Orson and Bob Mitchum

[dmolson]

Heard a Black Museum program last night on the local radio. Quite dramatic, with plenty of British quality, story style and voices. Cutting in every once in a while was the host, adding just the right element of suspense and tension. Course I imagine he could make a cornflake commercial sound like radio noir...
To my topic: today I got this great cd, Robert Mitchum That Man, a bear family product which includes his 50s calypso carrying on, his country and folk stylin's from the 50s and 60s. Great cd! Anyways, in the booklet they talk about the actor's musical background, which included writing and such. It says that in 1939 "he conceived an oratorio about Europe's Jewish war refugees that was produced by Orson Welles as part of a fund-raising benefit at the famed Hollywood Bowl" Any recording or info on this, Jeff?
thanks... Wouldn't Mitchum and Welles have been a great team for a buddy-film noir flick!?!

[Jeff Wilson]

I have never heard of the Mitchum oratorio the liner notes mention. It isn't even in This Is Orson Welles. So without doing more digging, I can't help you. Sounds intriguing though. I never knew Mitchum was such a well-rounded guy.

[Welles Fan]

In 1939, was Mitchum anybody, yet?

[Jeff Wilson]

No, he wasn't. His film debut didn't come till four or five years later, so I tend to think that story is bogus. He was 22 in 1939, and while we all know about Welles the boy genius, I've never heard of Mitchum the genius. Again, I don't know anything about Mitchum's bio, aside from the obvious stuff later on.

[dmolson]

It certainly sounds like this is a Mitchum tale, something he apparently was known for. In the Ragman's Son, Kirk Douglas says: "Out of the Past was a picture I did on loan-out for RKO with Robert Mitchum. I don't remember much about him, except that his stories about being a hobo kept changing every time he told them." While the item has a dubious note, I'll do a little digging around to see just how likely Mitchum mixed with Welles in my item above. Maybe it evolved out of a 'Day-O' song and has become just a tiny little lie among a boat load... Interesting, still, though.

[Harvey Chartrand]

I read somewhere that Welles and Mitchum talked about collaborating on an opera in the 1950s, shortly after Welles staged The Lady in the Ice ballet for Roland Petit in London. Welles would write the libretto; Mitchum the music. Never happened. Neither did the production of Hamlet that Welles and Marlon Brando discussed in the mid-fifties.

[dmolson]

Well, after a dozen of hours of what I'll generously call 'research', have found nothing that elaborates on the theme of this tiny thread – just another mention at the start of a Salon interview. Both sources may have just copied or repeated it without question, as in this one interview there's no quote giving the exact story... Best to put it to bed, unless someone else has some other info. The liner notes for Bob Mitchum's cd were written by a Joseph Laredo and it came out in 1995, just in time to give ol' Bob a chuckle at perhaps another myth added to the pile. And it also perhaps was a chance to put behind him an anti-semitic comment or two that he tossed off in an interview in the late 80s or early 90s. Here are some choice quotes (and I know its off topic, but our fearless leader can bury this later) from the late great Mitchum...


http://www.salon.com/july97/mitchum970711.html

BY DICK LOCHTE

...Mitchum was the genuine article -- the Hollywood tough guy as hard-boiled as the heroes he played. He'd walked the walk, a runaway who hit the rails as "a thin, ferret-faced kid" of 14 and who, two years later, wound up on a chain gang in Georgia. He was a drifter, a boxer, a shoe salesman and even a poet. He wrote a play optioned by the Theater Guild and an oratorio that Orson Welles produced and directed in the Hollywood Bowl in 1938.

... One of the Los Angeles TV stations, in presenting the news of the actor's death, recalled his comment after being released from prison in 1948 for "conspiring to possess marijuana." Asked by a reporter what the 60 days incarceration had been like, Mitchum answered, "Like Palm Springs without the riff-raff."

... In the mid-'50s, Mitchum drew critical raves for his performance as the homicidal self-styled preacher in "Night of the Hunter." "That was a lovely exercise. But they worked on it for five months after I was finished and Charles (director Charles Laughton) put in a lot of shots of owls and pussycats. Said he thought I was too horrific and he didn't want people dragging their children off the streets when I passed by. The character was too strong for him, but that was what he asked me for to begin with. So he tried to undercut it with root beer floats and lacy laundry."

...Mitchum always got "those prices" in those days. "Somebody says, 'We really want you to do this script.' And I say, 'I'd need an awful lot of money in front to do that one.' And that never seems to be a problem. The less I like the script, the higher my price. And they pay. They may pay in yen, but they pay. Not that I'm a complete whore, understand. There are movies I won't do for any amount. I turned down 'Patton' and I turned down 'Dirty Harry.' Movies that piss on the world. If I've got $5 in my pocket, I don't need to make money that fucking way, daddy."

[dmolson]

Well, a month has past since I sent my query to the Hollywood Bowl archives/heritage dept. Without a reply, I'm left anxious to find a reason to extend this thread, or at least give someone here a chance to pick up the torch. In the meantime, here's one last quote of our friend Mitch, from his former neighbour, himself a fine actor...

Kent Jones' RICHARD WIDMARK interview

http://archive.filmlinc.com/fcm/5-6-2001/widmark.htm

All things considering, Widmark's average was pretty good, more like one out of three. Even the ones he considers lousy, like De Toth's Slattery's Hurricane ("They showed it to Zanuck, and he said, 'What the hell are we gonna do with this?'" or The Long Ships ("We were in Yugoslavia for six months. I wouldn't say it was fun. It was nutty") or Run for the Sun ("I used to say to the kids, If you're bad, you have to watch Run for the Sun"), were no big deal. It's a better average than that of his longtime neighbor Robert Mitchum. While it's true that Widmark never had an icon-maker like The Night of the Hunter or Cape Fear, it's also true that he led a much happier, more level-headed life, and cared more about his craft. "He was a good actor, and he'd never admit it," Widmark said of Mitchum. "A complex guy. You couldn't shut him up. One night I had a party for William Shirer [author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and Berlin Diary]. It was so embarrassing, because Mitchum spent the whole evening explaining the German problem to Shirer. And he'd never even been to Germany."

[Le Chiffre]

The only documented Mitchum/Welles collaboration I know of was around 1970 when Welles planned to direct Mitchum and Jack Nicholson in a film of Gavin Lyall's adventure thriller MIDNIGHT PLUS ONE. It's been awhile since I read it, but it was a good book, and for sure would have made a great film with that trio of talent. Unfortunately, it never got past the development stage. I wonder if a script was completed.

[Jeff Wilson]

I was flipping through the recent Mitchum bio "Baby I Don't Care" and it makes no mention of the oratorio thing. Welles is mentioned in regards to a couple projects later on, but nothing else.