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Then he made two Zane Grey films playing
the lead here in our Alabama Hills and his rise to stardom
had begun.
Robert Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut
on August 6, 1917. Eventually his father moved the family
to Charleston, South Carolina, and found work on a military
railroad. However, Robert's father was killed in a railroading
accident and the young mother was left a widow with a family
to support. Eventually, Robert left home and traveled the
rails as a hobo. Many of the hard experiences during that
time framed the rest of his life and created the nonconformist,
tough guy persona that was his trademark in films.
Robert eventually settled in California
and got experience in theater through the influence of his
sister playing first minor and then a few major roles. During
this time he wrote children's stories, poems and monologues
for local performers.
He was employed at Lockheed. However, his unhappiness
there had begun to effect his health. He left the job, and
after a short stint as a shoe salesman, he talked to agent
Jack Shay who got him an interview with Harry Sherman who
had just moved his Hoppy series to United Artists from Paramount.
He must have liked what he saw for he asked Mitchum if he
could ride a horse, and Mitchum gave the producer a story
about being a cowboy in Laredo.
Sherman told him not to shave and there
he was joining Pierce Leyden with a ticket to Bakersfield
where they would transfer for a ride up to Kernville and his
first Hoppy Border Patrol. There too was the horse.
Mitchum went to the costumer who got him dressed and put an
old hat on him. "Belonged to old Charlie Murphy,"
the costumer said. Got himself killed." So Mitchum loved
to say that he started out in pictures, "in a dead man's
hat."
William Boyd tells this story about Mitchum
and the horse, according to John Mitchum in his memoir. "Well,
he mounted that pony and got thrown pretty hard. He climbed
on a again and hit the dirt again. Then he walked up to that
horse, grabbed him by the bridle and told him off. 'You son
of a bitch! He whispered. 'I need this job so its you or me.
Then Bob hauled back and whipped that pony a right hand that
made it roll its eyes backward. Bob climbed on him for a third
time. Rode him well for the rest of the picture."
Mitchum summed up his experience in typical
fashion: "I was very pleased to work on the Hoppys, Supper
on the ground, free lunch, a hundred dollars a week, and all
the horse manure you could carry home." In 1943 he appeared
in 19 feature films.
Then he was cast in two low budget westerns
to be made in Lone Pine: Nevada and West of the
Pecos. Mitchum remembered "The cowboys-when it got
really overbearing out there on the desert, they'd gallop
by the camera and sprinkle a handful of sand into it. Well,
that's about a two hour delay while they'd clean that camera
up. We'd go and fall in the shade of a cactus."
He was remembered as something of a loner during
that first starring role. Margie Stewart of Western Clippings
states, "Anne Jeffreys and the rest would meet at the
bar where our star was always slumped down on a bar stool
with his hat pulled over his face."
At the Golden Boot Awards and again the
same year in an interview that Charles Champlin made with
Mitchum to be shown at the LP Film festival, Mitchum stated,
"I just remember the Dow Hotel and the Sierra Café
and one more place up the road that they called 'The Bucket
of Blood.' I am unsure of the true name of it. We sallied
forth every day and went to the Alabamas or, on occasion,
out to the alkali desert east of Lone Pine."
The improvement of Robert Mitchum between these
two movies is noticeable and with his next movie The Story
of G.I. Joe he was to receive an Academy Award nomination
for supporting actor. He was on his way.
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