Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care (31 page)

On August 31 Robert Mitchum and Robin Ford went house hunting again. He was going to spend all day at it. He needed to have a good prospect he could describe to his wife the next time they spoke. Dottie had called earlier in the week to let him talk to the kids. He told her he was looking for a new place for them. He was on his best behavior, said whatever he could think of, determined to make a good show for her. Didn’t the kids have to come back soon and start school? he asked. But Dorothy wouldn’t commit to anything. There was still a lot of fence-mending to be done, that was clear.

He and Robin Ford had driven all over the place, from towns in the Valley out to the ocean. It was early evening when they got back to Ford’s place on North Havenhurst. Mitchum called his agent, Phil Berg, and discussed a script they had received. The Korda people in England wanted him to do the lead in a film of Joseph Conrad’s
Outcast of the Islands.
It would mean working in London and on location in Southeast Asia. Mitchum told Berg he would be eager to read the script. Conrad had long been one of his favorite authors, and he had dreamed of visiting the Orient since he was a kid.

It was after seven when he and Ford drove up to Bob’s house. Reva Frederick was waiting for him there. She reported the day’s business. At his insistence she had canceled tomorrow’s public relations appearance at City Hall. The studio had arranged for him to meet the mayor and speak to a group of young people about the dangers of juvenile delinquency. Tomorrow was National Youth Day. Bob had said to tell them he had laryngitis. Reva gave him a list of telephone messages. One was from Lila Leeds. He gave her a call. She told him about her new place and how she wanted him to see it. Lila could tell he had been drinking. Not much, but enough to make his voice fuzzy, she would remember. Bob said he would call her later, maybe drop by. Lila told him Vicki Evans was with her, and he said he would bring along Robin Ford. Lila said, “Come after ten o’clock.”

Mitchum remembered telling her that he would but thinking that he would not, being very tired.

“Ford and I then went to the kitchen where we drank a fifth of Scotch while talking. My secretary reminded me to get something to eat and left for home.”

•  •  •

At the house on Ridpath Drive, Lila told Vicki they were going to have a party. She phoned a pusher and asked him to bring up five sticks of marijuana. Later she had one of her funny premonitions and remembered asking herself how long it would take her to go into the bathroom and flush the tea down the toilet if a cop ever came to the door.

As the sun went down that evening, two figures moved out from the undergrowth and the shade trees around the house that clung to the hillside above Ridpath. They slipped around the tangled laurel and cactus and, like a team of professional peeping toms, moved into positions at the bedroom and living room windows. The windows were open, bright lights were on, and the two men could hear and see everything as clearly as if they had sneaked into a stage show. Or at least a burlesque house. The two blonde young ladies inside were getting ready for company. Lila Leeds wore a pair of white shorts and a bra top and an open corduroy tommy coat. The other one had on blue shorts and a loose top. Lila sat her friend down on a chair and stood behind her, putting up her hair. A lit stick of marijuana clung lightly to her cherry-red lips.

A couple of hours passed. It was getting close to twelve when the phone rang. Lila answered, speaking softly. Then she put down the phone and one of the men at the window heard her say, “It’s the boys. They’re at the bottom of the hill. They’re lost. And they’re loaded.”

Bob Mitchum drove the big new Buick up Laurel Canyon. The lights of Sunset Boulevard faded behind the woods and the rocks. They rode along, slowing at each crossroad until they found the right one, taking a left and then winding round and continuing to climb as the streets narrowed and became almost vertical. Ford spotted the place. A small, frame bungalow, it was perched on a steep slope above an open two-car garage. The street was bathed in moonlight and silent but for the wafting sound of a Victrola playing Anita O’Day—”Hi Ho Trailus Boot Whip.” An outside light went on, and Lila stood on the landing with her tommy coat hanging open and waited for them as they came up the rough stone staircase. Mitchum was a garish sight in a shiny brown-striped jacket and a red-and-black checked lumberjack shirt. Two frisky boxer puppies were at Lila’s feet and jumped excitedly to greet the newcomers.

“Watch out, they’re ferocious,” Lila said, and they all laughed.

Mitchum moved inside, raising his hand to his brow. “Let’s turn the lights down,” he said, “they’re hurting my eyes.”

The lights were dimmed. The dogs ran around yipping noisily. They had been acting excited all night, Lila said. She put them in the enclosed porch in the back and shut the door. Mitchum said he thought there was someone at the front window. He went over to the window and looked out but saw nothing. He crossed the room and joined Robin Ford on the davenport. Bob took out a Philip Morris pack and threw it on the coffee table.

He said, “Let’s get high.”

Lila shook out the contents of the pack.

“You’ve got brown ones and white ones, too.”

Lila lit a stick, then took it from her lips and passed it to Bob. Then she lit another one. Robin Ford fended for himself.

Vicki Evans leaned nearer. “Gee, what will it do to me,” she joked. “And what happens if I get knocked out?”

Bob said, “Oh, daddy!”

But Vicki didn’t take a stick, and Lila would later remember that Vicki hadn’t smoked anything all evening.

The clock ticked past midnight. It was officially National Youth Day.

The two men skulking and spying at the windows moved swiftly to the back of the house, around a laundry line and garbage cans, and up to the porch. The screen door wasn’t locked and they stepped inside, where the dogs were waiting for them. The boxers growled, but one of the men took some doggie treats out of his pocket. The puppies happily bit into them and were shoved outside.

When Lila heard something on the porch she got up to check, but Vicki moved past her, saying, “I’ll take care of them.”

When Vicki unlocked the kitchen door, the two men charged inside, the one in front grabbing the girl and using her as a shield.

Lila Leeds gasped.

Bob Mitchum, holding the stubby remnant of a joint, lurched from the couch and picked up a small table to throw at the intruders. In the same instant the men dropped Vicki Evans to the floor and aimed their revolvers at the actor’s head.

“Police officers! Freeze!”

Mitchum froze. It took him several moments to comprehend that the flaring roach he still held between his fingers was burning a hole in his flesh.

^*
Discussions of
Crossfire
seldom recall—there is only a single mention in the dialogue—that the loathsome racist Montgomery was a Saint Louis policeman in civilian life. “Four years in the jungle on the East Side,” he says to Finley, “I know the score.”

M
ITCHU M CURSED SOFTLY AND
released the burning stub.

Robin Ford was sitting motionless, staring fixedly at the opposite wall, as if thinking he might go unnoticed. His only movement was to take the joint from his mouth and flick it under the couch. One of the policemen—Det. Sgt. Alva Barr—came up, retrieved it, then scooped up what Mitchum had dropped. He crumpled the tips and then placed them in the breast pocket of his jacket. Picking up the Philip Morris pack on the coffee table, he examined the contents.

He looked at Mitchum and said, “These are yours?”

Mitchum said, “No, they’re not mine.” But the words seemed to evaporate in the back of his throat.

Barr said, “Don’t give me any business and we’ll get along fine.”

The other officer—Det. J. B. McKinnon—closed a pair of handcuffs on Robin Ford’s wrists. Mitchum then offered up his own.

Barr stepped over to where Lila sat and took one partly burned cigarette out of her hand. It had red lipstick around the tip. He told her to empty her bathrobe pocket, and she took out something wrapped in a page of the
Herald Express.
The cop unwrapped it and found what appeared to be three more hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes and eight Benzedrine tablets.

He told them they were all under arrest and then picked up Lila’s phone and called headquarters.

Vicki Evans said, “It’s just like the movies.”

•  •  •

In a matter of minutes the tiny bungalow was filled with lawmen, including Federal Narcotics Bureau investigator William Craig. Mitchum and Ford were frisked, photos were taken, evidence was secured. Policewoman Eleanor Whitney took the two ladies into the bathroom and searched them. Then the cops led the four accused miscreants downstairs and put them into the waiting police cars. The men were driven to the county jail, the women to the Lincoln Heights lockup. They were all booked on the same charge of narcotics possession, a felony with a penalty of up to six years in prison.

Reporters and photographers were already gathered outside both stations, alerted to the celebrity dope arrest. Ford and Mitchum entered past a gauntlet of flashbulbs and barked questions. One photographer snapped Bob with his features contorted; in the printed photo he was barely recognizable. The picture wrote its own caption: “A M
AN IN THE
G
RIP OF
D
EMON
D
RUGS
.” Inside the station Mitchum and Ford were booked. Name, age, address, identifying marks. When the policeman asked Mitchum his occupation, he replied, wittily, “Former actor.”

According to police, Mitchum had already made a lengthy and damning statement following his arrest by Detectives Barr and McKinnon. In the report, an oddly voluble and square-sounding Mitchum confessed,
“Yes, boys, I was smoking the marijuana cigaret when you came in. I guess it’s all over now. I’ve been smoking marijuana for years. The last time I smoked was about a week ago. I knew I would get caught sooner or later. This is the bitter end of my career. I’m ruined.”

Amazingly, the arrest report on Lila Leeds contained a similar unprompted confession with a number of duplicated words and phrases, as if the two suspects had issued a joint statement.
“I have been smoking marijuana for two years. I don’t smoke every day. I was smoking that small brown stick when you came in. . . . I’m glad it’s over. Tm ruined.”

Police released Robin Ford’s incriminating statement as well.
“Yes, I was smoking that cigaret. I haven’t smoked marijuana for a long time. I really don’t know who lit the cigaret for me. I was smoking it
—
ain’t that enough? This will ruin me.”

Clearly a side effect of the dope—everyone spoke the same catch phrases.

It was the middle of the night when a Howard Hughes flack got word of the Mitchum arrest. He put a call through to his boss and imparted the bad news. Hughes took it calmly—his anger was reserved for Commies and intransigent females.

“Well, who do we pay to kill this thing?” Hughes asked.

In Hollywood everything from rape to hit-and-run homicides could be—had been—hushed up if you knew the procedure.

But it was too late for that. The press already had the story. In a few hours there would be headlines.

Howard said, “Let’s get him out of jail, keep him from talking, and for Pete sake will somebody call Jerry Giesler.”

In the morning, as attorneys arrived to bail him out, Mitchum was telling reporters a different story from the one the police had supplied. He denied confessing to anything. He had been out house hunting and didn’t even get a chance to join the party.

“I
was framed.”

Anyone expecting to find a distraught, ruined man was in for a surprise. Mitchum’s demeanor was coolly sarcastic. “I’m sorry if my new look doesn’t appeal to you,” he said, referring to his jailhouse denim uniform. “It doesn’t appeal to me either. I left the house last night to get something to eat. I swung by Lila Leeds’ place. I sat down, then boom! What makes it worse is that I still haven’t had any dinner. As a matter of fact, I haven’t even had my morning coffee.”

Mitchum sat there with his bare chest sticking out of the denim jacket, chatting and laughing with Ford, sitting next to him, as the photographers snapped away. “Don’t take my picture when my eyes are shut,” Mitchum said. “It makes me look like I’ve just been hit on the head by a stick.”

“Who’s going to bail you out, Bob?” a reporter asked.

“Who knows! I’ve got two bosses—David O. Selznick and RKO. Have you ever listened to Selznick or RKO when they’re peeved? I think I’d just as soon stay in jail. Anyway, if Selznick calls I’ll hang up on him.”

Asked if he expected to be reconciled with his wife, Mitchum smiled wryly. “What,
now?
” he said. “I would like to hope so, but my wife is a very resolute woman.”

Over at Lincoln Heights, Lila Leeds and Vicki Evans were also sparring with the press, and they, too, were seemingly undaunted by a night behind bars or the potential six-year prison sentence that loomed before them. Posing for the cameras, Vicki pulled up her skirt while covering her face. “How’s this?” she said. Both girls dissolved in laughter. Lila complained about the poor job performance by her two boxers. “They must be police dogs in disguise,” she cracked.

Someone arrived with a morning paper and the first account of the arrests. Lila read it aloud with enthusiasm, like it was a review of
Campus Honey-moon.
When she reached a mention of the blue bathrobe she’d been wearing, Leeds exclaimed, “Gad! They could at least have said I had my shorts on.”

The four prisoners were released on a thousand dollars’ bail each, pending a habeus corpus hearing on September 3.

Los Angeles woke up to the first wave of news stories.

“R
OBERT
M
ITCHUM
F
ACES
M
ARIJUANA
C
OUNT WITH
L
ILA
L
EEDS
,

Two O
THERS
”

“N
ABBED AT
A
SSERTED
‘M
ARIJUANA
P
ARTY
”

“B
OB
M
ITCHUM
, 3 O
THERS
J
AILED
A
FTER
D
OPE
R
AID
”