That’s Steve McQueen and Robert Mitchum.
I saw Mitchum in a movie in which he played a bad guy and used a shotgun on an infant. I didn’t like that at all. :mad:
McQueen lost some respect with me when he went all over the world like a crybaby trying too desperately to get his cancer cured. :mad:
But they were both great actors and had charisma, and so I wonder … 
who had the most coolness, the most charisma? 
That’s a toughie. I think Mitchum had more of a physical presence, so that tips the charisma scales in his favor. Not just that he was bigger than McQueen, but the way he carried himself.
I’m of the older generation, so maybe I’m biased.
Mitchum, to me, had a far more impressive regime.
Moved from IMHO to CS.
McQueen was better looking but Mitchum had the greater range as an actor.
Coming from a young mid-20s guy like me, McQueen.
McQueen’s work is easier to seek out, and has more resonance today. I’ve seen and enjoyed “The Magnificent Seven,” “The Great Escape,” and “The Thomas Crown Affair,” and there’s no question that many others I’ve not seen, “The Blob,” “Bullitt,” Le Mans," “Papillon,” “The Towering Inferno,” are more ingrained in the cultural consciousness.
I have a vague sense of Robert Mitchum, but looking back, the only heyday Mitchum I’ve seen is “Out of the Past.” I’ve heard of a few others (“Night of the Hunter,” “Thunder Road,” “El Dorado”), but it’s not the same.
That, and McQueen died young, and even with the whole “turning to Billy Graham” thing, he’s held his cool a bit better as a result.
And can some of the older dopers explain to me: Was Calypso really “the next big thing” to replace rock and roll? It’s a laughable notion now, and Robert Mitchum is in turn laughable for being part of it.
Mitchum – he was so powerful they named a deodorant after him.
McQueen was way cool in Tom Thumb. Loved the scene where his ranch boss honored him at a party and gave him a big, juicy lobster and Thumb looked incredulously at it and his boss asked, “Is there a problem?” to which Thumb replied, “I just never seen a bug that big.”
One thing about all of those heros from yester year is that they looked sooo horrible with their shirts off – total flab compared to how a lot of guys look these days.
You should see Charleton Heston in The Big Country. Seriously buff.
Steve McQueen, baby!
You’re talking about two of my all-time favorites, and for me the question has no really good answer. Both were the ultimate in Cool. Both made screen acting a very personal business and both had their fair share of success at it.
The stand-out feature of McQueen’s acting was that he preferred to show and not say. I remember a biography type thing where Chuck Norris and James Coburn were recalling Steve’s advice to them: if you can show what you’re thinking or feeling, the audience will remember it whether the words say so or not.
For the best example from McQueen’s repertoire of that trait, check out Bullitt and notice how sparse the dialog is.
Mitchum’s style derived from his being totally comfortable on screen and rarely did he attempt to “act” in his roles. And yet you never doubt he’s the character. For an indication of his abilities, look at the range demonstrated in
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)
The Sundowners (1960)
The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
The Yakuza (1974)
just for starters. Mitchum was a star from the 40’s to the 90’s and most of his stuff is worth watching.
One of the funniest things I ever heard attributed to him is, “Listen. I got three expressions: looking left, looking right and looking straight ahead.”
All I know for sure is that when and if they decide to do movies about the lives of these two guys it’s going to be damn hard to cast!
Oh, yeah, I forgot, Mitchum was busted for pot smoking.
He wins!
In case you haven’t seen it, you might find the analysis of McQueen’s appeal, charisma, coolness and overall life experience amusing and maybe even enlightening in The Tao of Steve (2000).
At the very least you can see how the effects of McQueen’s aura made their way into the pop culture lexicon.
McQueen was not much of an actor. He “played” cool well enough, and had some roles that seemed tailor-made to play up this strength (The Cooler King, Bullitt, Jake Holman in The Sand Pebbles), but he was essentially a poor man’s Paul Newman with nowhere the same acting chops. His best acting is in Junior Bonner, but his range was indeed extremely limited.
I brought this up in another thread, but Mitchum is among the very best actors of the golden age. His laconic delivery and lazy-lidded appearance allowed people to grossly underestimate his abilities. He also was never an icon the way Wayne or Fonda or Stewart or, much later, McQueen was, and the great films he made (or the ones where he was great in them) aren’t really ones that are household names: The Night of the Hunter, Out of the Past, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Crossfire, The Story of G.I. Joe, Pursued, Angel Face, The Sundowners, Home from the Hill, etc.
I would say that McQueen has superficially more charisma, but Mitchum had more “presence”. His characters resonate for who they are (and what he did to breathe life into those characterizations) while McQueen’s are memorable because of how they look or the cool things they do.
McQueen – so cool, the lead in Cars is named Lightning McQueen.
McQueen was pretty well put-together for the time. He has a couple of shirtless scenes in “The Cincinnati Kid” and I’d put him up against pretty much any of today’s Hollywood pretty boys.
Sorry Otto, I don’t think so.
Maybe it’s the photo. Looks like his upper arms are a bit flabby, and is that the beginning of a paunch?
I gotta agree with what GuyNblueJeans said earlier – actors from that era had average bodies.
Charlton Heston is a good exception. Is that because more of his movies had him shirtless?
Here’s a WAG based on a stereotype I got from watching movies: Gyms in the 40’s and 50’s were mostly used by boxers. Where would an actor go to train?
To follow on with this theme, I’d add that even the Tarzan actors like Weissmuller, (even though he was an Olympic swimmer), weren’t built along the body-builder lines like Arnie until the Lex Barker and Ron Ely models. The first muscular guys to get big screen time were the Hercules types (Steve Reeves, for example). I remember Buster Crabbe being well built but usually covered in a T-shirt. I’d say Brando in Streetcar was the exception to the rule, but James Dean (at 24) looked sorta flabby in Rebel. It’s really pathetic how poorly muscled many of the big name stars were. On the other hand, Kirk Douglas looked pretty good even in his older age. Burt Lancaster was an acrobat and kept a decent physique into middle age or longer.
I suspect the attention on male physique came into its own in a big way in the late 50’s and early 60’s, with exceptions as early as the 30’s. But I’d suspect you’d have trouble getting the “good old boys” like Mitchum, Wayne, Tony Curtis, Dean Martin, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, etc., away from a bar long enough to hit the stairmaster. I can almost hear them laughing at the idea even now.
Well, that’s fine, more McQueeny goodness for me. But seriously, check out “The Cincinnati Kid” and you’ll see what I mean. Plus it’s a great movie.
