Robert Mitchum
Bob Mitchum was one of the good guys. He was a smoker of cigarettes and cigars, a drinker of Irish and Scotch whisky in large quantities, and a smoker of hashish and sinsemilla marijuana joints the size of White Owl cigars. He did 2 months in jail in 1949 for smoking pot when the cops set him up through an informer. But he was a tough guy too, "rode the rails" as a boy, and was on a chain gang in Georgia at 14 for vagrancy, escaped, and later had 27 fights as a professional boxer. His sardonic comment on the California jail was: "It was just like Palm Springs -- but without the riff-raff."
He was born in 1919 and he died, of emphesyma and lung cancer, in 2001. How did this talented actor and hell-raiser survive for nearly eighty years? He must have had leather lungs, a cast-iron stomach and the metabolism of a uranium burner. Or somebody up there certainly liked him, and kept him going, with his jokes and his storytelling, his sense of humour and his sarcastic jibes at fellow actors, and the great pity is that he never sat still long enough to record it all for posterity. It would have made a great book.
His friend Ken Hutcheson, a talented Scottish actor who often stayed in Mitchum's family home after making movies together, gave him a book of mine called Pimpernel 60 when he was in London for his 70th birthday. I had a message from him saying: "I'm reading it in the bathroom, with the door locked. It's the only place I can get some goldarn peace." He invited me to his birthday party but my capacity for the booze was about one tenth of his, and I feared getting into trouble with some of the characters he had invited, most of whom were training to drink for England, Ireland and Scotland in the next Olympics.
Mitchum's favourite pub in London was The Star, in Belgravia, also called "Paddy Kennedy's" named after its Guvnor.
His favourite bar in New York was 21, which had been the No.1. Speakeasy during Prohibition, in the days when President Jack Kennedy's father, Joe, was a bootlegger on a scale that made The Great Gatsby look like a gopher or go-fer, and his illicit millions were the foundation of the family fortune. With the Irish McCoy ("The real McCoy") and the Jewish Bronfmans, they brought in booze from wherever they could buy it, especially Canada, driven in trucks by guys like "Legs" Diamond, a small-time hood who got his name when he was a ten-cents-a-dance hoofer in the hall where Lily Langtry (The Jersey Lily) hung out in the twilight of her days (paying men to dance with her). She also had a sense of humour. When the King of England told her: "I've spent enough on you to buy a battleship", she replied: "And you've spent enough in me to float one."
Back to Mr. Mitchum. The best way to tell it is the way I wrote it in Volume III of my memoirs, Bogged Down in County Lyric, Chapter Two : A Clammy Mary. (21 sold a Bloody Mary, a Virgin Mary and a Clammy Mary, vodka, tomato juice and clam juice, later marketed by one of their entrepreneur customers, in canned goods, as Clamato - just add vodka!)
Robert Mitchum was ordering an Irish whiskey
"Have I seen you somewhere before?" he asked.
"The Star, Belgravia?"
"Right -- Paddy Kennedy's. I love that bar. And Paddy Kennedy too, the mad Irish son of a bitch."
"He has to buy a new television set. When the Reverend Ian Paisley came on the box the other day, Paddy threw a bottle of Bushmills through the TV screen. An expensive gesture of disapproval if you ask me."
"I sure felt at home in that bar."
"There was one night when I was working a Saturday shift for the Sunday Pictorial to make ends meet when we had a call from Paddy Kennedy after midnight. He'd been woken up by a noise outside his bedroom window and looked out to see a heavy-set man on a ladder scraping away at the gold star which hung outside, advertising the bar. He shouted he'd call the police, but it was the police. Someone had tipped off the Sweeney -- the Flying Squad -- that the gold from the London airport gold-bullion raid had been melted down and was currently replacing the star outside Paddy's boozer. Some villain had wound up the Sweeney, and they were very unhappy about it."
"I put the word out I wanted some Bob Hope -- preferably Red Leb. A sexy blonde job came in to make the delivery, and her name was Mandy Rice Davies."
Mitchum bought the drinks and said: "Talking of blonde jobs, you see the blonde behind me over my left shoulder ... don't make it obvious..."
A beautiful blonde was looking in their direction.
"What about her?"
"She wants my body." Mitchum said. "Say, do you know Kenny Hutcheson?"
"He drinks in The Flask in Hampstead. Scotsman. He was in that movie with you when you played a priest with a machine gun and Ken ran naked out of a knocking shop..."
"Did Kenny Hutch mention anything about that movie in Mexico/"
"He said the Chief of Police wasn't very happy about your visit."
Mitchum laughed. "You should have seen that son of a bitch's face! The filming was rained off so we were invited to do the tourist bit in Mexico city. This asshole was dressed up in a uniform with gold braid everywhere and he said: 'I am Chief of Police. All traffic stop for me. I have motor cyclists clear way through traffic. You stay right behind me, no problemas. Remember Mister Mitchum, stay right behind me.'
"We set off, visiting art galleries, museums, the works, then on to a buffet lunch in another gallery, where the Chief said to me: 'Excuse, please. I go make pee-pee.' He went into the Gents' toilet and I followed him in. He was standing there looking at the porcelain when he felt something warm on the back of his legs. He looked around. I was taking a piss all over his uniform trousers. "I'm right behind you," I said.
Mitchum was in a story-telling mood, yet I suspected he would never tell it in print, but, like Humphry Bogart, he liked to drink with writers, and felt at ease in their company. Mitchum, like Hemingway, had what they called 'a built-in shit detector', meaning that, with their artists' mile high antennae, they could detect sycophants, frauds, phoneys and bullshit merchants a mile off. When Mitchum was riding the rods, jumping trains all over America, black and white travelled together as buddies Black men would refer to themselves as "us niggers" because it simply meant black, from negre, and at that time Jew wasn't looked upon as a derogatory word, so when Mitchum referred to Kirk Douglas as 'Superjew', he was not being anti-semitic, merely scornful of affectation. And when Mitchum told the story about his experience with a substance known as 'Congolese black' some were shocked by his language. While the Big White Hunter waited for his jeep to take him into the jungle to start filming, a 'plane landed and a huge African in uniform, covered with medals and scrambled egg on his cap got out and entered a darkened limmo. The back window of the limmo slid down and a huge black hand, like a bunch of aged Fyffe's bananas, came out and a finger beckoned to Mitchum, who looked at the small 'plane, the large car and the big black hand and swaggered over and said 'Yeah?'
'I know who you are', said the occupant of the car.
'Is that right?'
'Yes, you are Mister Mitchum, de film star.'
'Right on,' said Bob
'Do you know who I am?' asked the Idi Amin lookalike.
'Looks like you're the Head Nigger round here,' said Mitchum, and sauntered back to the jeep which then shot off into the jungle.
Next day, during a lull in filming, a small 'plane appeared overhead, circled twice, then a little parachute was thrown out and it slowly floated to earth. On it was a shoe-box, addressed to: MISTER MITCHUM - FILM STAR.
The package was taken to Mitchum's tent, where he opened it to find two kilos of superior Congolese 'black' hashish, with a note attached which read: FROM THE HEAD NIGGER.
Mitchum finished his drink. "I'm splitting. I'm on the town but if anybody phones here -- like my wife -- you haven't seen me." He sauntered out of the bar of 21.
I looked around, hopefully, at the beautiful blonde, quietly eating her salad. I smiled, but, although she was still glancing at the bar, at the space which had been occupied by the film star, her look was blank. I smiled in vain, for single blondes like this in New York, especially ones who eat alone in 21, have an inbuilt detector, too, but it is a dollar detector, and it is a star detector and a celebrity detector, and it can also detect paupers, even ones wearing Saville Row suits.
Back in London, on a pub-crawl in Happy Hampstead with Kenny Hutcheson, he told me about the lunch he had attended in Hollywood for the retirement of Howard Hawks, the great director of Westerns. All the stars from his films were there -- John Wayne on his right hand, and Mitchum down the table. Hawks started to make his speech about how delighted he was to see all his old friends and a voice from down-table said: "You're full of shit, Howard." It was Mitchum. Wayne looked down the table at him and said: "Shut it, Mitchum" and Mr. Hawks went on with his speech, saying how wonderful it was to have worked with all you wonderful people, when the voice cut through again: "You're full of shit, Howard." Wayne glared: "I told you to shut it, Mitchum," he snarled. "You're full of shit, too, Dook.""
"I thought at any moment the six-guns were going to come out and they would start blazing away at each other," said Ken. "But the people next to them calmed them both down and the party went on...
But Bob Mitchum did not always come off well. When there was a weather-break in the filming of Ryan's Daughter on the rain-swept West coast of Ireland, the cast and crew took a break in Dublin where Mitchum asked the public relations man to take him to "an ordinary working class pub, no bullshitters and no star-gazers". He was introduced into a sawdust and spit bar in the rough quarter of Dublin, looked around at the shabby clientele and said to the P.R.O: "Where's the broads?"
"But Bob, you wanted an ordinary workers' bar. There are no broads here."
"No broads?" said Mitchum, walking up to the bar and letting his belly, which he had been holding in, sag against it.
"OK. Where's the BEER!"
A little Dubliner in cloth cap and waistcoat approached with a piece of paper and a biro. "Will you give me your autograph, Mister Mitchum?" he asked. "Hey, come on, man, I'm trying to get away from all that. I'm tired and I've been filming for weeks." "Oh, come on, Mister Mitchum. It's for my little boy. Just one autograph..."
Mitchum took the piece of paper, wrote on it, and the little man read it. It said: UP YOURS - Robert Redford.
The little man, who turned out to have been a boxer in his day, dropped the paper and swung a right hook that knocked Mitchum out cold, and the little Dubliner moved on to another bar.
Sometimes he came off best. Filming in London, he was drinking in the Sir Richard Steele public house on Haverstock Hill, Hampstead, the watering hole of Leon Griffiths, writer of Minder, and Ronnie Fraser, who had asked in his will for his coffin to be carried by his mates Peter O'Toole, Sean Connery and James Villiers (They did, and the photograph made all the papers).
Into the bar the bouncing little producer of the film, all waving hands and mid-European accent, joined Mitchum at the bar.
"Bob I vill be comink to the set on Monday. Now sometimes a producer has to shout at actors to get zem to act right, and I do that sometimes, but if I do it to you, Bob, you must not mind. It is nothing personal."
"Oh, I understand," said Mitchum, "and sometimes if a producer starts yelling at an actor on the set, the actor will get a bit annoyed and give him a punch in the mouth. But you musn't mind. It's nothing personal..."