Straight-talking Hollywood megastar
Robert Mitchum
"In an interview with Esquire magazine
in February 1983, Robert Mitchum, who
played a leading role in the television
production of Herman Wouk’s World War II
saga, Winds of War and War and
Remembrance, suggested that there was
doubt about the Holocaust. Asked about
the slaughter of six million Jews, he
replied “So the Jews
say.” The interviewer,
incredulous, repeated Mitchum’s comment
verbatim, “So the Jews
say?” and Mitchum
responded, “I don’t
know. People dispute that.”
But it states in his
biography/auto-biography that he said in
another 1983 interview, this time with The
Los Angeles Herald Examiner:
"I'm sorry there's such an
unnecessary flap .... I was just putting
him on .... When they finally do corner
me, I either tell them what I think they
want to hear or else I invent a whole
new beginning. I occasionally say
something outrageous so they'll say,
'He's not well, let's leave him alone'
... I think anyone who knows me, knows
my only objections are to injustice and
general discrimination."
