Inside the Life of the rebellious Hollywood antihero Robert Mitchum

Robert Mitchum was born in 1917 in Bridgeport, Connecticut. His mother was an immigrant from Norway and his father James Thomas Mitchum was Irish and worked in the shipyard and on the railroad.

Robert never got to spend time with his father as he died in an accident when he was just 18 months old. He was squashed by two boxcars while working at a railyard in Charleston, South Carolina.

Ann, Robert’s mother got married to Major Hugh Cunningham Morris, a former Royal Naval Reserve after many years of James’s death. He became Robert’s stepfather, but it was hard very had to raise Robert as he was a wild child, hence he was taken to his grandparents.

He didn’t stop getting into trouble while living with his grandparents, but along the line met the woman of his dreams, Dorothy who lived next door to his grandparents.

They got married in 1940 and moved to California.

Robert knew he had to get a source of income that wasn’t a 9-5 job as he already suffered enough from them.

He decided to go into Hollywood and it wasn’t long before he got his breakthrough in 1945 after starring in the American war film “The Story of G.I. Joe”

The viewers soon fell in love with him as he did great no matter the character he played.

His memorable character came to be the one he played in the thriller “The Night of the Hunter.

“I wanted to take it all the way,” he said. “I wanted to scare people to death. The book did that. It was ten times as frightening as the picture. But Charles had such good taste. He kept saying, ‘I make my living reading the Bible. I can’t do this sort of thing.’ As it was, it was pretty good… I guess.”

His character and real-life personality weren’t so much different.

He had a lot to his name and in 1948 he was arrested for having Marijuana on set and had to stay in prison for some time.

”The only effect that I ever noticed from smoking marijuana was a sort of mild sedative, a release of tension when I was overworking. It never made me boisterous or quarrelsome. If anything, it calmed me and reduced my activity,” Mitchum later explained.

He was also fired from the set during the filming of Bloody Alley. He quite have a temper and went on to smash a radio.

Mitchum had a very rough life and had demons he fought every day of his life, sadly he passed away days before his birthday on July 1, 1997. He died due to complications from lung cancer and emphysema.