ROBERT MITCHUM: A QUIET REBEL; EASY CHARISMA CREATED UNIQUE WISE-GUY COOL.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Well before Brando and James Dean, and with none of their attention-begging technique, Robert Mitchum, who died Tuesday at the age of 79, showed a generation of American men what being a rebel was all about.

With his subtle confidence, droopy seen-it-all-and-impressed-by-none-of-it eyes and natural orneriness, Mitchum did the charismatic outsider bit with graceful ease. Never appreciated for his gifts - and he could be as sensitive, charming and desperate onscreen as he could be coolly, dangerously contrary - Mitchum arguably reflected the average, unsatisfied guy's smoldering complaints better than anybody before or since.

While keeping in mind that Mitchum first came to prominence playing World War II heroes - ``Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,'' ``The Story of G.I. Joe,'' ``Till the End of Time'' - his best work usually presented him as a man out of sync with his social surroundings and not too inclined to apologize for it.

Of course, this did not prevent him from still being heroic. But Mitchum often managed to invest his admirable characters with - uncommon for the time, and uncommonly convincing - darker hues.

In the 1947 ``Crossfire,'' Hollywood's first film to directly address anti-Semitism in America, Mitchum helped trap a killer, but only by betraying some Army buddies. That same year, he was a particularly compromised ``innocent'' man in the tortured western ``Pursued.'' And as a modern-day rodeo cowboy in Nicholas Ray's ``The Lusty Men'' (1952), he exposed every chink in the emotional armor of a romantic ideal without, typically, ever making a big deal about it.

Mitchum was more interesting as a troubled loser, however, and never more magnificently so than in the 1947 (what a year!) ``Out of the Past,'' considered by many the greatest film noir of all time. As the ultimate chump, undone by femme fatale Jane Greer's deadly talent for wearing a white dress, Mitchum painstakingly cracked his stoic persona apart chip by heartbreaking chip. By the time he was finished, Mitchum was an open wound, and a more devastated portrayal of sexual need wasn't seen until Brando made ``Last Tango in Paris'' a quarter century later.

Mitchum also embodied two of cinema's most distinctive monsters - the homicidal preacher with ``Love'' and ``Hate'' tattooed across his knuckles in the lyrically haunting ``The Night of the Hunter'' (1955), and the original Max Cady in the still creepy, 1962 version of ``Cape Fear'' - as well as the movies' signature moonshiner in ``Thunder Road'' (1958), which he scripted and wrote and recorded the hit theme song for.

Looks ... and talent

Early in his career, Katharine Hepburn famously sniffed at Mitchum, ``You know you can't act, and if you hadn't been good-looking you would never have gotten a picture.'' Refusing to be daunted, Mitchum repeatedly proved the grande dame wrong, twice with an actress whose gifts at least equaled Hepburn's, Deborah Kerr (John Huston's Marine-meets-nun wartime adventure ``Heaven Knows Mr. Allison'' and Fred Zinnemann's deeply touching family drama about Australian sheepherders, ``The Sundowners'').

His solid performance kept Marilyn Monroe from going overboard in ``River of No Return,'' and he found equal amounts of humor, dignity and tragedy in the alcoholic sheriff of Howard Hawks' last great masterpiece, ``El Dorado.'' Later, he was hugely sympathetic as a washed-up gangster in ``The Friends of Eddie Coyle'' and a compellingly creaky Philip Marlowe in the 1975 version of ``Farewell, My Lovely.''

There were dozens of lesser movies, TV miniseries and even a short-lived, ghastly sitcom. But it's hard to think of a single one that was not enhanced by Mitchum's easily edgy presence.

Mitchum had an equally effective talent for off-screen, bad-boy legend-building. Who knows how true his tales of teen-aged trouble - escaping from a Georgia chain gang, boxing in 27 prizefights, riding the Depression-era rails - really were. The salient point was that they sounded like formative experiences of a guy who never took guff from Hollywood power brokers and apparently cared not a whit what the press or public thought about him.

The celebrated 1948 marijuana bust forever established Mitchum's outlaw image (not to mention pioneering the key act of rebellion in which his children's generation would later indulge). Mitchum's description of his brief incarceration at Castaic - ``It's just like Palm Springs without the riffraff'' - beat Mad magazine by five years as a hallmark in the history of wise-guy cool.

Never a phony

However, Mitchum's perceived ethos - not to give a damn about anything except what he cared to - was a mature one. Unlike the anti-establishment artists who came after him, there was nothing forced or phony or nihilistic about his attitude. Mitchum's grand trick was that he knew what was worth caring about and what wasn't.

Married for 56 years to his childhood sweetheart, Dorothy; always on time and totally prepared for work; a dedicated poet and writer of children's stories; Mitchum found value in the things of life that Hollywood fantasies rarely portray convincingly, even when they try to. And that might be what made him the most successful film rebel of them all.

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3 Photos

Photo: (1) Robert Mitchum in ``Cape Fear.'' The actor died Tuesday at his Santa Barbara home at the age of 79.

(2) Mitchum's solid performance kept Marilyn Monroe from going overboard in ``River of No Return.''

(3) Mitchum - here with Charlotte Rampling - was a compellingly creaky Philip Marlowe in ``Farewell, My Lovely.''

Associated Press