Robert Mitchum

Robert Charles Durman Mitchum (August 6, 1917 – July 1, 1997) was an American film actor, director, author, poet, composer, and singer. Mitchum rose to prominence for his starring roles in several classic films noir, and is generally considered a forerunner of the antiheroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. His best-known films include Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955), and Cape Fear (1962). Mitchum was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Story of G.I. Joe (1945). Mitchum is rated number 23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male stars of Classic American Cinema. 2Early life Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut into a Methodist family. His mother Ann Harriet Gunderson was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter; his father James Thomas Mitchum of Scottish-Ulster and Blackfoot Indian descent, was a shipyard and railroad worker. A sister, Annette (known as Julie Mitchum during her acting career), was born in 1914. James Mitchum was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina in February 1919, when his son was less than two years old. After his father's death, his mother was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant with her second son John, who was born in Septembe