Happy 100th Birthday to Robert Mitchum!

Noir icon ROBERT MITCHUM, who died in 1997, would have been 100 this Sunday. The rugged actor was born on August 6, 1917 in Bridgeport, Connecticut and went on to become one of the actors most associated with film noir for classics such as "Out of the Past."

TCM will be honoring him all by showing his movies on August 6 (see schedule below).

Here are some of the tributes to our favorite movie tough guy, including film retrospectives.

LA Times: On his 100th birthday, here's to legendary Hollywood tough guy Robert Mitchum

WSJ: The Versatile Robert Mitchum: The actor, who would have been 100 this week, mastered many genres—thriller, film noir, western and more

Massive Robert Mitchum Centenary Tribute Set As NYFF 2017 Retrospective

Boston Globe: After 100 years, there’s still been only one Robert Mitchum

TCM SCHEDULE FOR AUGUST 6
(Times are Eastern)

6:00 AM The LOCKET (1946)
    
7:30 AM WHEN STRANGERS MARRY (1944)

9:00 AM CROSSFIRE (1947)

10:30 AM HOLIDAY AFFAIR (1949)

12:00 PM HIS KIND OF WOMAN (1951)
    
2:15 PM ANGEL FACE (1953)

4:00 PM THE STORY OF G.I. JOE (1945)

6:00 PM THE WONDERFUL COUNTRY (1959)

8:00 PM THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER  (1955)
    
10:00 PM OUT OF THE PAST (1947)
    
12:00 AM THUNDER ROAD (1958)

2:00 AM THE ENEMY BELOW (1957)

4:00 AM GOING HOME (1971) 

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.

Mitchum Movies 'Cape Fear,' 'The Night of the Hunter,' 'River of No Return' at TCM Classic Film Fest

Three ROBERT MITCHUM movies will be screened at this year's TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles.

FRIDAY, APRIL 26:

'The Night of the Hunter' screens in 35 mm at the Egyptian Theatre at 9:15 a.m

'River of No Return' screens in 35mm at the Chinese Multiplex 6 at 12:00 p.m.
With producer Stanley Rubin in attendance

SATURDAY, APRIL 27:

'Cape Fear' screens in 35mm at the Egyptian Theatre at 9:00 a.m. With Barrie Chase (who played Gregory Peck's daughter) in attendance

Buy tickets online

Behind-the-Scenes Footage Shot by 'Ryan's Daughter' Stand-In to be Shown for First Time

An Irishman who served as a stand-in for ROBERT MITCHUM on "Ryan's Daughter" has just donated the on-set home movies he made during the film's shoot. That behind-the-scenes footage from the David Lean film will be screened for the first time March 17.

Tom Fitzgerald, who went on to become a Fianna Fail senator, earned £96 a week. He put part of that new salary towards a Super X 8mm camera and began filming, often without the crew's knowledge. "For film people, this is of huge interest. I was the only one with a movie camera at the time so there's no other archival material like it around," he told the Independent

Fitzgerald has donated his original reels to the RTE Archive, who then transferred the original to DVD. He gave a copy to the Dingle Film Festival, which will screen his footage for the first time in public in St James' Church on March 17.

Festival director Maurice Galway said it would be a unique opportunity for the town to celebrate its association with "Ryan's Daughter."

Via Irish Independent

Screening of 'The Legend of Marilyn Monroe' Jan. 25

LA-area fans of Marilyn Monroe might want to check out a free night dedicated to the screen icon taking place Jan. 25 at the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum. The evening includes a screening of the 1966 documentary The Legend of Marilyn Monroe, with director Terry Sanders in person. Among the people appearing in the film are director John Huston and ROBERT MITCHUM, Monroe's co-star in River of No Return.

Also on the program, newsreels and outtakes of Monroe and a Q&A with Sanders and Susan Bernard, author of the photo book, Marilyn: Intimate Exposures.

More details here.

Robert Mitchum Western Series at UCLA

Mitchum in 'Blood on the Moon'

Great news for LA-based ROBERT MITCHUM fans: UCLA is screening 10 of his westerns in a series called Tracking the Cat: Robert Mitchum in the West.

The series runs from July 8 through July 30 and includes both well-known westerns like El Dorado and some much more obscure cowboy flicks, like West of the Pecos. 

Films in the series include several great films not on DVD, like Blood on the Moon, The Lusty Men, as well as Pursued, The Sundowners (which apparently counts as a western even though it's set in Australia), Track of the Cat, Rachel and the Stranger, River of No Return and The Wonderful Country.


Overview of Mitchum's westerns.

NY Screening of Bruce Weber's 'Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast'

From Italian Vogue:
On June 21st, 30 Rock star and Emmy Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin hosted a special sneak peak of fashion photographer Bruce Weber's latest film, Nice Girls Don't Stay for Breakfast, (the title comes from a 1967 album by singer Julie London) a beautifully shot documentary examining the life of the movie star with the tough guy looks and a cigarette always in his hand, ROBERT MITCHUM

The film also reveals never before seen studio recordings of Mitchum, a notorious Hollywood bad boy who starred in films like The Big Sleep and The Last Tycoon, singing. Filmed mostly in black and white, the movie is narrated by New Orleans rhythm and blues musician Dr. John and features revealing interviews with Mitchum, his brother John and many of his friends.

... Weber is most famous for his erotically charged photographs of semi-nude All-American boys, but he is also an Academy Award nominated director who has turned his movie camera in 1988 on jazz trumpeter Chet Baker in Let's Get Lost (which earned him the Best Documentary Oscar nomination), on his herd of beloved pet dogs and on teenage boxers in Broken Noses in 1987.

Weber is attracted to not only male physical perfection, but to beauty's flipside: damaged, wayward souls, so Mitchum, who often played anti-heroes and was called by film critic Roger Ebert "the soul of film noir," is the perfect subject.

From The Huffington Post:

The big question of the night, how did Weber get such candid footage from interview-phobic Mitchum who eluded the invitations of Barbara Walters, Dick Cavett, and Larry King. Weber, in signature head scarf, is disarming and sly, telling how he sent beautiful women with gifts to Mitchum's door ...

Through Weber's lens, the Hollywood tough guy of Westerns and noirs, the creep in the original Cape Fear with deep cleft chin and eyes at half mast emerges as a shy, modest, non-celebrity jamming sweetly off-key with Dr. John, Marianne Faithfull, and Rickie Lee Jones ...

Broccoli Only Man Brave Enough to Wake Mitchum

Story at Times Online


Albert "Cubby" Broccoli is best known as the producer of the classic James Bond series. The BFI is celebrating with a two-month season of his films, starting on April 8. Here's an anecdote regarding Mitchum:

"On the Caribbean shoot for Fire Down Below, Broccoli was the only man brave enough to dump a bucket of water over a comatose ROBERT MITCHUM to wake up the boozy actor."

Two Mitchum Films Scheduled for LA Film Noir Series

It's time for Deadline: Noir City, the 11th Annual Film Noir Festival, held at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles. This year, two Mitchum films will be shown:

April 2: Out of the Past -- part of a Jane Greer double feature with the rare The Company She Keeps.

April 11: The Racket -- a double bill with another Robert Ryan film, Woman on Pier 13.

Film Noir Schedule

American Cinematheque on Blogspot

'Fire Down Below' Screening in London

Fire Down Below will be screened April 11 and April 26 at London's BFI Southbank as part of a tribute to James Bond producer Cubby Broccoli.

Schedule information at BFI

'El Dorado' Part of Howard Hawks LACMA Retrospective

Story at LA Weekly

Better Late Than Never: Howard Hawks at LACMA
Retrospective surveys indomitable director’s final films

... Rio Bravo (1959), El Dorado (1967), and Rio Lobo (1970) all star an increasingly monumental John Wayne and were scripted by Ms. Leigh Brackett, retracing the same paths to diminishing returns. (Hawks: “You’ve got fellows with guns, and one of them’s a sheriff ... there isn’t much you can do.”) Hedged in by outlaws, the Law waits on reinforcements. This involves rolling cigarettes, propping his leg on whatever’s handy, and generally bullshitting. Wayne nurses a gunfighter-turned-lush (real-life alkies Dean Martin or ROBERT MITCHUM) back to self-esteem and humors a procession of orn’ry ol’ crackers (real-life crackers Walter Brennan, Arthur Hunnicutt and Jack Elam). Hawks shows he can still turn a scene on a dime, as in... El Dorado’s shift from pastoral openness to the intimate suffering of a gut-shot kid (one of the toughest scenes Duke ever played).

Film Schedule at LACMA.org
El Dorado screens March 20.

First-Ever Film Footage of Mitchum?

Mitchum, with his own chest hair, we assume, in His Kind of Woman

Story at LA Times

Ladies and gentlemen, the UCLA Film & Television Archive Festival of Preservation has returned. This is the 14th UCLA festival, at one time an annual event and now held every other year at the Hammer Museum's Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood. Though I've seen only parts of it, the most boggling program of the entire series looks to be "Behind the Scenes in Hollywood," which samples the archive's fascinating collection of cinematic flotsam and jetsam ... Here is possibly the first-ever 1942 screen appearance by ROBERT MITCHUM as a nameless extra getting hair put on his chest in a Max Factor promotional film called "The Magic of Make-Up." — Kenneth Turan

Note: Mitchum in need of extra chest hair? I recall reading that he was actually the first actor in Hollywood to refuse to shave his chest hair, ushering in a new age of ultra-macho movie stars. Mitchum's film debut was in 1943, so this footage would definitely pre-date that.

The festival runs from March-April. The Mitchum footage will be screened April 10.

UCLA Film & Television Archive Schedule.