I’m not sure why it’s taken me
till now to find this line from Robert Mitchum about walking, “People think I
have an interesting walk. Hell, I'm just trying to hold my gut in.” It’s a great line, and the story of many of
our lives as we get older.
Mitchum was talking to Earl Wilson,
for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1971, when he would have been aged 54. The previous year he'd made the movie Ryan’s Daughter,(that's a still from it below), and he’s certainly not
the slim young man of his youth but really he doesn’t look bad at all compared to the average
54 year old.
Even so, it had all started rather differently, as it usually does:
And he was evidently a man who
liked to get his shirt off, whether he was walking or not, and I'd say that gut is being rather fiercely held in in this picture, from Going Home, actually from 1971.
Equally, Mitchum spent much of his
career in a well-cut suit and/or a trenchcoat, which would hide many of the gut problems.
Of course there are times when even a suit can’t completely get the job done, though (inevitably) he's still looking pretty good here, and certainly a lot better than Michael Winner:
And sometimes of course a man stops walking, sits back and doesn’t even try to hold it in, although that the belt is doing its very best.
And as seen here, there are some walkers who actually
prefer to let it all hang out. They ain't no Robert Mitchums. Who the heck is?:
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