Customer Reviews

Robert Mitchum: "Baby I Don't Care"

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Bio's I generally keep around for "light" reading to fill in those breaks when other books get to heavy. However, this well done tome written by Lee Server kept my attention from the introduction to the epilog. Of course, being a life-long fan of Mitchum may have had something to do my diligent enthusiasm for sticking with it while dust settled around me.

The author obviously dug deep in his research because he offers much information I don't think was generally known about Mitchum. His long marriage, which had to be a great trial to his long-suffering wife Dorothy, was exposed in a different tenor then anything else I've read on the couple. He brings out a soft, compassionate side to the crusty, vulgar macho man one generally hasn't been exposed to. Mitchum have been one of the few actors who worked with Marilyn Monroe that was understanding of her tardiness and outward vanity that covered a very vunerable woman with low self-esteem. Yet, he wasn't afraid to take on the "big guys"....the directors and producers while endeavoring to protect those that were intimidated by the "fat cats". He stood up for his convictions and remained honorable to those he cared about. To the end he was his image...Robert Mitchum; tough guy. He probably never had a clue how highly he was thought of because to him, he was just doing a job that as he put it, a dog, "Rin Tin Tin" was in the same profession! He tossed out one-liners that years from now will probably be well known cliches. I always respected him as an actor....now, I also respect him as a man. Hollywood lost their last great actor from the glory days.

As a dedicated fan of Robert Mitchum, I was happy to see a full-scale biography available at last. It does an excellent job of cataloging Mitchum's films and acting methodology. I would have appreciated less repetition of "understated, natural, stole the film" etc., and more insight to the particular strengths he brought to his best movies. The author tells us the movie might have been bad, but Mitchum-never. I have seen almost all of Robert Mitchum's films, and I am here to tell you, there were a few that he strictly walked through his part. This is true of almost any actor that has had a 30+-year career.

The book is severely limited by the lack of access to the principal players in Mitchum's life: his wife, sons, and many of his closest relationships. There are disadvantages to an "authorized" biography if the family wishes only the positive virtues of the subject to be included. However, without their input or cooperation, it is almost impossible to get any realistic picture of the man. Before I read this book, I knew Mitchum was a drinker, a brawler, a womanizer and a bad boy. When I finished the book, I didn't have much to add to that impression. His early life though sketchy, was interesting. His famous detachment is easily understood when you read about his childhood. His mother, though a hard worker, was a drifter and her children more or less raised themselves.

The direct sources are questionable. His sister is an unusual woman who claims "ESP" with Robert; though her view of him is so laudatory I sometimes wondered if she was speaking of an entirely different person. The tales from "barroom buddies" are just that - highly questionable. He seems to have been aloof toward his children and slightly skeptical. Mrs. Mitchum is a mysterious character throughout the book. Why did he stay with him? Why did he keep coming back? We never find out. According to the book, he had a long relationship with Shirley MacLaine, yet the author did not have one conversation with her.

Robert Mitchum remains an enigma. The definitive biography remains to be written.

I just recently finished Lee Server's bio on Robert Mitchum and found it to be extremely worthwhile. I had been eagerly awaiting for it to come out, both as a Robert Mitchum fan and as a fan of the writer, Lee Server, who has written excellent books on Pulp Fiction, Vintage Paperbacks, and Noir culture in general. He has a humorous and hip take on these subjects, knowledgable and enthusiastic without being academic.

The Mitchum book is written in the same style. It's full of great stories and details, particularly about his early life on the road, his infamous Reefer Bust, and how many of his movies were developed. There are numerous and lively anecdotes about many well-known directors and actors (John Huston, Charles Laughton, Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe) and some others who should be better known (Jane Greer, Edward Dmytryk, Anthony Caruso, Jacques Tourneur) The blend of Mitchum's actual life and his film life is shown seamlessly and there are no phony explanations about any of his actions. He is shown in many aspects: poet, partyer, brawler, and father. Warts and all. The book is a long one with many details but it is written in a crisp and fast-moving style. A very enjoyable read. Anyone who wants to learn more about: Mitchum, Film Noir, Hollywood, and a fascinating slice of 20th Century history should pick it up. This one's a keeper!

Server's biography of Mitchum provides a painstakingly detailed portrait of Mitchum's artistry, as well as an unflinching description of his sometimes disgraceful off-screen behavior. Server is an exceptional writer whose prose enchants. He has also done his research and the stories of old Hollwood are quite scandalous and,at times, slimy.

Mitchum's antics off screen seem to focus mostly around his womanizing, drinking and smoking weed. He also loved practical jokes. Mitchum was tempermental and could be rude or violent with people who annoyed him--and he could be a mean drunk. He also seemed to really like public urination--many an anecdote in Server's book ends with Mitchum pissing on the floor, in a pool or even on somebody.

The book was highly readable. Server is a cinemaphile who provides beautiful reviews of all of Mitchum's films as well as details of their making. At times I grew tired of Mitchum's childish antics but then Server would reel me back in with a story of Mitchum being kind or providing a wonderful performance. In addition some of the history of film production in the 40's was very interesting--in particular Howard Hughes sex and detail obsessed film-making style.

Actor Robert Mitchum was the Real Deal, and author Lee Server has written a wonderful book about him entitled "Robert Mitchum, 'Baby I Don't Care'."

Relatively unschooled, the naturally intelligent Mitchum hit the Depression era American roads at age 14. A dozen years later, in the midst of WWII, the roustabout made his motion picture acting debut as a bad guy in a Hopalong Cassidy western. That began a "magic carpet ride" that spanned six decades of glamorous, rough and tumble Hollywood history. Server's thoroughly researched page-turner takes us along for the ride. And what a life it was! If you love movies, you'll love this book.

Mitchum took a lifelong lunch bucket approach to his work. He was not about making high art, he was there for the paycheck. He showed-up on time, hit his mark, and delivered his lines. Then he went out and played hard, oftentimes until it was time to show-up again. As a studio contract player for RKO early in his career, he assured himself a lasting place in cinematic history by starring in many of the "dark" potboilers that became a beloved genre, film noir. When the studio system came apart in the mid-fifties, Mitchum transitioned into a globe-trotting international star who held his own with anybody for the next twenty years. He never quit working, even as age and lifestyle finally caught up with him. It is astonishing to remember that his last picture was released just six years ago.

Like all good biographers (and good filmmakers) Server does not get in the way of the story. He does not burden the reader with any amateur psychoanalysis or judgmental moralizing about his subject. As Server leads us chronologically through this unique actor's 120-film career, his admiration and sympathy for Mitchum are self-evident. But Server pulls no punches. As he so ably and entertainingly relates, Mitchum was a contradictory and sometimes complex character. A fundamentally liberal and philosophical man who enjoyed writing poetry, he was also quite capable of chauvinism, bigotry, and the crassest vulgarianism. Some of Mitchum's story hurts, but most of it is pure pleasure.

Pull on a trench coat. Stick a gat in your pocket. Saddle-up your horse and ride out and buy Server's book. Then take it home, get in your favorite armchair and "roll `em." It doesn't get any better than this.

I first read this biography tye year it came out after it had been named one of the Best Books of the Year in the Los Angeles Times list. This took me by surprise since Robert Mitchum was not the type of actor who usually ended up on Best anything lists when he was alive. I would go so far as to say he was one of the most overlooked great actors and stars. I read the book from cover to cover and it was as good as the Times said and better, enthralling, informative, full of new information about Mitchum and the hundred movies he made. More crazy things happened to Mitchum than all the other stars put together. This book has some of the most entertaining and funny Hollywood stories I have ever read. Mitchum was an eccentric man who didnt play by anybody's rules. He refused to take Hollywood bull-- (I don't think i can use the word that Mitchum aimed at Hollywood most of the time. The book recounts a larger than life story and tells it so that you feel like you are reading a novel and want to know what happens next. You go from the hard living of the Depression and Mitchum running away from home and riding the rails until he gets into big trouble and on a chain gang. Then the first years as a struggling movie actor falling on his butt in a lot of b westerns. Then stardom but he almost ruins that by a little problem with drugs and a police raid when Mitchum is playing around with some sexy young actresses. This is a long section in the book that covers his trial and jail time and it is great. Some of the stories in the book had me rolling over with laughter (I won't spoil it but the best oneis about a big donnybrook fight with Frank Sinatra and some other actor and Mitchum and it involves eating Sinatra's toupee). The author writes in a very readable style that is like watching a Mitchum movie if you know what I mean, with a lot of tough snappy lines and a cynical attitude but I don't think Mitchum could have asked for a better biographer because he never lets you forget what a great actor Mitchum is and how much he brought to these movies. Sever interviewed hundreds of people who knew Robert Mitchum. He found the people who went to grade school with him in the 1920s, and they proved that Mitchum was an original even then. He talks to relatives, co-stars, drinking buddies, his personal assistant for fifty years, people who knew every aspect of Mitchum's life so that you get a fully rounded picture of the man. He finds the most amazing people to talk to about Mitchum and they all have amazing, funny, outrageous stories to tell (oh yes let me mention the story about sneaking the hashish out of India or the story about The Night of the Hunter when Mitchum has a little disagreement with the movie's producer and does something to the man's car (it is the producer himself who tells Server this funny story) The biographer seems to have spent a lot of time with the one person living who knew Mitchum from the time he was born, his older sister, and she gives a very interesting perspective on Robert's whole character as a child and as a young man, all the things that shaped the adult who became a star.. She too is an eccentric character and she is very interesting on the family as he was growing up, kind of like early beatniks, wandering around and with no discipline and very artistic. Mitchum sister gives insights to the side of Mitchum most people don't know about, the intelligent curious young man who wrote poems and song lyrics and this is one of the things I love about the portrait that is painted of Mitchum in this book. You see the man who gets into trouble with the police and gets stoned and doesn't give a damn and then you see the man who liked to write sensitive poetry and knew just about every subject on earth. Server's picture of Mitchum getting older and more cynical is very sharp and painful with some incidents that you feel is Mitchum lashing out at the world in his psychic pain of age and alcohol dependence. And then comes old age and illness. Server handles these scenes with an understated tendernes and you feel like you are saying goodbye to an old friend or a family member when Mitchum finally takes his last bow. I took this book with me this past summer and re read it after three years and I found it as exciting and impressive as I did the first time.

This big book rekindles an interest in an actor whose work is much neglected these days and almost impossible to find in video stores or on TV. It's fun to read about Mitchum's career, especially the early phase of it, and interesting to trace his decline due to alcoholism. What's disappointing is the lack of penetrating insight into either his uniqueness as a person or his special talent as an actor. The author repeats the same superficial descriptions over and over again, without ever getting below the surface of the man. Mitchum was a "natural;" he pretended not to care, but was always ready, prepared and focused. He never took himself too seriously, and was considerate of his colleagues -- unless they took themselves too seriously. He was a lousy husband and father whose wife and children had difficult and conflicting feelings about him to the end. He found it difficult to relate to anyone except through drugs or alcohol, which he abused most of the time. But, somehow, in spite of his chronic bad behavior, the author implies Mitchum is worthy of forgiveness and admiration. Why? I can't figure that one out.

But, in spite of the book's faults, it's full of insider views of other celebrities from the movie biz, which keeps it fun and interesting. And it has prompted me to search for old Mitchum movies in the hope of seeing some of those performances which the author singles out as special and illustrative of Mitchum's specialness.

Baby I Don't Care is punchy, vulgar, intelligent, witty and disturbing, just like it's subject matter. Mitchum the actor takes precedence over Mitchum the scandal magnet for a change. His inspired years as an R.K.O work horse are lovingly rendered, (his unique relationship with sinister eccentric Howard Hughes belongs in a James Ellroy short story). The great roles, the forgotten jewels and the mountains of trash are obsessively covered. Lee Server's eulogy to Mitchum's duel take on Phillip Marlowe in the 70's, is a reminder that Mitchum was the heart of noir. Mitchum the man's nihilistic fatalism bares this out. Baby I Don't Care is packed with bar brawls, clashes with the law, serial adulteries and numerous acts of public urination. At the heart of every scandelous event was a deep rooted sense of pointlessness masked as casual indifference. Mitchum's initially entertaining acts of rebellion take on a more melevolent air with old age, alchoholism and the approach of death. Like Dino and Brando, Mitchum is a talented apathetic chinese puzzle that can probably never be truly fathomed,(even his own wife doesn't seem to know what made him tick). Lee Server takes on a big dark fascinating enigma with lust and skill in a biography that somebody needs to adapt into a movie someday.

Titled: BABY I DON'T CARE. (It was his catch phrase.)
By: Lee Server

*****

It could just as easily been titled NO BOUNDARIES. The man never had any.

His father died when he was a small child. His mother was a free spirit. He left home at 14 with her blessing. While hoboing around the country he discovered marijuana. He smoked it until he died.

He sort of fell into acting and never felt it was the way a REAL MAN should earn a living.

He cheated on his wife with one woman after another. She deserved a metal and sainthood for staying married to him all those years. He was a great actor, but he was a rotten husband and father; a true product of his time.

Mr. Server did his research. This is an excellent biography. He is even handed dealing with Mr. Mitchum's quirks, peccadilloes and often adolescent behavior, and his good qualities, he did have them, regarding his mother, sister, brother, wife and children.

If you are wanting a glimpse of the real Robert Mitchum this is the book to read.

Lee Server's new book on Robert Mitchum will satisfy the knowledgeable and the curious . It is replete with facts and interviews never before available and written with a charm and wit that the erudite Mr. Mitchum would have found appealing. At the same time the book confronts the conflicts within that made Mitchum beguiling and boorish simultaneously. A gifted talent, a mercurial loner, and an impossible puzzle even to all who knew him best... this book is a fascinating and amazing read. It is with out question one of the best biographies to come along in many, many years. Kudos upon kudos for Mr. Server. A stellar effort with a fabulous subject. Buy it today, and ship it rush! Sincerely,

Butch Huff butchhuff@hotmail.com