Robert Mitchum was regarded by many critics as one of the
greatest actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. No one seemed to know that he
was more than just a film actor, director, author, poet, composer, and singer.
Before the antiheroes in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was, he was. He was
considered a forerunner of the antiheroes prevalent in film during the 1950s
and 1960s…. and... He was probably my best friend. We had a few things in
common. His father James Mitchum was crushed to death in a railyard accident,
my father, Njoku Manga Bell was crushed and injured by a steel beam, eventually
dying from his injuries on a construction job in Queens, New York.
It was February of 1967, and the Beatles seemed to have
caused the world to leave its orbit with the release of their "Penny
Lane" & "Strawberry Fields" record. Teamster president Jimmy
Hoffa begins 8-year jail sentence for defrauding the union & jury
tampering. United States Marine Corps and ARVN troops launch "Operation
Deckhouse Five" in the Mekong River delta. A Black Man, Edward W. Brooke
(Senator-Republican-Massachusetts), takes his seat as the 1st popularly elected
African American to the US Senate…and while "Respect" single recorded
by Aretha Franklin made the Billboard Song of the Year, Yaphet Frederick Kotto
signed a contract with producer Hal Wallis as a featured player in Paramount’s
Five Card Stud starring Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum.
After about six weeks of heavy duty filming in Durango,
located in the fourth largest state in Mexico and living with the cast and crew
at the Mexican Campo courts. Movie legend, Director Henry Hathaway and his
large Paramount army of crew and casts left the state that was bordered to the
north by Chihuahua, to the northeast by Coahuila, to the southeast by Zacatecas,
to the southwest by Nayarit, to the west by Sinaloa and journeyed for Estudios
Churubusco, one of the oldest and largest movie studios in Latin America.
Most of the cast Inger Stevens and Roddy McDowell flew to
Mexico City, Mitcham decided he would ride and invited me to go along with him
and his driver, it was a thrill to ride along with a super star like Mitchum.
He told jokes about his Marijuana bust and his stay in a county jail and then
43 days on a prison farm for possession of marijuana. He laughed about it and
seem to take it in stride—The slammer was "just like Palm Springs, but
without the Jive" he’d punctuate many things he said by slapping me
five—Bob was totally cool, I kept wanting to ask him are you a really white or
are you a black man in disguise? When he told me, he had done time on a chain
gang when he was 14. I knew he was street wise and a tough dude. Read more >>
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