Background
Thomas Mitchell was born on 11 July 1892 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States.
Thomas Mitchell was born on 11 July 1892 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States.
Graduated from St. Patrick High School in Elizabeth.
Nineteen-thirty-nine was a prodigious year for Thomas Mitchell and supporting parts: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle); as Kid Dabb, denying failing sight, in Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks); as the alcoholic doctor in Stagecoach (John Ford), for which he won the supporting actor Oscar; Mr Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra); and as Scarlett’s father in Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming). That sort of vivid enthusiasm has not dated, and it is typical of the sure sense of idiom that Hollywood bred in supporting players. Stagecoach, for instance, is a blueprint movie, in that any actor could have known exactly how to play it from one reading of the script: it is exactly centered on convention. Only Angels ... is far more original in that its conventions are entirely Hawksian. Arguably, it is Mitchell’s most testing part. The man he plays is, indeed, a kid, despite being in his forties. Mitchell very subtly suggested the undertone of homosexuality in such male cama-raderie, just as he played on the same theme, more robustly, as Pat Garrett in The Outlaw (46, Howard Hughes).
Mitchell only went to Hollywood in 1935, after an all-round career in the theatre as actor and director. He was immediately drafted into good parts in big films: Craigs Wife (36, Dorothy Arzner); Theodora Goes Wild (36, Richard Bole- slavsky); Make Way for Tomorrow (37, Leo MeCarey); Lost Horizon (37, Capra); The Hurricane (38, Ford); Trade Winds (38. Tay Garnett); The Long Voyage Home (40, Ford); Three Cheers for the Irish (40, Lloyd Bacon); Our Town (40, Sam Wood); Angels Over Broadway (41, Lee Garnies and Ben Hecht); Out of the Fog (4L Anatole Litvak); Joan of Paris (42, Robert Stevenson); Song of the Islands (42, Walter Lang); Moontide (42, Archie Mayo); This Above All (42, Litvak); Tales of Manhattan (42, Julien Duvivier); The Immortal Sergeant (42. John M. Stahl); The Black Swan (42, Henry King); Flesh and Fantasy (43, Duvivier); Bataan (43, Garnett); The Sullivans (44, Bacon); Wilson (44. King); Dark Waters (44, André de Toth); Buffalo Bill (44, William Wellman); The Keys of the Kingdom (44, Stahl); Captain Eddie (45, Bacon); Adventure (45, Fleming); the forgetful Uncle Billv in It’s a Wonderful Life (46, Capra); The Dark Mirror (46, Robert Siodmak); The Romance of Rosy Ridge (47, Roy Rowland); High Barbaree (47, Jack Conway); Silver River (48, Raoul Walsh); Alias Nick Beal (49, John Farrow); Journey into Light (51, Stuart Heisler); High Noon (52, Fred Zinnemann); Destry (54, George Marshall); Secret of the Incas (54, Jerry Hopper); While the City Sleeps (56. Fritz Lang); By Love Possessed (61, John Sturges); and A Pocketful of Miracles (61, Capra).