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WOW they should have had their masks on to prevent the spread of disease.

 

Oh wait we never worried about all that Hazardous chit till somebody new got into the W.H. Art thanks for posting that and keeping us all Sane.

 

RON K.

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WOW they should have had their masks on to prevent the spread of disease.

 

Oh wait we never worried about all that Hazardous chit till somebody new got into the W.H. Art thanks for posting that and keeping us all Sane.

 

RON K.

Ron,

Not to mention American actor/playwright/director Sidney Toler playing Charlie Chan would be cancelled today before the cameras exposed a frame of film. Perhaps the lack of respiratory protection is because the World Health Organization wasn't established until a couple years after the film was released...

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That picture was made at Monogram Studios, about as low production values as they came. They made mostly cheap westerns there and when the actors shot there're six shooters while racing on their horses, the prop master made sure the blanks produced huge plumes of smoke so you could tell they were really firing their guns. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the prop master didn't use the same type blanks in shooting this indoor stage set scene, (totally unnecessary) and resulting in overwhelming the set with smoke.

 

Mike Hammer

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Yes charlie Chan and Amos and Andy watched them all. I am looking into 60's street gangs in Chicago and the History. Very interesting. considering i was part of that History at that time. It was a time of High Adventure.Sadly over 80% of those i knew are not around anymore.

 

They say never look back or you can't move forward. I say move in whatever direction you need to at the time.

And you won't become trapped.

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That picture was made at Monogram Studios, about as low production values as they came.

 

Mike Hammer

Mike,

Robert Mitchum got his break as a leading man at Poverty Row Monogram in 1944's film noir pic "When Strangers Marry/Betrayed."

Art, ask and you shall receive. Way ahead on that one. Here's a signed original Insert poster that both Mitch and his leading lady Kim Hunter signed for me back in the day. I'll tell you something, Mitchum was a hell of a guy. Before cool was McQueen...it was Mitchum. Yes Ron, he was a veteran, but laughably he worked in the medical dept. in charge of checking enlistees for hernias or piles, he was a "ball-checker". I asked him about his relationship with Howard Hughes when Howard owned RKO Studios, (he and Jane Russell were his biggest moneymakers.) He told me that "Hughes was a gentleman, an honest straight-shooter and his friend", who stuck by him when they busted him on that pot charge, (he was set-up). I once asked one of the sweetest actresses in the world, Miss Lillian Gish about working with him in "Night of the Hunter", she called him one of the nicest gentleman, with great charm and exquisite manners, she just loved him. However, if he got stinking drunk, (which happened on more than one occasion", he could be mean as hell. He was a hell of an actor, and on acting he said: "it beats working", HA! He was one of kind, and unfortunately the times we now live in, this world will not produce many like him.

 

Mike Hammer

mitchum.jpg

Edited by Mike Hammer
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Reminds me of my brief foray into flint lock black powder . Did not like it as much as cap locks , so I went back . Left me with a near full can of 4F priming powder . As I was trying to figure out what to do with it . I spied my Thompson propped up in the corner . I wondered if it would work . It did . Quite well as a matter of fact . A 30 round burst would provide plenty of cover for a get-a-way , too. I also learned why the Gatling gun had a spotter off to one side giving impact directions .

Chris

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Robert Mitchum and his son was in my favorite movies Thunder Road It came out around 57 and I had to see it anytime it came to a theater. I guess being from SW Virginia I had friends that were in the moonshine business

 

Frank

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Ahh yes. Our trivia knows no bounds. Arthur - I thought I had seen all of the Charlie Chan

movies (I liked Warner Oland better than Sydney Toler) so I will have to track down Dark/Dirty

Alibi. Don't know how I missed it.

Also the first movie I rented from Netflix (now DVD.com) many years ago was Aerial Gunner

(1943) which I believe was Mitchums first appearance in a film for which he was uncredited.

 

Bob

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From Ma Deuce in 1952 "One Minute To Zero" to an M60 in 1966/67 South Vietnam.

 

Excerpt from Lee Server's 2001 book "Baby, I Don’t Care"

"The greater part of Mitchum’s two-week visit was to be spent in the field, roaming by helicopter and light aircraft from one U.S. encampment to another, fanning across the jungles north of the capital city. Dressed in a khaki safari suit, Mitchum, accompanied by an army public relations man or other assigned “minder,” would drop from the skies onto tiny landing fields the size of a parking space, where he would be welcomed by the top brass and shown around. The usual itinerary included a quick tour of the base and an hour or so of shaking hands and making small talk, encouraging words for the troops – then back to the Huey and the next camp on the list. He posed for pictures, signed autographs for anyone who wanted one, and collected phone numbers and messages from kids who knew their moms would be thrilled to hear Robert Mitchum telling them their boys were OK.

 

“He got back from Vietnam with ninety million tiny scraps of paper,” said Reva Frederick. “Just about every boy he met over there gave him a message to take back. Pieces of paper with phone numbers, names. And Robert sat down for days and called every number. Just brief conversations with wives and mothers and fathers. ‘I just saw your son and he wanted me to call and say hello. He’s doing fine, looks good. He’s doing a good job over there.’ Called every one."

 

At one point a navy man wanted to wrap a visit up and get back to the helicopter, but Mitchum said, "Relax, man. Anybody got a drink around here?" They trudged over to the local clubhouse, a contraption made of ammunition boxes and Playboy centerfolds. Mitchum asked what they charged for a drink, then asked how much it would be to buy the whole bar. The captain didn’t know. Mitchum told him to figure it out. Then, Special Forces veteran Daniel Carpenter wrote, Mitchum "took a fat roll of bills from his pocket. It cost him a couple hundred to buy the bar. The troopers drank free, on his tab, for months.” Mitchum played some craps, lost most of his roll, and took off. He signed up for a second tour, and in February 1967, spent two more weeks roaming encampment and military hospitals."

 

 

 

 

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Edited by Arthur Fliegenheimer
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Art, wasn't that mighty kind of Mitchum to go out on his own like that and not with some USO tour where he would have to do some stupid skit or something with Hope and the rest. Instead he spent quality time with the boys. Here are a few more pics from his visits to Nam. While he may have made more films using a Thompson Sub-Machinegun, probably the most memorable is "The Story of GI Joe", his career took off after that film. Much later he made a film with Rita Hayworth, "The Wrath of God", her last film), where he picked up the Tommy Gun once again.

 

Since Mitchum was far to self-deprecating about himself and the film business, he never wrote any book about his life however the book Art mentions, "Baby I Don't Care" is excellent". A real page turner as well is a fairly rare book that his brother John wrote called "Them Ornery Mitchum Boys", some really engrossing behind the scenes stories about both of them.

 

Mike Hammer

Mitchum Thompson.jpg

Mitchum GI joe thompson.jpg

Mitchum GI joe.jpg

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Mitchum m-60.JPG

mitchum m 60.JPG

Edited by Mike Hammer
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I was a big fan of Mitchum until I found out he didn't lead a division assaulting Omaha beach.

Jim C

 

Brigadier General Norman Cota/Bob Mitchum

I don't have to tell you the story. You all know it. Only two kinds of people are gonna stay on this beach: those that are already dead and those that are gonna die.

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Arthur,

I think a role reversal was in order at Omaha,

Eddie Albert played the part of an indecisive, second banana to Mitchum.

I seem to remember that Albert was awarded a medal for valor at Normandy, while Mitchum was washing dishes in the US.

Albert should have played the part of Gen Cota.

Jim C

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Arthur,

I think a role reversal was in order at Omaha,

Eddie Albert played the part of an indecisive, second banana to Mitchum.

I seem to remember that Albert was awarded a medal for valor at Normandy, while Mitchum was washing dishes in the US.

Albert should have played the part of Gen Cota.

Jim C

 

After the 1956 WWII movie 'Attack!", where Eddie Albert played the sniveling Section 8 Captain Erskine Cooney, Zanuck was looking for greener acres rather than verisimilitude in the casting of Mitchum for the role. But to add to the incredulity of war movies, Mitchum later played an American correspondent in the movie "Anzio" who picks up a TSMG and dispatches a Kraut sniper.

post-110-0-63035000-1594584665_thumb.jpg

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he was in a remake of The Big Sleep in the 1970s, parts of it were filmed around here (I recognised the road in the title sequence).

James, you are correct. The remake of "The Big Sleep" with Mitchum was filmed in and around London and they had a heck of a time trying to make it anywhere resemble old L.A. It just didn't work. He was already getting a bit old for the part as well. When I asked him about this Raymond Chandler classic, he came back with the self-deprecating retort, "One critic called it "The Big Yawn". HA! It would have been interesting if Hollywood would have thought to use him in the 40's in the Chandler classics, I think he would have been as equally as good as Bogy in the role if not better. Here's a poster from that film he signed for me along with a signed poster from the other Chandler classic remake, "Farewell My Lovely".

 

Mike Hammer

big sleep.jpg

Farwell My Lovely.jpg

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Arthur,

I think a role reversal was in order at Omaha,

Eddie Albert played the part of an indecisive, second banana to Mitchum.

I seem to remember that Albert was awarded a medal for valor at Normandy, while Mitchum was washing dishes in the US.

Albert should have played the part of Gen Cota.

Jim C

 

Actually Eddie Albert was awarded a Bronze Star with Combat V for his actions at Tarawa. He drove his LCVP in under heavy Japanese fire and rescued over wounded 40 Marines who were trapped on the offshore reef

 

Mitchum didn't bear any physical resemblance to Norman Cota but I guess that level of accuracy didn't extend to the lesser known historical figures in The Longest Day. They did intentionally cast an actor with a very strong resemblance to Eisenhower, the other figures not so much

Edited by StrangeRanger
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