Either he must have done something right, or his wife should have gotten a Purple Heart just for putting up with him. Although he was married for over 50 years, he was the ultimate skirt-chaser. Of course, the directors were all warned not to have Mitchum work past 6 P.M., due to his alcohol intake during the early-morning hours and his 24-hour-a-day passion for the 'devil weed.' Aside from that, he was the perfect employee - he was always a friend to the shooting crew (he often ensured that the set was supplied with good food), while challenging the higher-ups at every opportunity. His acting technique was closer to Zen than method acting: His primary concern was to memorize the shooting script and make sure he didn't bump into the furniture. Reading Lee Server's biography Robert Mitchum: 'Baby I Don't Care', one is struck by Mitchum's skill in making things look easy - when Mitchum actually bothers to use any skill. In this world where nothing is consistent, we have one man who was consistent in his ability to convey a sense of 'I don't give a fuck' throughout all of his 79 years. Written with great style, and vividly detailed, this is an intimate, comprehensive portrait of an amazing life, comic, tragic, daring, and outrageous.Ĭool can be defined in two words: Robert Mitchum. Exhaustively researched, it makes use of thousands of rare documents from around the world and nearly two hundred in-depth interviews with Mitchum's family, friends, and associates (many going on record for the first time ever) ranging over his seventy-nine years of hard living. Robert Mitchum: 'Baby, I Don't Care' is the first complete biography of Mitchum, and a book as big, colorful, and controversial as the star himself. Mitchum's powerful presence and simmering violence combined with hard-boiled humor and existential detachment to create a new style in movie acting: the screen's first hipster antihero-before Brando, James Dean, Elvis, or Eastwood-the inventor of big-screen cool. Allison Cape Fear The Longest Day Farewell, My Lovely and The Winds of War. One of the movies' greatest actors and most colorful characters, a real-life tough guy with the prison record to prove it, Robert Mitchum was a movie icon for an almost unprecedented half-century, the cool, sleepy-eyed star of such classics as The Night of the Hunter Heaven Knows, Mr.

Robert Mitchum by Lee Server