ROBERT MITCHUM

An extremely well-written and interesting account of Mitchum's life and influence. Robert Mitchum's life touched on the films he made - he started out in Westerns, playing cowboys and Indians, and was himself of American Indian descent; he made films about the war he served in; and he made a lot of film noirs, a genre he so personified even before he was, in real life, the unwitting fall guy in a set-up orchestrated by gangsters, and baited with a blonde femme fatale. He was - because of all this and in addition to it - one of the great movie actors. The book follows Mitchum through his films and looks in wonder at what he did, finally finding that everything was 'solid'. The book contains: A ChronoMitchology: a time-line sketch of Mitchum's life and career; Chapters on a dozen of Mitchum's major films (he made 120); Chapter on his musical output; A Mitchabet: an A to Z of Mitchum with one mini-essay for each letter of the alphabet, including essays on Attitude, Beat, Cigarettes, Directors...Fights, Girls...Noir, Rebel...Westerns.