Listen to Robert Mitchum, star of such classics as "Ryan's Daughter," "The Longest Day," "Crossfire" and the TV epic
"The Winds of War," and you come away knowing he has an ineluctable feeling of ennui about his latest project.Mitchum says he just doesn't care if "A Family for Joe" (Saturdays at 7 p.m., Ch. 2) makes it.
"It's a matter of complete indifference to me," he says. "I'm committed to do it, but I don't particularly care if it works. When they wrap it up each day, that's the end of it for me. Thank God there's no contractual obligation saying you have to watch these things."
With more of his unique candor, Mitchum confides on the show's set that before he started this program, "I never had watched a sitcom before, except `Golden Girls.' It happens to come on at the right time."
Mitchum sees "A Family for Joe," in which he plays a formerly homeless ex-Merchant Marine sailor "adopted" by a group of kids about to be farmed out to foster homes, as a mere continuation of a typecasting trend in his career.
"I used to say every picture I did should have been called `Pounded to Death by Gorillas,"' the actor explains. "Every time the writers got stuck, they beat the heck out of Mitchum. The way I feel, a big gorilla always beats me flat.
"It's happening in a different fashion here. The whole tenor of the show is belittling. The kids belittle each other, the kids belittle the old man, the old man belittles the kids. It's not funny at all."
So why does he do it?
"I was halfway through the pilot before I knew it was a pilot," he says. "I hadn't planned on this being a series, but I became resigned to it."
So what can Mitchum have to look forward to if NBC picks up the series for its fall schedule?
Not much except the end of each week, when he heads home to Santa Barbara. "If it's picked up, I'll either have to do it or go to court," he says. "Oh, it can be fun, when you've got a company with which you're compatible - someone like Deborah Kerr or John Huston. With someone like Huston, you always knew he had been in every situation and it gave you confidence."
But now Mitchum is the elder statesman, the lone veteran in an ensemble cast with four kids. In a way, he likes that. Well-known for his distaste for the long hours some TV and film directors impose on their casts, Mitchum refused to do "A Family for Joe" until he knew the hours would be short.
But he finds little else to look forward to in sitcom-land.
"So far, Joe is nothing," he says after taping eight of the show's initial order of nine programs. "They (the producers) create situations and give him a line every now and then they hope is funny. None of them have been yet. But you ought to hear the writers laugh when we're rehearsing."