The Marion Robert "John Wayne" Morrison Myths and Robert Mitchum - The Real Deal

[Dante]

Great interview from 1983. Robert Mitchum was one of the greatest Hollywood actors of his generation and maybe of all time in Hollywood.

I remember older guys speaking of him and calling him "A man's man." He seems to me to be such a no bullshit man. Turns out he was.

Mitchum is regarded by some critics as one of the finest actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. David Thomson hailed Mitchum as one of the three "most important actors in film history" along with Cary Grant and Barbara Stanwyck.[385] Appraising Mitchum's career, Thomson wrote: "Since the war, no American actor has made more first-class films, in so many different moods."[3] Roger Ebert wrote:

Robert Mitchum was my favorite movie star because he represented, for me, the impenetrable mystery of the movies. He knew the inside story. With his deep, laconic voice and his long face and those famous weary eyes, he was the kind of guy you'd picture in a saloon at closing time, waiting for someone to walk in through the door and break his heart.

Mitchum was the soul of film noir.

“I’m not as visible as Frank. He has an organization. So did Duke Wayne. Duke was six four, but he wore four-inch lifts and a ten-gallon hat. He had a station wagon modified to fit all that paraphernalia. He even had the overheads raised on his boats so that he could walk through the doorways with the lifts on. And he was bigger than them all.

“I was with him one time and he was cussin’ everybody out. ‘You goddamn assholes,’ Duke was saying. Then he turns to me and says, ‘Come on.’ So we walk into his office, he pours out a drink and says, ‘You gotta keep ’em Wayne-conscious.’”

Mitchum leans over conspiratorially, stretching out the last two words.

“That’s what he had to sell,” Mitchum shrugs. “It was his business.”

 

[Dante]

*sigh