I'm a big fan of Robert Mitchum, and have been since childhood, yet I missed his appearance on "The Dick Cavett Show" on April 29, 1971, because I didn't have a TV set at that time. Luckily, TCM ran this interview this past summer (2014) and I was able to record it and finally watch it 43 years after the fact. It was originally a 90-minute show but with all the commercials cut out, it adds up to about 68 minutes of interview. The last film of Mitchum's to be released before this interview was RYAN'S DAUGHTER (1970) and the show features a clip from that film and from NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (1955), the only film clips used. Mitchum did not do a lot of TV interviews during his career. (I only remember seeing him once on "The Tonight Show," in 1977.) He was wary of interviewers and was usually pretty cagey with the press, relying on jokes and tall tales to keep them at bay. He's a little less guarded with Cavett and I suspect he watched Cavett's show a few times before agreeing to do it.
It's always great to see Mitchum raw, as he is a few times here, although one has to put up with him getting progressively drunker as the show went on. (Apparently it was the only way he would be able to keep still for 90 minutes.) He even admits as much early on when he holds up his glass and says, "I've gone from Perrier water to scotch, how do you like that shot?" And it sure looks like scotch in the closeups where he brings the glass up to his lips. (Unless, of course, it's ginger ale and he's just putting us on.) The drinking's never terribly evident, except when his stories get longer and more rambling and build up to nonexistent punchlines. (There are three long stories like this, but they're worth sitting through to get to the good stuff.) There are awkward moments and times when you wish Cavett would just shut up and let Mitchum talk and times when you wish he'd jump in and ask a follow-up question or press for a more detailed answer.
Mitchum does have a lot of good one-liners and he's better when telling about the broad arc of an experience rather than a specific story. For instance, he tells us about his experiences in high school, where he got into trouble frequently; life on a chain gang as a teenager; and his work on Hopalong Cassidy westerns at the start of his movie career, and he makes them interesting by telling us a few incidents that occurred during those periods and interspersing various one-liners, such as when he describes his vagrancy charge as "mopery with intent to gawk." There are occasional peeks into parts of Mitchum's life that he doesn't want us to see. When Cavett brings up his writing of poetry, Mitchum at first denies it, but when Cavett insists that he's read some of it, Mitchum reacts with a glare: "I didn't expect it to leak out." He then reluctantly admits to it and says that it was private and "I'd throw it in the waste basket and someone would retrieve it and blackmail me with it." His modesty about his non-cinematic creative efforts is on display when Cavett mentions an oratorio Mitchum wrote for a benefit for Jewish refugees after the war and staged at the Hollywood Bowl by Orson Welles. Mitchum dismisses it as a "blackout," i.e. a short stage skit that ends with a blackout, and says only that it was performed by the Jewish comic Benny Rubin. There's a paragraph on this performance in Lee Server's excellent biography of Mitchum, "Baby, I Don't Care," and Mitchum's overly modest account doesn't quite match it. I wish Cavett would have pressed him to say more about it. One way he could have framed it would have been to ask him to talk about working with Welles and Rubin. Mitchum had keen observational powers and was often best when talking about some of the people he worked with, as in one instance here where he talks about the great character actor Charles Bickford. Mitchum was a great mimic and could do all kinds of dialects and voice impressions. If only Cavett had capitalized on that.
Mitchum offers an astute assessment of his own talents, "I'm a good, professional actor, there's no great mystery about that," and goes on to lament some of his choices: "I should do much better work. I should have always held out for much better work and I'm sorry to say I haven't always done that." He denigrates the quality of the scripts he was given, even early in his career, and the sheer amount of waste by the studios: "Why would they make a film that has so little chance and do it so badly? I always felt that they could do much better." He describes this practice as unfair to audiences. I just wish Cavett had pressed him for some specific examples.
Mitchum talks about a host of other subjects including his marriage and his appeal to women, again displaying outsized modesty. But one can easily read between the lines if one so chooses.
The interview is available on YouTube and all Mitchum fans should definitely seek it out. Even non-Mitchum fans should watch it--to get a glimpse of what a real movie star was like off-camera in the days before gossip sites, 24-hour entertainment news channels and social media allowed stars to wear out their welcome long before their expiration date.
It's always great to see Mitchum raw, as he is a few times here, although one has to put up with him getting progressively drunker as the show went on. (Apparently it was the only way he would be able to keep still for 90 minutes.) He even admits as much early on when he holds up his glass and says, "I've gone from Perrier water to scotch, how do you like that shot?" And it sure looks like scotch in the closeups where he brings the glass up to his lips. (Unless, of course, it's ginger ale and he's just putting us on.) The drinking's never terribly evident, except when his stories get longer and more rambling and build up to nonexistent punchlines. (There are three long stories like this, but they're worth sitting through to get to the good stuff.) There are awkward moments and times when you wish Cavett would just shut up and let Mitchum talk and times when you wish he'd jump in and ask a follow-up question or press for a more detailed answer.
Mitchum does have a lot of good one-liners and he's better when telling about the broad arc of an experience rather than a specific story. For instance, he tells us about his experiences in high school, where he got into trouble frequently; life on a chain gang as a teenager; and his work on Hopalong Cassidy westerns at the start of his movie career, and he makes them interesting by telling us a few incidents that occurred during those periods and interspersing various one-liners, such as when he describes his vagrancy charge as "mopery with intent to gawk." There are occasional peeks into parts of Mitchum's life that he doesn't want us to see. When Cavett brings up his writing of poetry, Mitchum at first denies it, but when Cavett insists that he's read some of it, Mitchum reacts with a glare: "I didn't expect it to leak out." He then reluctantly admits to it and says that it was private and "I'd throw it in the waste basket and someone would retrieve it and blackmail me with it." His modesty about his non-cinematic creative efforts is on display when Cavett mentions an oratorio Mitchum wrote for a benefit for Jewish refugees after the war and staged at the Hollywood Bowl by Orson Welles. Mitchum dismisses it as a "blackout," i.e. a short stage skit that ends with a blackout, and says only that it was performed by the Jewish comic Benny Rubin. There's a paragraph on this performance in Lee Server's excellent biography of Mitchum, "Baby, I Don't Care," and Mitchum's overly modest account doesn't quite match it. I wish Cavett would have pressed him to say more about it. One way he could have framed it would have been to ask him to talk about working with Welles and Rubin. Mitchum had keen observational powers and was often best when talking about some of the people he worked with, as in one instance here where he talks about the great character actor Charles Bickford. Mitchum was a great mimic and could do all kinds of dialects and voice impressions. If only Cavett had capitalized on that.
Mitchum offers an astute assessment of his own talents, "I'm a good, professional actor, there's no great mystery about that," and goes on to lament some of his choices: "I should do much better work. I should have always held out for much better work and I'm sorry to say I haven't always done that." He denigrates the quality of the scripts he was given, even early in his career, and the sheer amount of waste by the studios: "Why would they make a film that has so little chance and do it so badly? I always felt that they could do much better." He describes this practice as unfair to audiences. I just wish Cavett had pressed him for some specific examples.
Mitchum talks about a host of other subjects including his marriage and his appeal to women, again displaying outsized modesty. But one can easily read between the lines if one so chooses.
The interview is available on YouTube and all Mitchum fans should definitely seek it out. Even non-Mitchum fans should watch it--to get a glimpse of what a real movie star was like off-camera in the days before gossip sites, 24-hour entertainment news channels and social media allowed stars to wear out their welcome long before their expiration date.
