Millard Mitchell (August 14, 1903 – October 13, 1953) was a popular stage and radio actor in the 1930s in New York. A character actor whose credits include roughly thirty feature films and two television appearances.
Born in Havana, Cuba, he appeared as a bit player in eight films between 1931 and 1936. Mitchell returned to film work in 1942 after a six-year absence. Between 1942 and 1953, he was a successful supporting actor.
His first cinema appearances were in industrial short features, filmed in New York. His first Hollywood role was in Mr. and Mrs. North (1942). After World War II, Mitchell acted in a goodly number of movies, often cast as sardonic, stolid characters.
An extremely prolific theatrical actor, he appeared on Broadway from 1925-1948, notably in one of its most important flops, Penny Arcade, which led to its stars James Cagney and Joan Blondell being signed by Warner Brothers.
Although dressed as a cliché in the Anthony Mann western, The Naked Spur (1953), he eluded the usual geezer-sidekick persona as an old prospector who falls in with James Stewart as a bounty-hunter after laughing villain Robert Ryan.
For his performance in the 1952 film, My Six Convicts, Mitchell won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. He is also known for his role as Col. Rufus Plummer in Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair (1948), as Gregory Peck’s commanding officer in the war drama Twelve O’Clock High (1949), but musical-goers most admired his screen role as movie-mogul “R. F. Simpson” in the classic, Singin’ in the Rain (1952).
A heavy smoker, Mitchell died at the age of fifty from lung cancer at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, and was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.
Spouse.
Peggy Gould (actress). Daughters Mary Ellis and Margaret.
Partial filmography.
A Lesson in Love (1931)
Grand Central Murder (1942)
Slightly Dangerous (1943)
Swell Guy (1946)
Kiss of Death (1947)
A Double Life (1947)
A Foreign Affair (1948)
Thieves’ Highway (1949)
Everybody Does It (1949)
Twelve O’Clock High (1949)
http://youtu.be/eulKbZgrLRg?list=PLL2q_RzBZrB3JwTiiFqbW4tr2iUa-Cpry
The Gunfighter (1950)
Winchester ’73 (1950)
Convicted (1950)
Mister 880 (1950)
You’re in the Navy Now (1951)
My Six Convicts (1952)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
The Naked Spur (1953)
Here Come the Girls (1953)
Agencies/IMDb/T.Evans/Various/Wiki/InternetPhotos/youtube.
The Cuban History, Hollywood.
Arnoldo Varona, Editor.