Robert Mitchum

 In 1966, Robert Mitchum was flown out on a government aircraft to Vietnam on a USO tour where he spent his first days in Saigon, wining and dining in tropical colonial splendor, meeting and greeting the military elite.

He was taken to military hospitals and toured the wards filled with injured Americans, young guys with missing arms and legs and faces half blown off. The visits had their intended effect — it wasn’t easy to remain neutral or indifferent about the war when you saw what the enemy—whatever their cause— was doing to these hometown boys.

He was taken out to villages and shown good works projects, Americans putting in sewage systems, building schoolhouses. He was impressed, and pissed off. Why didn’t they show any of these noble efforts on the news back home?

The greater part of Mitchum’s two-week visit was to be spent in the field, roaming by helicopter and light aircraft from one U.S. encampment to another, fanning across the jungles north of the capital city.

The itinerary included a quick tour of the base and an hour or so of shaking hands and making small talk, encouraging words for the troops.

He posed for pictures, signed autographs for anyone who wanted one, and collected phone numbers and messages from kids who knew their moms would be thrilled to hear Robert Mitchum telling them their boys were okay.

"He got back from Vietnam with ninety million tiny scraps of paper," said Reva Frederick. "Just about every boy he met over there gave him a message to take back.

Pieces of paper with phone numbers, names.

And Robert sat down for days and called every number.

Just brief conversations with wives and mothers and fathers. ‘I just saw your son and he wanted me to call and say hello. He’s doing fine, looks good. He’s doing a good job over there.’ Called every one."

At one point a navy man wanted to wrap a visit up and get back to the helicopter, but Mitchum said, “Relax, man. Anybody got a drink around here?”

They trudged over to the local clubhouse, a contraption made of ammunition boxes and Playboy centerfolds. Mitchum asked what they charged for a drink, then asked how much it would be to buy the whole bar. The captain didn’t know. Mitchum told him to figure it out.

Then, Special Forces veteran Daniel Carpenter wrote, Mitchum “took a fat roll of bills from his pocket. It cost him a couple hundred to buy the bar. The troopers drank free, on his tab, for months.”

Mitchum played some craps, lost most of his roll, and took off. He signed up for a second tour, and in February 1967, spent two more weeks roaming encampment and military hospitals.

—Excerpt from book, “Baby, I Don’t Care” (Tumblr)

Which Robert Mitchum movies have you watched several times?