
He then sought work as a film actor, performing initially as an extra and in small speaking parts. He also suffered a nervous breakdown (which resulted in temporary vision problems), due to job-related stress. Mitchum found steady employment as a machine operator during World War II with the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, but the noise of the machinery damaged his hearing. He gave up his artistic pursuits at the birth of their first child James, nicknamed Josh, and two more children, Chris and Petrine, followed. In 1940, he returned to Delaware to marry Dorothy Spence, and they moved back to California. According to Lee Server's biography ( Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care), Mitchum put his talent for poetry to work writing song lyrics and monologues for Julie's nightclub performances. He also wrote several short pieces which were performed by the guild. At The Players Guild of Long Beach, Mitchum worked as a stagehand and occasional bit-player in company productions. Julie persuaded him to join the local theater guild with her. During this time, Mitchum worked as a ghostwriter for astrologer Carroll Righter. In the mid-1930s Julie Mitchum moved to the West Coast in the hope of acting in movies, and the rest of the Mitchum family soon followed her to Long Beach, California. He soon went back on the road, eventually "riding the rails" to California.

At the age of 16, while recovering from injuries that nearly cost him a leg, he met 14 year old Dorothy Spence, whom he would later marry. By Mitchum's account, he escaped and returned to his family in Delaware. He later stated that at age 14 in Savannah, Georgia, he was arrested for vagrancy and put in a local chain gang.
#Wedding at rails steakhouse professional#
After being expelled from Haaren High School he left his sister and traveled throughout the country, hopping freight cars and taking a number of jobs, including ditch-digging for the Civilian Conservation Corps and professional boxing. A year later he moved in with his older sister in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. In 1929 his mother sent the twelve-year-old Mitchum to live with her parents in Felton, Delaware the boy was promptly expelled from middle school for scuffling with the principal. Īs a child, Mitchum was known as a prankster, often involved in fistfights and mischief. When all of the children were old enough to attend school, Ann found employment as a linotype operator for the Bridgeport Post. They had a daughter, Carol Morris, born July 1927 on the family farm in Delaware. Her third child, John, was born in September of that year.Īnn married Lieutenant Hugh "The Major" Cunningham Morris, a former Royal Naval Reserve officer. His widow was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. James was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919. His older sister, Annette (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career), was born in 1914. His father, James Thomas Mitchum, a shipyard and railroad worker, was of English-Scottish-Irish descent, and his mother, Ann Harriet Gunderson, was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter. Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on August 6, 1917, into a Methodist family of English-Scottish-Irish and Norwegian descent. Mitchum is rated number 23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male stars of classic American cinema. Navy Captain Victor "Pug" Henry in the epic miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and sequel War and Remembrance (1988). He is also known for his television role as U.S. His best-known films include Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), Out of the Past (1947), River of No Return (1954), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Thunder Road (1958), Cape Fear (1962), El Dorado (1966), Ryan's Daughter (1970) and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973).

His acting is generally considered a forerunner of the antiheroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s.

Joe (1945), followed by his starring in several classic film noirs. He rose to prominence with an Academy Award nomination for the Best Supporting Actor for The Story of G.I. Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American actor.
