Mitchum Slums It Admirably in a By the Numbers Western with Some Nostalgia

"Young Billy Young" is not a good movie. Its a very routine Western in a period where a number of Westerns were better just by sheer quality of production and look.

But every movie needs a star, and Young Billy Young has one in Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum famously didn't much care about acting, or so he said. A story I like is one where, over dinner, he was the first to be offered the choice of three leading roles in "The Way West" and told the producers: "I don't care. I'll do any of them." Kirk Douglas and Richard Widmark got the other two roles, Mitchum took what was left.

We know how great Mitchum could be as a villain in Night of the Hunter and Cape Fear. But he was more often the hero -- borderline ugly, but very macho in a relaxed manner, and centered by that bullfrog baritone of a voice. He was good young in the noir "Out of the Past" but he's one of those actors who looked better as he aged. By the time he made Young Billy Young -- flanked by youngsters like Robert Walker Jr.(the "spitting image" son of Robert Walker, who played Hitchcock's great villain Strangers on a Train and promptly died at 33) and David Carradine -- Mitchum is the "man" in the movie; the one with gravitas and sex appeal.

There are weird bits of nostalgia in "Young Billy Young." Much of it was filmed on the famous "Old Tucson" outdoor movie lot in Arizona where Rio Bravo(starring John Wayne and Dean Martin) and El Dorado(starring John Wayne and Robert Mitchum) were filmed, so Mitchum ends up not only re-visting HIS Howard Hawks Western but that other one as well. Telltale memories from Rio Bravo include: that big peaked mini-mountain in the distance and..Angie Dickinson(who does a bathtub scene from which a nude photo survives in Burt Kennedy's autobio -- even though Angie doesn't go nude in the movie.)

I swear the sheriff's office out of which Mitchum operates looks exactly like the one he manned in "El Dorado." It was only two years later; maybe the soundstage set was still available.

A different kind of nostalgia is offered by Jack Kelly as the suave, skinny town boss villain of the piece. To the extent Kelly had some fame, it was as Bart Maverick on Maverick , who altenated with James Garner as the lead on that show, and worked more as Garner ran to movies. Its kind of weird to see Bart Maverick in Technicolor and as a bad guy(who beats up Angie Dickenson, but then she was ALWAYS getting beat up, like by Ronald Reagan in The Killers.)

But these are small pleasures, momentary in passing and thoroughly unable to overcome the cheapjack uncommitted nothingness of the final product.

Except for Robert Mitchum. He only SAID he didn't care. When he showed up and acted for you -- he cared.