Former Child Star Dick Moore Dies at 89

RIP to Dick Moore, who had a small but pivotal role as a mute employee of ROBERT MITCHUM's in 1947's Out of the Past. In the final scene of the film, he lies to make sure that Ann, the nice girl Jeff (Mitchum) was seeing, thinks he was going away with bad girl Kathie (Jane Greer) so she'll go on with her life. After she walks away in tears, he gives a final salute to the sign on the gas station that reads "Jeff Bailey."

Moore got his start as an infant in 1927's Beloved Rogue and his last film was 1952's The Member of the Wedding. In between, he played the lead in Oliver Twist, gave Shirley Temple her first kiss in 1942's Miss Annie Rooney, and starred opposite Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford and Gary Cooper.

He is survived by his wife, actress and singer Jane Powell of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Happy Birthday, Robert Mitchum

Happy 98th Birthday to ROBERT MITCHUM. The noir icon and all-around tough guy was born August 6, 1917 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. TCM is celebrating his birthday a few days late (August 12) with a full day of movies dedicated to him as part of their Summer Under the Stars series. Set those DVRs since many of these films aren't on DVD or Blu-ray.

AUGUST 12 on TCM (Times are for East Coast):

6:00 AM: Till The End of Time (1946)
8:00 AM My Forbidden Past (1951) buy dvd
9:15 AM The Sundowners (1960) buy dvd
11:45 AM Rachel And The Stranger (1948)
1:15 PM Blood On The Moon (1948)
2:45 PM The Lusty Men (1952)
4:45 PM The Hunters (1958) buy dvd
6:45 PM The Dick Cavett Show: Robert Mitchum (1971)
8:00 PM Home From The Hill (1960) buy dvd
10:45 PM Thunder Road (1958) buy blu-ray
12:30 AM The Yakuza (1975) buy dvd
2:30 AM Ryan's Daughter (1970) buy dvd

Happy 99th Birthday to Olivia De Havilland

Olivia De Havilland just celebrated her 99th birthday. The actress is now not only the last surviving cast member of 1939's "Gone With the Wind" and the oldest living Oscar winner, but she's also the last surviving cast member of "Not as a Stranger," the 1955 Stanley Kramer film she costarred in with ROBERT MITCHUM. In it, she played a Swedish nurse who falls for medical student Mitchum, who views her just as a meal ticket while he romances Gloria Grahame. It's not a great film but what a cast: Frank Sinatra, Lee Marvin, Broderick Crawford and Harry Morgan.

Grahame died in 1981, Crawford in 1986, Marvin in 1987, Mitchum in 1997, Sinatra in 1998, and Morgan died in 2011.

Happy Father's Day: Mitchum's Daughter To Appear At UCLA Screening

UCLA shared this photo of ROBERT MITCHUM and his daughter, Petrine, on Twitter. Petrine, along with William Wellman, Jr., will attend a screening of the western "Track of the Cat" on June 28 at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum in Westwood, Los Angeles.

Petrine will sign copies of her book "Hollywood Hoofbeats: The Fascinating Story of Horses in Movies and Television" and Wellman will be there to sign his book about his father, "Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel" beginning at 6 p.m.

"Track of the Cat" is a 1954 Western in which Mitchum -- the head of a backwoods clan -- hunts a killer mountain lion. It costars Teresa Wright, Diana Lynn, Tab Hunter, Beulah Bondi and William Hopper.

The film is part of a double bill with another Wellman western, "The Ox-Bow Incident," starring Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn and Harry Morgan.

For more information on the program, visit the UCLA site.

The Billy Wilder Theater is located at 10899 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90024.

Read more about the Mitchum Acting Clan.

Happy Mother's Day From Sinatra to Mitchum

Happy Mother's Day! Supposedly, after ROBERT MITCHUM gave Frank Sinatra a hangover cure while they were making Not as a Stranger, Sinatra began calling him 'Mother" and sent Mitchum a Mother's Day Card for several years!

"Thunder Road" Out on Blu-ray

Thunder Road, starring ROBERT MITCHUM as a moonshiner outrunning the law in a souped-up hot rod, is now out on Blu-ray from Shout Factory. Order on Amazon.

The Collinsport Historical Society site, dedicated to the show Dark Shadows, shares this onset memory from actor Mitchell Ryan, who would go on to play Burke Devlin on the supernatural soap opera:

"I was twenty-three years old and on my first movie set. I was nervous as hell and stayed to the side away form the camera. I had a small scene with Mitchum who was just short of being a god and at the height of his popularity. He stood by the camera joking with the crew. At last I heard my scene called, at which point Mitchum walked over to me, was silent for a second and then said, 'Remember, I'm big Mitch and you're Little Mitch.' He looked grim then burst out laughing and said, 'Let's do this fucking thing.'"

Shirley MacLaine Talks Robert Mitchum at TCM Classic Film Fest

Shirley MacLaine attended the TCM Classic Film Festival March 29, where she discussed her famous costars, including ROBERT MITCHUM. Via The Hollywood Reporter:

“We had a three-year relationship, kind of under the radar. [Hears audience murmuring.] You didn’t know? Neither did he! He was the most intelligent maybe of anybody I’ve ever met. He had a photographic memory. He could read a script and word for word cite it back to you. Frankly, I think that’s sick. He was a bit of an emotional coward. So I loved the contradiction. It gave me so much work to do: Who are you? I just loved shoveling through what he really was. I mean, this business about working on a chain gang, I think that was for 20 minutes or something, and [involved] filling in a pothole or something. But he was also the most underestimated.”

MacLaine starred with MITCHUM in Two for the Seesaw and What a Way to Go!. She wrote about her affair with him in her 1996 autobiography, My Lucky Stars. Read more about it here.

Video: Robert Mitchum Meets Belgian King In 1959

A visit by King Baudouin of Belgium to MGM Studios in Hollywood (circa 1959) was filmed as he meets several stars, starting with Eva Marie Saint. He's also filmed meeting Gary Cooper and Charlton Heston on the set of "The Wreck of the Mary Deare;" Eleanor Parker and ROBERT MITCHUM on the set of "Home From the Hill;" and Gina Lollabrigida and Frank Sinatra filming "Never So Few." The day ended with a luncheon for the King, who sat between Debbie Reynolds and Glenn Ford, who were filming "It Started With a Kiss."

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

David Lean's 1970 film "Ryan's Daughter" airs today on TCM at 10:45 pm PT as part of their St. Patrick's Day ode to Irish films. It stars ROBERT MITCHUM as an Irish schoolmaster who takes a much younger bride (Sarah Miles) who soon falls for a British officer. The film, which is set in 1916, is loosely based on Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary. John Mills won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the film and Freddie Young won a Best Cinematography Oscar.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2015! Janet Leigh, Gordon Gebert and ROBERT MITCHUM in the final scene from Holiday Affair, when Leigh realizes she does want to be with Mitchum and joins him on his train to California on New Year's Eve.