Large Fierce Mammal

Robert Mitchum in the role of Raymond Chandler’s fictional private detective Philip Marlowe. Tiny hated him in that part too!

I discovered an interesting phenomenon one day while watching “The Yakuza”, a 1974 film directed by Sydney Pollack starring American actor Robert Mitchum as a detective who has come to Japan to rescue a friend’s kidnapped daughter. The phenomenon was that my Toy Poodle, Tiny, had a hatred for Robert Mitchum.

Tiny was lying in her normal position for helping me watch a movie; on top of the right arm rest of my chair. Every time Mitchum appeared on screen, she raised her head, stared at the screen, and growled. Nobody else in the movie disturbed her and she would relax in between, but Robert Mitchum seriously pissed her off!

Things got even stranger when Remembrance Day rolled around. I watched “The Longest Day”, a 1962 film about the invasion of Normandy. The cast included just about every actor of note at the time it was produced including Eddie Albert of “Green Acres” fame, Paul Anka (the singer/actor, not Lorelai Gilmore’s dog), Richard Burton (the actor formerly married to Elizabeth Taylor, not the famous swordsman of the Victorian era), Red Buttons, Sean Connery, Peter Lawford, Roddy McDowall (of the original “Planet of the Apes” movies), John Wayne, and, you guessed it, Robert BLOODY Mitchum.

“The Longest Day”, as its name implies, is a LONG movie, and through it all Tiny slept, instantly waking up at the sound of Mitchum’s voice. Mitchum plays Brig. Gen. Norman Cota, a character who appears only at certain points in the movie, and every time he showed up, whether he spoke or not, she growled; occasionally becoming so incensed that she leapt to her feet to bark shrilly at the screen.

I have to ask, what did she know about that man?