Sally Field got to work with a classic Hollywood screen icon in the 1960s – but she couldn’t understand a word he said.
The Oscar-winning star, 79, had only starred in the short-lived TV show Gidget when she scored a role in 1967 western The Way West opposite actors Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas and Richard Widmark.
In the film, Field played a young woman named Mercy McBee, one of a band of settlers travelling on the Oregon Trail in 1843 led by Mitchum’s Dick Summers.
During her downtime, Field, overwhelmed by the filming experience, would often sit alone, but would be joined by the sleepy-eyed Mitchum, whose credits included Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955) and the original Cape Fear (1962). The only problem was that Field could never work out what he was saying to her.
“Mitchum would sit with me, and I never could understand a single word he said,” Field told Talking Pictures podcast.
“I didn’t know what he was saying. I don’t know if he was stoned or what, but I couldn’t string two words together. And I would go, ‘yeah, yeah,’ and [I’d laugh] and pretend I understood what he said.”
She said she got the sense that Mitchum was being “good to me” and “that he was somehow accepting of me”, adding: “The only thing that I understood that he said to me – and then I thought, did I understand that right? – he said, ‘You know, you’re one of us.’ And I went, ‘Well, OK.’”
Field said she “didn’t really know” what Mitchum meant at the time, but took it as the actor stating “a fact”.
“It certainly wasn’t overly sentimental or overly flattering. He said, ‘You know what, you’re one of us.’ And I just said thank you.”
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Field hit the big time in the 1970s, with starring roles in Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper and 1976 miniseries Sybil, for which she won an Emmy.
She won two Oscars in the 1980s – for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart – and racked up credits in films Murphy’s Romance (1985), Steel Magnolias (1989), Mrs Doubtfire (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994).
Despite being one of the most acclaimed film stars of all time, the memorably deadpanned Mitchum, known for his brooding, tough-guy roles, never won an Oscar. He received just one nomination, in the Best Supporting Actor category, for his performance in 1945 war film The Story of GI Joe.
Throughout his five-decade career, he worked with screen icons including Katharine Hepburn (Undercurrent, 1946), Marilyn Monroe (River of No Return, 1954), Rita Hayworth (Fire Down Below, 1957) and John Wayne (El Dorado, 1966).
But his most defining screen partnership was with his close friend Deborah Kerr, with whom he starred in four films: Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957), The Sundowners (1960), The Grass is Greener (1960), and Reunion at Fairborough (1985).
He died in July 1997 from complications of lung cancer and emphysema, with his wife of 57 years by his side.
