On screen and off, Robert Mitchum was the face of film noir, the embodiment of its hard-bitten cynicism, self-destructive vices, and magnetic, inscrutable, preternatural cool. As a performer in such classic films as Out Of The Past, Night Of The Hunter, The Lusty Men, and Cape Fear, he resisted the ostentatious preening of other movie stars, underplaying roles more naturally served by his imposing physique and mysterious, "immoral" visage. If anything, his personal life exceeded his reputation as a smoldering dark horse; he was a notorious drinker and womanizer with a healthy contempt for authority and an even greater contempt for Hollywood and its slick, phony politesse. Mitchum's off-screen escapades alone would be enough to fill a marathon block of E! True Hollywood Story, but Lee Server's exhaustive, lovingly detailed biography, Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care, resists the lure of cheap tabloid dish. That's not to say that Server ignores Mitchum's often staggering indulgences and exploits, but he has the integrity to place them in a larger perspective and show how they informed Mitchum's extraordinary body of work. The child of a broken home, Mitchum lost his father to a railyard accident at an early age. Despite the best efforts of his overtaxed mother (who instilled in him her passion for poetry and the arts) and grandparents, his penchant for troublemaking never went away. Both the smartest kid in school and the most mischievous, Mitchum was once expelled for defecating in a teacher's hat, and at 14, he left home to live a hobo's life on the rails during the Great Depression. He resurfaced with an endless supply of tall tales and a highly developed taste for liquor and marijuana, which would lead to countless brawls, jail time, and other embarrassments once he was in the public eye. After Mitchum moved to Los Angeles with his new wife Dorothy (who miraculously stayed with him through all his affairs and rabble-rousing), his talent was discovered at a community theater, and he began his unlikely acting career as a bit player in B-Westerns. His no-fuss, workmanlike attitude ("I have two acting styles: with or without a horse") set him apart from other leading men, and for a time, he was RKO's biggest star. In similarly workmanlike fashion, Server trudges through most of his filmography, and while masterpieces such as Out Of The Past and Night Of The Hunter get the most attention, each production is covered in impressive critical and anecdotal detail. Of course, Mitchum's legendary off-set antics are also rehashed with great relish, including his highly publicized arrest for narcotics possession in 1948, the raging benders that led the press to label him "Hollywood's Bad Boy," and his flings with Ava Gardner, Shirley MacLaine, and Lucille Ball. But the sad truth about Mitchum is that once his star faded and he fully succumbed to the bottle, he became an embittered, often despicable character, given to violent outbursts and racist and anti-Semitic rants. Server doesn't gloss over his scandals and misbehavior, but doesn't limit his portraiture to them, either. Like his tragic character in Out Of The Past (the source of the book's fitting title quote), Mitchum used his machismo to mask an essential vulnerability—not just to temptation, but to a personal history he could never quite escape.