until October of that year. He didn’t see any action, though, spending his time as a drill instructor and medic. Mitchum described his role hilariously to Rolling Stone magazine, saying he was a “pecker checker” who also inspected the rear end of “every G.I. in America, looking for piles, hemorrhoids, bananas, grape, dope — you name it.”