Robert Mitchum (Actor)

"Anybody who really has known me for a long time knows I never changed anything, except my socks and my underwear. And I never did anything to glorify myself or improve my lot. I took what came and did the best I could with it." --Robert Mitchum, in "A Star in Spite of Himself", by Kathleen Sharp in Parade Magazine, June 12, 1994.

"People say I have an interesting walk. Hell, I'm just trying to hold my gut in." --Robert Mitchum.

"This is not a tough job. You read a script. If you like the part and the money is OK, you do it. Then you remember your lines. You show up on time. You do what the director tells you to do. When you finish, you rest and then go on to the next part. That's it." --Robert Mitchum in Larry King's "People", USA Today, March 25, 1991.

Describing his tenure as one of the last contract stars at RKO during the years from the late 1940s through the mid-50s when Howard Hughes gradually drove the studio into the ground, Mitchum wryly remarked, "Usually I'd appear in a film entitled "Pounded to Death by Gorillas". As the film opens I'd be standing there in a jungle or somewhere and a gorilla would come up behind me and "Pow!" knock me down. I would then get up and he'd knock me down again. This would continue for most of the picture--"Pow!" he'd knock me down and I'd just keep getting up again. Finally, near the end of the picture the poor gorilla would collapse on top of me, exhausted. Then the leading lady would show up, drag me out from under, dust me off and say straight into the camera, "I don't care what you think. I like him!" The End." --Quoted in "Robert Mitchum" by John Belton; it should be noted that in only one film, 20th Century-Fox's "White Witch Doctor" 1953, does Mitchum wrestle a gorilla ... and win

Referring to Mitchum's iconic status in the 1980s as one of the last regularly working Hollywood stars of the classic studio days who seemed to embody something sturdy and larger than life, one writer noted, "He's our last Gary Cooper."