Yeah, I'm unique—like an actor who has only one eye in the middle of his forehead. Or the Elephant Man. I've got a patent on the type. To be an actor… - Robert Mitchum

I usually take no notice of reviews unless a critic has thought up some new way of describing me. That old one about the way I sleep my way through pictures is so hackneyed now.

Listen, when I arrived in Los Angeles in the early '40s, there were just 640,000 people. Every loser in the world headed there because there was no competition. The keynote was mediocrity because the film, radio and music businesses had defined that the average mental age of the audience was 12. They handed me the bloodstained hat of a guy who'd fallen off his horse and suddenly I was in the movies—in a Hopalong Cassidy picture. I give hope to the hopeless. People say, "If he can make it, I can be Queen of England.

No. But it was indicated by other people that I should go there—like my wife, my friends, the woman from Alcoholics Anonymous who came around. My wife, Dottie, was the prime mover. It would have been a disappointment to her if I'd rejected her suggestion. I stayed until they were done with me. I don't know if it 'worked.' I don't understand that.