by Lee Server
The shooting schedule had to be changed, and Mitchum could not do close-up work for weeks. Lean seemed not even to notice. What were a few weeks to him? He worked at the pace of a pyramid builder. It didn’t hurry things any that the weather was atrocious for filming, pouring rain one hour, sunny the next, and back again, so overcast for days at a time that the cameraman got no reading at all on the light meter. When summer arrived, they had been shooting for nearly six months and there was no end in sight. Mitchum continued to feud with Lean. Once the director left him standing in wet sand for over an hour and then went off to do another shot without telling him. The next time Lean wanted a shot of him, Mitchum waited till the camera was turning, then exposed himself and began pissing.
Bored, cut off from all but those minimal comforts offered by Dingle, Mitchum felt obliged to be self-sufficient. He cooked many of his own meals and gradually became chef to a good portion of the company. He obtained a rare bundle of huge lobsters one weekend—lobster thermidor was one of his specialties—but before he could have his way with them, Sarah Miles—having seen their cute little crustacean faces—took them and threw them back in the sea. Mitchum vowed revenge, and later, she said, had it by announcing to reporters—accurately—that Sarah was a secret urine therapy adept—drank her own pee. He planted marijuana “trees” in the back garden at the hotel, which yielded a huge crop (”In my hands I hold the hopes of the Dingle Botanical Society”). Generously encouraging all and sundry to try a toke, he gave much of the inhibited British crew and cast their first experience with the devil weed. On one occasion Sarah Miles was startled to see Mitchum and her own mother sitting together sharing a joint. On another a Dingle policeman showed up at the Milltown to inquire about the unusual vegetation in the garden. Mitchum whipped out a sizable spliff, lit it, and goaded the cop into trying it. Soon other members of the constabulary were said to have stopped by as well for a sampling of the contraband.
With pubs galore and comrades like Trevor Howard in the vicinity, Mitchum was also known to open a bottle or two. He gave every watering hole his custom at some point. There was Paddy Bawn’s, there was Tom Long’s, there was Ashe’s, his home away from the Milltown. Turned out the place was run by Gregory Peck’s cousin, small world that it was. And—shades of Thunder Road—Mitchum sniffed out the local moonshine trade as well, sampling a regional, triple-distilled, untaxed liquid magic known as poteen.
Mitchum and others from the film would spend their lunch break at a bar, coming back to Kirrary blotto. Many scenes in the finished film had to be artfully put together so as not to reveal when the actors had obviously had a few. Regarding Mitchum’s nightshirted walk along the beach after finding out that Rose is unfaithful, Tony Lawson, the assistant editor, told Kevin Brownlow, “In the rushes you could tell he was absolutely paralytic. I remember when we were cutting we had to look for the bits where he looked like he wasn’t about to topple over.” Mitchum himself liked to come with visiting girls and pals to the twice-weekly showing of rushes in the local cinema—barging in uninvited, Lean made note—and give a noisy and hilarious narration about which figures on screen had been totally shit-faced at the time of shooting.
Trapped in Dingle for month after month, Mitchum required conjugal visitations. First, of course, came those of his wife, who visited the location for weeks at a time. As soon as she had been safely set aboard a flight back to Los Angeles, Mitchum would begin shuttling in the relief catchers. “Mitch’s dolly birds would fly in from all over the place,” wrote Sarah Miles. “What I couldn’t fathom was whether they came of their own volition . . . or Mitchum got them to come over and footed their bills. Were they simply dope carriers? The quality of most wasn’t particularly appetizing, some of them being no more than scrubbers.” The Hotel Milltown became jocularly known around Kirrary as The Dingle Brothel.
Mitchum had his fun, but then it would wear out again. And the filming just went on. “There’s no reason for it,” he growled. “I could have made three pictures in that time just as good as Ryan’s Daughter will probably be. There’s no reason to have to sit around like this. It’s all inefficiency. . . . I sit home all day and eat potatoes. They did let me go to California for a visit. I went over the North Pole and spent a full sixteen hours in Los Angeles and they rushed me back, and then they didn’t use me for three weeks.”
It seemed that it would never end. But one day in November, finally, it did. He had been on the production for ten months, longer than his entire hitch in the U.S. Army. Mitchum wearily headed home. And they’re still back there, he told people in horror, Lean and his merry cameramen chasing a parasol down a beach in Ireland somewhere in the pouring rain, David shouting, “Oh, bugger!”
Howard Hawks wanted him for another Western with John Wayne. They were calling it Rio Lobo, but it might as well have been Rio Bravo, Part III or El Dorado Strikes Back. Wayne said to Hawks, “Do I get to play the drunk this time?” Mitchum told the director he was done working. Wayne said, “Mitchum’s been saying he was retiring since the first day I met him.” Hawks persisted. Mitchum let it be known his price was a million dollars. Hawks decided to make do with a less expensive Mitchum, Chris. Mitchum visited his son, Duke, and the rest in Tucson while they were shooting Lobo. He watched Chris do a scene. Hawks told him the kid might be a star in the making. Mitchum told his son, “I figure to live, say, twenty years more. I might spend everything I’ve got. What would you think of that?”
“Go ahead,” Chris said. “It’s your money. Brother Jim and I will make our own.”
Although he was a millionaire four or five times over, Mitchum seldom thought of himself as a man of great wealth, and he hated it when others thought of him that way. He never even touched the big paychecks; everything went through managers and accountants, straight to corporate bank accounts. The only cash he generally put his hands on came from his beloved per diems, the daily stipend for expenses he received during a film’s production. He signed the checks when the relatives asked, but it was often accompanied with an air of disdain, even contempt. “Bob wasn’t known to be the most generous man in the world. Some in the family wanted money from him forever,” said a ten-year friend and business associate. “And Bob always resented it. When it was about money he could be the biggest prick. Bob always resented people wanting him for things.” When organized charities came soliciting his services or an appropriately large donation, Mitchum’s frequent response, via Reva, was “Absolutely, as soon as our accountant can take a look at your books.”
His sister Julie believed Robert’s generosity was simply not known to a lot of people because he wanted it that way. “He did all kinds of goodies for all kinds of people. But he didn’t do it for the credit. He never wanted to leave any fingerprints.”
“I think he was very aware that many people who came in touch or wanted to get close to him were trying to get something out of him,” said Reni San-toni. “And so he was always a little sceptical. If you wanted to spend time with him, and I count myself among them, you had to have no other reason than to have laughs and be together with this very interesting guy. You did not go to Mitchum and say, ‘Gee, I’ve got this good script I want you to see; you think you might—’ No, you never hustled him or that was the end. And I would never think of asking him for anything; I would never want to muddy the waters like that. But if you respected that, then you saw that he gave openly and generously.”
In addition to supplementing the incomes of his children when requested and offering the occasional boost to his brother and sisters and members of their families (brother John would write of Bob’s paying for John’s daughter’s medical bills on one occasion and other generosities through the years), Mitchum paid for pleasant upkeep for his mother and stepfather for most of their lives. His family’s involvement with the Baha’i organization was also supported by Mitchum, according to a family friend: “Their whole group, if they wanted to take a missionary trip or something, they would schlep the mother and Bob would p
ay for all of them.” While his wife did much work for high-profile charities like the SHARE organization that involved celebrity participation and publicized events, Mitchum preferred to remain the barroom philanthropist, helping out old pals and the sorts of characters who didn’t rate much in the way of Hollywood benefit dinners. His friend George Fargo, for example, a professional extra, was frequently in need; and Mitchum would often drive to the supermarket, buy eighty or a hundred bucks’ worth of groceries, and drop it off at Fargo’s with a bag of weed from his tree, giving the man sustenance for weeks at a time. Mitchum received many letters from prisoners through the years, some with desperate tales of having been abused by the justice system, railroaded into prison and such, and many times he would make at least the gesture of sending a check or recommending a lawyer and sometimes more. “Prisoners would write him or even call him,” said Toni Cosentino, his manager and a friend for many years. “They figured, he’d been in the joint, he was a tough guy, not a namby-pamby movie star. He was constantly sending stuff to prison. People in prison just sort of had his heart, I don’t know why. We all say, sure, that guy didn’t really do it, but he gave everybody the benefit of the doubt. And just because other people said it was irrefutable evidence, he wouldn’t take that as gospel.”
“He called once, he was in town and he had some friends coming in,” Reni Santoni recalled. “And his usual ‘source’ was not to be found, so he called me and I checked and this one guy I knew was around. So I told Mitchum, and we agreed on a time. He did kind of slip in the fact that he hoped there weren’t going to be a bunch of people at this guy’s place. So I called up this guy and told him who it was coming over to make a purchase and we wanted it low key. He said, ‘That’s cool.’ So Mitchum picks me up in his little Porsche; we zip over to this guy’s apartment in Hollywood. We go to this guy’s apartment and there’s two guys sitting there on the couch. And I think, ‘Oh, shit.’ Mitchum’s very cool, he doesn’t let on he’s uptight or anything. He nods to the guys. One stares right at him and he can’t contain himself. He gets up from the couch, runs over, he says, ‘Hey, man, I had to stay to meet you!’ And Mitchum starts looking at the floor, he’s kind of embarrassed, he’s not looking to sign any autogaphs. And the guy says, ‘Man, you sent us that stuff, that gym equipment, those exercise bikes,’ and he mentions some penal institution in northern California. ‘Man, we didn’t have shit in that place. When that stuff showed up it was like Christmas! I’ve got to thank you for myself and eighty other individuals. Shit, man, I always knew I’d meet you one day and thank you; I didn’t know it would be here—while you were scoring!’ And he pumped his hand, and Mitchum’s all embarrassed. We did our business and got out of there. But that’s the kind of cool things he did, just because he thought: those guys didn’t have anything.”
On March 16, 1970, Robert and Dorothy celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary.
“He asked me what he should get her for an anniversary present,” said James Bacon. “I said, A Purple Heart!’”
People marveled at Dorothy’s aplomb, her self-control. It could not have been easy being married to “a masturbation image,” as Robert said she had called him. How often—at parties, social events, visiting on locations—must she have been been made to feel like an inconvenience, an intrusion, while the women—men, too—waited for Robert’s undivided attention. Some didn’t even bother to wait. Once at some party in London, Rex Harrison’s soused wife, Rachel Roberts, had crawled on hands and knees across the floor to Mitchum—as Dorothy stood there beside him, no doubt aghast—and tried to pull his fly open with her teeth.
What kept them together? There were the standard-issue suggestions: love, habit, security. There were the cynical speculations: “The worst job in Hollywood is to be an ex-Mrs. Movie Star,” said one showbiz veteran who knew both of them. “All of a sudden you’re nobody. Even your own kids won’t answer your calls!” Another: “Wife and family, that was Bob’s safety net. When another woman tried to hold on to him he’d just say, ‘I’d love to see you more frequently, but my wife wouldn’t approve.’ Or, ‘You better ask Dorothy.’”
“She was his constant, his honing signal,” said Reni Santoni, a frequent visitor to the Bel Air household. “Whatever crazy shit he got into anywhere in the world, he knew there was always one place he could still go where he would be welcome and where he didn’t have to play the movie star. They were like Nick and Nora Charles together for a while. She was a handsome woman, very low key, sharp wit. And she wasn’t any shrinking violet. She wasn’t the kind to slip in from the kitchen and say, ‘Can I get you gentlemen something?’ She’d sit there with the guys as long as she wanted to. And she was always quite generous and very cool.”
“Dottie sometimes says she hoped I would evolve,” Mitchum reflected, “whatever that means. No way. People who’ve known me a long time tell her I was a bum when she married me, I’m a bum now, and I’ll be a bum when I go.”
For most of that year he drifted.
He would get in the Porsche and drive. He would roll into towns, try a few old phone numbers, stir up a drinking buddy or a friendly female, drive on. When he wanted to “get lost,” he told people, he would put up at some nowhere motel for a time, take out his teeth, go unrecognized. “It gives me,” he would say, “the temporary illusion that I’m real.”
He went to Mexico for a while. Tourists spotted him on the beach at Mazatlan. You could see him lying on a lounge chair in the sun, sipping from a bottle of tequila, with a comely Mexican chick rubbing coconut oil on his chest and shooing away the riffraff. An American on vacation down there got close enough to ask him what he was doing. Mitchum opened one eye and said he was getting in shape for his next picture, The Life ofSabu.
He visited his mother and sister near Scottsdale, Arizona. Mother now lived with sister Julie and her jewelry executive husband, Elliott Sater. Bob’s stepfather, the Major, was in his nineties by this time, completely deaf and ailing, consigned to a nearby rest home. He could still kick up his heels on a good day, still had a twinkle in his eye, and Julie and Mother were with him as often as possible.
The quarter horses took up some time, pleasantly spent. Mitchum kept between thirty and thirty-five animals on his seventy-six-acre ranch. He had raised at least one real champion: Don Guerro. Mitchum and trainer Earl Holmes and jockey Ronnie Banks ran the horse in the California derbies in the early ‘70s and won the Bay Meadows and Gold State stake races. Don Guerro was considered an “anxious colt,” with a rare quirk, bursting from the starting gate like a streak of lightning but so fast and hard he caused the ground to break, tripping himself. The horse either won by a mile or he fell flat on his face at the gate. Pundits called him “the Stumbling Senor.” After being written off by the handicappers, a four-year-old Don Guerro had a spectacular, unexpected win at the third running of the prestigious Champion of Champions race at Los Alamitos. With this glorious comeback, he was retired to stud. Mitchum could ask no more for himself.
People kept trying to get him back to work. The scripts came in. Reva would read them, make her recommendations. He would tell her to send them back. One day he got a call from Orson Welles. Orson said he wanted to direct him in a movie, and they had to get together at once. Robert thought this one at least was good for a lunch. Orson wanted to go to some French restaurant that cost about a hundred bucks a plate, plus wine. Orson didn’t have enough in the bank for hot dogs at Pink’s, so Mitchum was buying, so Mitchum told him they would go to the Polo Lounge. The waiter asked them if they were having any cocktails. Orson said he had stopped drinking all hard liquor. Mitchum ordered a large scotch, and Welles said he would have one, too, then drank up both at a swallow. He told the waiter, “Bring two more of those . . . and Mr. Mitchum would like another as well.” Welles told him about the movie project, a spy story set in a French whorehouse, and he slipped Shakespeare and Hearst into it somewhere. It couldn’t miss.
In the early morning of September 1, three ei
ghteen-year-old girls came into the West Los Angeles Police Station. One girl had visible injury to her left eye in the form of a reddening of the eyeball and a slight laceration. A second girl had a visible injury on her right cheek, a fresh bruise and swelling. The girls told the police that they had been in their car, stopped at Sunset after midnight, when a white Porsche came up beside them and through the open window they saw a man they recognized as the actor Robert Mitchum. Mitchum, they said, asked if they were interested in going with him to “smoke some shit.” The girls followed him in their car, up Benedict Canyon and into the hills, pulling up to a ranch house on a dead-end street. The three girls said there were other people inside the house, a couple and a single man at the other end of the main room, all of them smoking what smelled like pot. As the girls sat together nervously on the couch, they said, Mitchum offered them a lit marijuana cigarette, but one of the three “chickened out” and ran from the house and back to the car. Mitchum became angry, they said, yelled, “Don’t fuck me,” then struck one of the other girls on the leg and then in the eye. The two fled the house, they said, with Mitchum in pursuit, catching up with them and striking one girl on the cheek with the palm of his hand and then kicking the same girl as she tried to get into the automobile. They got the car going and drove off, leaving their host in the driveway staring after them.
At the West LA Police Station, Officers Capitain and Pedneau took one of the girls back to the Benedict house. Capitain knocked at the front door, got no answer, announced himself, and entered the house. The police report stated, “Officer Capitain located the Suspect (Mitchum) in bedroom with female/Caucasian and informed Suspect (Mitchum) that an individual fitting his description had been named in a crime report charging battery. Officer Capitain then obtained information from Suspect (Mitchum) as to his name, address, etc. Suspect (Mitchum) made no statements concerning the incident.”