"They used to say to me," he told the St. Petersburg Times in 1993, "did you ever think about getting your nose fixed." And then he fell back on one of his standard interview lines:

"I had it fixed three or four times--by a straight left!"

He left home when he was barely 15, according to "Robert Mitchum: A Biography," written by George Eeels and published in 1984.

He worked as a deckhand on a salvage ship and then decided to join his sister Julie in Long Beach. En route he hitchhiked through Georgia, where he supposedly was arrested on a robbery charge and sent to a chain gang. Mitchum varied the length of his imprisonment with each telling but claimed to have escaped and fled to California where he drove trucks and washed dishes.

When work ran out, he returned to the East Coast and met the woman he was to marry--Dorothy Spencer--who had been dating his brother.

Despite Mitchum's acknowledged infidelities and his penchant for problems, the marriage endured 57 years and produced three children, James, Christopher and Petrina, and seven grandchildren.

Mitchum again took off for California, where his sister had begun acting with the Players Guild of Long Beach. It was on the sands of that city that he began experimenting with marijuana.

Mitchum, a childhood poet who by then was writing material for his sister's nightclub act, was hired as an assistant by astrologer Carroll Righter. He revisited his poetic side in the mid-1950s with a calypso record, "Calypso Is Like So," that was reissued in 1995.

With his 1940 marriage, Mitchum was forced to give up his unrewarding writing jobs and went to work in a defense plant shortly before Pearl Harbor.

But the routine of Lockheed bored him and he and an actor friend registered with the Screen Extras Guild and began to get regular work in low-budget films. He landed a bit part in the 1943 Hopalong Cassidy film "Hoppy Serves a Writ," and began to appear regularly in the series.

By the end of that year he was portraying a lonely soldier in "The Human Comedy," based on William Saroyan's novel. The role launched both his career and his reputation, for he began to be seen hanging out at various Hollywood saloons with fellow iconoclasts.

Mitchum credited his success as an actor to such predecessors as Bogart, who introduced the era of what Mitchum called "the ugly leading man." The era came after the horrible realities of World War II when the pretty faces of Tyrone Power and Robert Taylor no longer seemed relevant.

Near war's end, Mitchum was drafted into the Army but spent most of his eight-month service career promoting "G.I. Joe." Friends said he was bitterly disappointed when he failed to win the supporting actor Oscar, although Mitchum said he didn't care.

He was now under contract to RKO and made "Till the End of Time," "Undercurrent" and "The Locket." But about that time (1946) he found that his business manager had embezzled nearly all his money and Dorothy Mitchum insisted that the family return to the East Coast and Bob give up films.

But RKO quickly insisted that he return and honor his contract. He came back to Hollywood by himself where he admittedly began drinking too much while courting those who could supply marijuana.

Career Honors

His arrest in 1948 in the company of Lila Leeds at first seemed to doom his career, but he emerged from prison to find:

His wife and family had come back to California to reconcile.
His latest film, "Rachel and the Stranger," was attracting huge crowds, most of them curious to see the "dope addict."

He returned to films a conquering hero and was met by increasing throngs of admiring women whenever he toured to promote such pictures as "The Big Steal" and "Holiday Affair."

By January 1951 he had completed two years' probation, the court had expunged the record of his arrest, and he and his family were living quietly in Mandeville Canyon.

Although he never again became the worst of Hollywood's "bad boys," he had occasional skirmishes with the law over traffic tickets and the like while continuing to attract the interest of gossip columnists who were either prying into his supposed affair with Shirley MacLaine or following him about the watering holes of the Westside.

Again, he was supposedly disappointed when Deborah Kerr was nominated for a best actress award for "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison," but his performance opposite her was ignored.

He was not totally without formal honors, however, winning the 1960 best actor award by the National Board of Review for "The Sundowners," and in 1983 a life achievement award from the American Theatre Arts.

Late in life he also crafted some final triumphs, among them the ambitious "Winds of War" on TV and "That Championship Season" in film. In 1991 he did a cameo role in the remake of "Cape Fear," in which he had starred in 1962 with Gregory Peck.

He had survived the critics, the brawls and the problems, had the satisfaction of acting with his sons in a 1985 TV movie of the week and had become one of the nation's favorite curmudgeons.

He continued to grant interviews and may have even been a little more forthright in his answers.

He had lasted a long time.

Why? he was asked a few years ago.

"I work cheap," was the typical Mitchum-esque riposte.

A TOUGH GUY'S LEGACY

Robert Mitchum made acting look so easy for so long that he became an icon.

Robert Mitchum (1917)