Summer Under the Stars Day 12: Robert Mitchum

 

Robert Mitchum is todays focus on TCM's Summer Under the Stars. He was an "underrated American leading man of enormous ability, who sublimated his talents beneath an air of disinterest" (source). First of all, did you know he can sing?!? After learning this I started looking at him in a whole new way...

 

Honey's Lovin' Arms

 

Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral

 

Little Old Wine Drinker Me

 

The Ballad of Thunder Road

 

Apparently he made a couple albums. Check out more search results here!

 

I've only seen four films with Mitchum: El Dorado and more recently Holiday Affair - also The Longest Day (1962) and one of his early films where he makes a brief but memorable appearance as a soldier on leave in Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1944) starring Simone Simon.

In El Dorado (1966) Mitchum plays a sheriff. A drunk sheriff. And he's very good at it. The films main star is John Wayne and the story is pretty much exactly like Rio Bravo (1959) - which I will be reviewing on the 20th, with Mitchum in Dean Martin's role. It also has a young James Caan.

James Caan as Mississippi

 

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Holiday Affair (1949) stars a young Janet Leigh as a single mother with a little boy. She is a comparison shopper - she buys products from stores and compares them and then returns them. Mitchum knows what she's doing but doesn't bring her to his boss like he's supposed to and ends up losing his job because of it. He doesn't really care though; he's more interested in pursuing Leigh. It's a cute little Christmas movie with the typical two guys who want the same girl (the other guy being Wendell Corey). Guess which one wins.

I like Leigh's little apartment in the film, especially the way she displays her Christmas cards (she sure has a lot).

Screenshot by Phyl

I recommend both films. Neither of them are among my top movies but they are definitely enjoyable.

This post is part of the month-long 2015 TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon hosted by Kristen at Journeys in Classic Film. Be sure and check back all month to see all the great posts!

All images found via Pinterest except shot of apartment.

New in June: Go Big or Go Home (2014)

Netflix continues to bolster its back catalog of important directors. There are new additions this month from Woody Allen (Annie Hall), Jim Jarmusch (Coffee and Cigarettes), Howard Hawks (El Dorado), Steven Spielberg (1941), and three more from Robert Altman, not to mention the return of those itinerant Francis Ford Coppola films that never seem to stick around for more than a month or two. And in the No News Is Good News department, the handful of James Bond movies that showed up last month remain available�a first in the year-plus since this blog began. Bond titles, as many of you know, usually vanish after 30 days. But one of the bigger stories in June is the streaming debut of a movie as infamous as it was unavailable (at least in the U.S.), and as underrated as it was underseen�the one, the only:

Ishtar (1987)

"Honest and popular don't go hand in hand"

An early example of a movie reviewed for its budget rather than its quality, Ishtar sits only a notch below Heaven's Gate in terms of the critical scorn and audience indifference hurled its way. It may not have ruined a studio, but it certainly helped ruin the directorial career of Elaine May (who also wrote it), and long served as one of a handful of poster children symbolizing Hollywood excess prior to today's Tentpole Era. Me, I've always thought the movie got a bum rap. Having seen it during its initial�extremely brief�theatrical run, I remember being puzzled by the critical pummeling. Certainly it wasn't The Greatest Comedy Ever, but it was clever, entertaining, and silly in equal portions. Essentially a big-budget homage to the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby road pictures (anyone remember those?), it revels in the absurdity of Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty, as two of the world's worst songwriters, getting dragged into an international crisis involving the CIA, gunrunners, and Middle Eastern revolutionaries. Hoffman and Beatty have a blast playing against type (Beatty is hopeless with the ladies), bringing real zest to their off-key interpretations of the deliberately awful Paul Williams songs they're meant to have written. Some of it may be dragged out and, at times (yes), excessive, but like the characters in a Will Ferrell or Farrelly Brothers movie, these are very smart people playing stupid, and most of the time they get it right�especially Charles Grodin, whose sly underplaying steals every scene he's in.

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Expiration Watch: TWO FOR THE SEESAW

There's a lot to be said for blunt, literate dialogue between two characters--something more common to plays, books, and high-caliber TV dramas than today's big-studio releases. Equally refreshing are movie romances minus the pinches of Hollywood fairy dust that often cloud the screen, especially if you prefer to see relationships with some semblance of real life. Functioning as a kind of companion piece to Billy Wilder's The Apartment, only less witty and with a narrower scope, Two for the Seesawthrives in its carefully observed portrayal of two lost souls learning to trust each other in 1962 New York.

The details are what sell it. From the Oscar-nominated location photography to the peeling paint inside the cramped and sagging downtown dwellings, this is a world that's been lived in. Not that the film is some gritty kitchen sink drama soaked in gin and reeking of broken childhoods. But director Robert Wise seems to have taken great care to dispense with movie shorthand and actually show what living in New York was (and still is) like for the average striver. Accounts are regularly tallied, dollars saved, geographical integrity honored. Given the film's pedigree--from the director of West Side Story, starring Robert Mitchum and Shirley MacLaine, shot in gorgeous widescreen black and white--such fidelity comes as a refreshing surprise.

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