Celebrate the Golden Age of Film
Arabella feels that any picture worth a thousand words has to move and talk even if the conversation is held in sub-titles!
So this site is fondly dedicated to moving pictures..... and to the legendary stars of cinema’s golden age..... their films, their lives,their loves and their exploits on and off the screen..... and to celebrate the work of all those in front or behind the camera who made these wonderful moving pictures of yesteryear possible with the fervent hope that their efforts will be preserved for generations to come.
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September 11th,2001
We will not forget... “No matter where the big guns roar, |
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....the Maverick! August 6th, 1917 July 1st, 1997 |
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Talking to Robert Mitchum about Robert Mitchum was
akin to mounting an unbroken, maverick horse.....no matter where you
wanted to go, he took you someplace else and the ride was bruising.
Most reporters returned to their post battle-scarred, confused and awash
with unreprintable, unrepeatable yarns. So it was decided among the
surviving members of the Fourth Estate
that if one wanted to learn the truth about Robert Charles Durman Mitchum,
you had to talk to someone else. So they began to talk to his mother
Anne, his sister Julie, to his loquacious younger brother, John (who
took it to heart and wrote a book!) and to the people with whom he worked.
And slowly, the real Robert Mitchum emerged much to the discomfort of
...the real Robert
Mitchum!
He was born the second of two children to Anne and James Mitchum in Bridgeport Connecticut the summer of 1917. At age two, he lost his father, a train switchman, to a accident at the railroad yards. Anne Mitchum, seven months pregnant at the time, spread the accident compensation money as thin as she could but, as soon as John was born, she had to go to work to support her little brood. She found a job as a typesetter and part-time reporter at the Post-Telegram where, when Robert was 8, she met and married a co-worker, Hugh Cunningham-Morris. Hugh was a Englishman with an aptitude for adventure but was willing to take on Anne and her brood. The children would later fondly call him the Major but they weren’t too pleased at this point. A year later, with Robert expelled from school and up to his ears in mischief, Anne took the boys to her parents’ farm in Delaware.His sister Julie had already left home and was making her way as an entertainer in Manhattan at 14! By the time Robert was fourteen they had moved three times and he had been expelled from two schools. He ran away to go to sea but when the captain found out his age, he was sent packing.
Robert headed west, by thumb and by freight, washing dishes and other odd jobs (legal and not-so-nice) along the way. Homesick after a few months, he headed home only to be picked up in Georgia where they weren’t too hospitable to non-paying freight train occupants. Robert was sentenced to hard labor on the chain-gang, and shackled at the ankles. But he escaped and thumbed his way home, ankles cut and bruised and one horribly infected. Only his mother’s home remedies saved his leg. But while he was home he met the love of his life, Dorothy Spence.
Again, Robert took to the road until, returning to his sister Julie’s home in Long Beach, he finally found his niche. Julie introduced him to theater! He worked backstage, he acted, he wrote and he directed in the local theater group. All the talent and creativity buried deep inside him came to the surface. Only Julie had known it was there. In 1940, he had saved up enough money to go back and marry Dorothy. The happy couple headed west again where Robert tried out a real job, working for Lockheed but when that didn’t work out, his mother suggested he try movies. So he hired an agent, borrowed his grandmother’s coffin money to join the union and it was off to Tinseltown....or at least Western Tinseltown!
Robert’s first movie was a Hopalong Cassidy oater. So was his second and third. Hopalong told this story: It seems no one told the casting director Robert couldn’t ride! The horse he was assigned had already thrown 2 riders and preceded to throw Mitchum not once but twice. Mitchum picked himself up, walked over to the horse and belted him. “I need this job, you s.o.b. and I intend to keep it”. The horse understood perfectly. Robert went on to make to make 19 movies that year, and at least 8 of them were Westerns.
By 1948, Robert Mitchum had box office clout. He was RKO’s top attraction when on September 1, 1948 he was picked up in a starlet’s cottage for marijuana possession. The scandal shook the industry and sold papers. But Robert Mitchum did his time and went back to work. He and Dorothy patched up the hole left in their marriage. Things were good again. Then in 1954, scandal struck again. Robert and Dorothy were attending the Cannes Film Festival when a French starlet suddenly pushed her way toward him and, as he grabbed her, dropped her bra top. It was the snapshot heard around the world. In Bob’s own words “What else could I do? I had my back to the sea. Jump in the water?”
But the real Robert Mitchum was much more than the sum total of his peccadillos. He was an exceptional actor,who could learn 100 pages of dialogue by just reading it. He was a man who loved fishing but would never shoot an animal for sport..he considered it immoral. He wrote beautiful poetry and prose but never let anyone read it. And he was a man who, more often than not, sung softly to himself as he walked through his world.
Robert Mitchum died on July 1, 1997 of lung cancer. He left us with over 140 pieces of work in both film and television, plus several recordings of his music. For more about Robert Mitchum on and off the set, plus a collection of his quotes I call “Mitchumisms”...see Arabella’s Notes.
For more about his life, look for these books at your local library:
“Them Ornery Mitchum Boys” by John Mitchum
“Robert Mitchum” by George Eells
“Robert Mitchum on the Screen” by Alvin H. Marill
The Magic of Makeup (1942) documentary
Border Patrol (1943)
Hoppy Serves a Writ (1943)
The Leather Burners (1943)
The Human Comedy (1943)
Aerial Gunner (1943)
Follow the Band (1943)
Colt Comrades (1943)
Bar 20 (1943)
We’ve Never Been Licked (1943)
Corvette K-225 (1943)
The Lone Star Trail (1943)
Cry Havoc (1943)
False Colors (1943)
Minesweeper (1943)
Beyond the Last Frontier (1943)
The Dancing Masters (1943)
Doughboys in Ireland (1943)
Riders of the Deadline (1943)
Gung Ho (1943)
Mr. Winkle Goes to War (1944)
Girl Rush (1944)
Johnny Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1944)
Nevada (1944)
When Strangers Marry (1944)
Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944)
West of the Pecos (1945)
The Story of G.I. Joe (1945)
Till the End of Time (1946)
Undercurrent (1946)
The Locket (1946)
Crossfire (1947)
Pursued (1947)
Desire Me (1947)
Out of the Past (1947)
Rachel and the Stranger (1948)
Blood on the Moon (i948)
The Red Pony (1948)
The Big Steal (1949)
Holiday Affair (1949)
Where Danger Lives (1950)
My Forbidden Past (1951)
His Kind of Woman (1951)
The Racket (1951)
Macao (1952)
One Minute to Zero (1952)
The Lusty Men (1952)
Angel Face (1952)
White Witch Doctor (1953)
Second Chance (1953)
She Couldn’t Say No (1954)
River of No Return (1954)
Track of the Cat (1954)
Not as a Stranger (1955)
The Night of the Hunter (1955)*
Man with the Gun (1955)
Foreign Intrigue (1956)
Bandido (1956)
Heaven Knows ,Mr. Allison (1957)
Fire Down Below (1957)
The Enemy Below (1957)
Thunder Road (1958)*
The Hunters (1958)
The Angry Hills (1959)
The Wonderful Country (1959)
Home from the Hill (1960)
The Sundowners (1960)
The Night Fighters (1960)
The Grass is Greener (1960)
The Last Time I saw Archie (1961)
Cape Fear (1962)
The Longest Day (1962)
Two for the Seesaw (1962)
The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)
Rampage (1963)
Man in the Middle (1964)
What a Way To Go! (1964)
Mister Moses (1965)
The Way West (1967)
El Dorado (1967)
Anzio (1968)
Five Card Stud (1968)
Villa Rides! (1968)
Secret Ceremony (1968)
Young Billy Young (1969)
The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969)
Ryan’s Daughter (1970)
Going Home (1971)
The Wrath of God (1972)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
The Yakuza (1975)
Farewell, My Lovely (1975)
Midway (1976)
The Last Tycoon (1976)
The Amsterdam Kill (1977)
The Big Sleep (1978)
Breakthrough (1978)
Matilda (1978)
Agency (1980)
Nightkill (1980)
That Championship Season (1982)
The Ambassador (1984)
Maria’s Lovers (1984)
Remembering Marilyn (1987) documentary
Marilyn Monroe: Beyond the Legend (1987) documentary
Mr. North (1988)
Scrooged (1988)
John Huston: The Man, the Movies, the Maverick (1988) documentary
Believed Violent (1990)
Midnight Ride (1990)
Cape Fear (1991)
Waiting for the Wind (1992)
Seven Deadly Sins (1992)
Tombstone (1993)
Woman of Desire (1993)
The Mystery of Rhyne Caluder (1993)
Backfire (1995)
Dead Man (1995)
Waiting for the Sunset (1995)
Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1996)
James Dean: Race with Destiny (1997) documentary
* Night of the Hunter (children’s director)
* Thunder Road (producer, writer and composer {songs})
“The Wonderful Country (executive producer)
In a television mini-series....
The Winds of War (1983)
North and South (1985)
War and Remembrance (1989)
For more information on Robert Mitchum check out Galaxy of Stars
Hollywood real heroes....
....heroes who became actors and actors who became heroes!
Here are just some of them......
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Audie Murphy
1924-1971 |
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Born to poor Texas sharecroppers, Audie became a legend in his own time and in the 3rd Infantry Division. As America’s most decorated combat soldier of WWII, he won his country’s highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor, as well as 33 other awards, 5 from France and Belgium. Murphy was credited with killing or wounding and capturing over 240 of the enemy.
After his discharge in 1945, he accepted James Cagney’s offer to go to Hollywood but his acting career got off to a rocky start. His first starring role came in 1949 in Allied Artists’ “Bad Boy”. Later, Audie’s portrayal of himself in the film based on his best selling autobiography “To Hell and Back” became Universal’s highest grossing picture until “Jaws”.
Audie Murphy was killed in a plane crash in 1971 while on a business trip. He was 46.
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Neville Brand
1920 - 1992 |
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America’s 4th most decorated soldier of WWII, Neville was born in Griswold, Iowa, one of 7 children. He won the Silver Star for gallantry in combat and the Purple Heart as well as many other citations. Disregarding his own safety, Brand single-handedly crept into a nest of German snipers and wiped out the enemy. Later he was wounded while pinned under enemy fire and almost bled to death before he could be rescued.
After his discharge, Neville studied acting under the
G.I.Bill. His first film was in 1950 as the sadistic hoodlum in “D.O.A.”
opposite Edmund O’Brien but he consistently gave excellent performances
on stage and in films and television for 35 years.
Brand died of emphysema complications in 1992 at the age of 72.
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Wayne Morris
1914 - 1959 |
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Born Bert de Wayne Morris in Los Angeles, California, Wayne left a budding acting career to join the Navy in WWII where he earned the Distinguished Flying Cross four times and the Air Medal twice. He was credited with downing seven Japanese planes, and sinking a gunboat and two destroyers.
Morris was discharged as a Lt. Commander at the end of the war and attempted to resurrect his film career but his absence had cost him the chance for starring roles. One of his more memorable roles was that of Lt. Roget in the 1957 film “Paths of Glory”.
In 1959, while a guest aboard an aircraft carrier observing aerial maneuvers, Wayne Morris was stricken with a heart attack and died. He was 45.
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Jean-Pierre Aumont
1911 - 2001 |
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He was born Jean-Pierre Salomons in Paris, France and was already an established stage and film star when he opted to join the Free French Forces in the defense of his homeland against the Nazis. After serving bravely in Tunisia, Italy and France, Jean-Pierre was awarded two of France’s highest awards, the Legion of Honor and the Croix de Guerre.
Aumont came to the US. in 1942 and was assigned by MGM to play the lead in “Assignment to Brittany” (as Pierre Aumont)...a role he had already lived as a leader of the French Resistance.
Jean-Pierre Aumont was revered as a international star on stage, films and television right up to his death at age 90. He died in his sleep of natural causes.
Why not e-mail me with some of your favorites? I will include them in a later edition.
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From Ted in Coal Center, PA... Tell me more about singer-dancer June Knight.
She sang with Robert Taylor in “Broadway Melody of 1936”
and the song was one of my favorites “I Got the Feelin’
You’re Foolin”. What other movies has she made?
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Dear Ted, Bad news first..June Knight died in 1987
at the age of 74. Born Margaret Rose Valliquiello in Los Angeles
on January 22, 1913 , she had to battle both polio and TB during
her childhood and took up dancing as a form of therapy. As Marie
Valli, she Ladies Must Love (1933) Arabella |
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From Deloris in Houston, Tx.... Who was the comedian who pretended to swallow a harmonica
and made sounds on |
That was Gil Lamb, Deloris. The comic/mime
originated that routine in his vaudeville |