Cameron Mitchell

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors

  1. John Garfield, The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1945.      If director Tay Garnett had not managed to spring Garfield from the army, the part – and a brighter career- would have been set for Cameron.. Now you know whyhewas alwayssuch a surly, moody Mitchell.
  2. Victor Mature, The Egyptian, 1953.    Mature was a surprisingly good substitute as Horemheb, Master of the Guard in the court of Egypt’s pharaoh Akhenaton… and buddy of Edmund Purdom (replacing a runaway Brando) as the court physician Sinuhe. Variety reported that almost double  the amount of  film was used on  shooting the tests than the movie…  
  3. Richard Egan, Seven Cities of Gold, 1954.    Or The Gun and the Cross when Mitchell and Russell Evans, the Hollywood regular and the UK outsider, were in talks for Jose Mendoza, the sacrificial lamb of Anthony Quinn’s Spanish Conquistator ,in some gold-hunting malarkey pretending to be historical adventure in California, circa 1769.  The  New York Times considered that Jeffrey Hunter and Rita  Moreno as Indians –  a chief and a suiciding maiden –  were “quite absurd”.
  4. John Derek, The Ten Commandments, 1954.  
  5. James Dean, Giant, 1955.
  6. Elvis Presley, Love Me Tender, 1956. The  black-white B Western, with Richard Egan, William Campbell, James Drury and Mitchell (Jeffrey Hunter or Robert Wagner) as Western siblings,  was transformed when Hall Wallis at Paramount agreed (for a hefty fee) that Fox could take the first box-office gamble on his new contract star – as the youngest brother, whose almost blond hair was suddenly dyed pitch black for the tacked on finale of, what else, but the new  Love  Me Tender song. Film and  disc went  through the  roof and unfortunately Presley’s  manager, Colonel Tom Parker, immediately figured he knew all about movies.  He knew scat and ruined his  superstar’s ambitions for an important film career by refusing Bus Stop, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Midnight Cowboy, West Side Story, etc… for such  turds as Speeedway, Stay Away Joe, Live A Little, Love A Little,  The Trouble With Girls. 
  7. Clint Eastwood, Per un pugno di dollari/For A Fistful of Dollars,Italy-Spain-Germany, 1964.    After Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Lee Marvin, refused what became The Men With No Name (a different character per movie: Anonymous, Manco (Joe for US) and Blondie), director Sergio Leone trawled B-movie seas. Cameron, however, had signed with the other Sergio (Corbucci) for Minnesota Clay – among his 232 screen roles over 50 years.

 

 

 Birth year: 1918Death year: 1994Other name: Casting Calls:  7