Robert Mitchum
”The only difference between me and my fellow actors is that I’ve spent more time in jail.” So said Robert Mitchum, a man who’d been having brushes with the law since before he started brushing his teeth. Arrested for vagrancy at the age of 14(!), Mitch paid off his debt to society on a Georgia chain gang (from which he twice escaped). His stretch eventually completed, he returned to his criminal ways, smuggling whiskey across the Canadian border, before eventually making his way to Hollywood. Stardom could not put a stop to Mitchum’s misdemeanours, however, and in 1949,
he was (in)famously busted for the possession and use of marijuana. With such a colourful history, it’s little wonder the great man was so dismissive of press stories about his private life. “They’re all true,” he once conceded. “Booze, brawls, broads -
all true. Make up some more if you want.”
Burt Lancaster
Deciding that a life selling lingerie wasn’t really for him, Burton Stephen Lancaster did what most young men only dream of - he ran away and joined the circus! Trained as an acrobat and trapeze artist by ring legend Curly Brown, he was soon performing to sell-out crowds across America. Amazingly given his impressive physique, Burt spend the Second World War not on the front lines but in a concert troupe. However, no sooner had he relocated to Hollywood than he reasserted his reputation for toughness by performing his own stunts in swashbucklers such as The Crimson Pirate. But like all our favourite tough guys, Lancaster was always quick to dismiss his rugged image. “Most people seem to think I’m the kind of guy who shaves with a blowtorch,” he once remarked. “Actually, I’m bookish and worrisome.”
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