DATE: Thursday, July 3, 1997                TAG: 9707030081

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  110 lines

ROBERT MITCHUM 1917-1997 TOUGH-GUY STAR CARED MORE THAN HE EVER SHOWED

HE WAS AN ornery, tough old cuss who would suffer no nonsense - and who thought the movie industry, with all its glitzy trappings, was mildly ridiculous.

Robert Mitchum, who died Tuesday, took delight in the fact that no one could catch him ``acting.'' He seemingly walked through 110 films with a sleepy-eyed attitude that suggested his tough-guy characters were always in charge.

One of the greatest, most varied, actors in movie history, he was a star on his own terms.

``My movies make money, or they don't make money. It's that simple,'' he once told me - refusing to discuss the intricacies of five decades of movie stardom. Most of all, he had no inclination to discuss what acting was all about.

``You show up. You say the lines. You get paid,'' he said.

The fact that he never played the Hollywood game is perhaps the reason he received only one Academy Award nomination, despite his many memorable characters. That was for ``The Story of G.I. Joe,'' the film that lifted him out of anonymity in 1945 - and the nomination was for supporting actor.

Although he'd be the first to belittle his contribution, he leaves indelible images in our movie past, which, with TV and video, will remain permanent. Who can forget his psychopathic killer, with ``love'' written on one hand and ``hate'' on the other, in the 1955 film ``Night of the Hunter''? Or the relentless way he stalked Gregory Peck's family in 1962's ``Cape Fear''?

The moonshine epic ``Thunder Road'' (1960), one of the most memorable B-pictures ever, was a mainstay of Virginia and North Carolina drive-ins for years.

Mitchum's role as a Marine in the 1957 film ``Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison'' was the epitome of a Mitchum character - tough exterior softened by the effects of a good woman. He was just as memorable, again opposite Deborah Kerr, in 1960's ``The Sundowners'' as an Australian sheepherder who was reluctant to settle down.

And he could play weakness too. ``Ryan's Daughter,'' a greatly underrated David Lean character study released in 1970, showed him willing to portray a weak, cuckolded husband, opposite Sarah Miles.

He held his own with John Wayne in Howard Hawk's ``El Dorado'' in 1967. He did remakes of Raymond Chandler's ``The Big Sleep'' (1978) and ``Farewell My Lovely'' (1975) - proving that he could give a new air to Bogart-type toughness.

In all, he made more than 100 films. Last year he supported Johnny Depp in ``Dead Man.'' His final movie, ``James Dean: Race With Destiny,'' is due out this fall.

Mitchum treated interviews as if they were a ridiculous waste of time. I saw him pretend to fall asleep during a news conference - putting his head on a table. After pretending to be awakened, he said: ``I'm sorry. Your questions are so boring.''

When ABC television gave a huge party on a luxury ocean liner for the miniseries ``Winds of War,'' he deigned to appear - but insulted reporters who tried to get near him. ``Are you a waiter?'' he'd ask them. ``Could you get me a drink?''

When his limousine was missing at the end of the party, he bribed the press bus driver with $50 and took the press bus - leaving 50 top critics stranded on a dock.

He didn't appear to care. He seemingly walked through roles as if he were bored with the whole thing. He made movie love to some of the world's most beautiful women - Ava Gardner in ``My Forbidden Past,'' Jane Russell in ``Macao,'' Marilyn Monroe in ``River of No Return,'' Susan Hayward in ``White Witch Doctor'' and ``The Lusty Men,'' Jane Greer in ``Out of the Past'' - yet he seemed to have a sleepy-eyed reticence that bounded on boredom.

Women, like movies, were seemingly disposable. Mitchum's persona was so tough that he let nothing shake him.

It was Jane Greer who, in a way, saved his career. In 1948, long before the freewheeling 1960s, he was arrested on a charge of possessing marijuana. Serving a 60-day sentence, he readily allowed news photographers to photograph him sweeping out his cell. He hid nothing. The studios said he was through.

Greer was one of the few stars who would agree to co-star with him. His next picture was a hit. The public didn't care about the charge. Indeed, it enhanced his don't-give-a-damn persona.

Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Conn. His father, an Irish railroad worker, died when he was still a baby. Mitchum later wandered the country on his own, serving time on a Georgia chain gang for vagrancy. He found work as an engine wiper on a freighter, as a nightclub bouncer and as a promoter for California astrologer Carroll Righter.

He wed his high school sweetheart, Dorothy Spence. They were married for 57 years, largely, Hollywood rumors persist, because of her willingness to look the other way. The affair that became most public was with Shirley MacLaine.

He went to California to take a job as a drop-hammer operator in an aircraft plant. After a series of walk-on roles, mostly as villains in Hopalong Cassidy Westerns, he got the ``G.I. Joe'' role that sent him on his way.

Secretly, he wrote poetry and plays - insisting that none of them be published. He briefly owned an estate in Virginia.

Suffering from lung cancer and emphysema, he died, at age 79, in his sleep. He left orders that his funeral was to be private and that his ashes were to be scattered at sea.

Don't give a damn? Hardly.

It was all a ruse. While Laurence Olivier and Spencer Tracy won acting accolades, it was Robert Mitchum who was delivering the goods. Though he seemed reluctant to admit that he was a real actor, he was - in every sense.

Like it or not, Robert Mitchum's secret is out. The tough guy cared deeply about acting - and the results show. He was one of the screen's greatest actors. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Robert Mitchum's movie breakthrough came in ``The Story of G.I.

Joe'' in 1945. KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY APPRECIATION

MOVIES

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