The Western Robert Mitchum

Mitchum was "The Man with the Gun" (1955) cleaning up lawless Sheridan City with less than subtle methods. "Bandido" (1958) cast Mitchum as an adventurer caught up with Gilbert Roland's rebels during the Mexican Civil War. He rode both sides of the border in "The Wonderful Country" (1959) from Tom Lea's novel about a cowboy running guns for a Mexican dictator while actually a Texas Ranger. The star was absent from westerns for eight years and returned with a vengeance in the late 1960s. Based on A.B. Guthrie's novel, "The Way West" (1967) offered Kirk Douglas, Richard Widmark and Mitchum as the scout guiding a wagon train to Oregon in the 1840s.

All Mitchum had to hear was Howard Hawks and John Wayne before accepting "El Dorado" (1967) which was old-fashioned rousing western fare. There was no hope for the bad guys when aging gunman Wayne teams with drunken sheriff Mitchum. While Hawks succeeded, fellow old pro director Henry Hathaway stumbled with "Five Card Stud" (1968) in which Mitchum walked through his role as a reverend seeking revenge for his brother's lynching. Robert Towne and Sam Peckinpah co-scripted "Villa Rides!" (1968) featuring Yul Bryner sporting hair as Villa and Mitchum playing a gunrunning pilot.

Burt Kennedy helmed Mitchum's final two westerns. In "Young Billy Young" (1969), he again played an aging sheriff hunting his son's murderer. Along the trail he romances saloon gal Angie Dickinson and reforms young killer Robert Walker Jr. Mitchum practically played the same role in "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys" (1969) where he joined forces with over-the-hill outlaw George Kennedy. While best known for his non-western roles, the often cantankerous Mitchum seemed to enjoy making westerns the most and certainly the western portrayed a vital developmental role in the career of this one-of-a-kind star.