{"id":641667,"date":"2026-06-16T13:28:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T13:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/641667\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T13:28:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T13:28:13","slug":"sally-field-says-she-couldnt-understand-a-word-classic-movie-co-star-said-i-dont-know-if-he-was-stoned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/641667\/","title":{"rendered":"Sally Field says she couldn\u2019t understand a word classic movie co-star said: \u2018I don\u2019t know if he was stoned\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Sally Field<\/a> got to work with a classic Hollywood screen icon in the 1960s \u2013 but she couldn\u2019t understand a word he said.<\/p>\n

The Oscar-winning star<\/a>, 79, had only starred in the short-lived TV show Gidget when she scored a role in 1967 western The Way West opposite actors Robert Mitchum<\/a>, Kirk Douglas and Richard Widmark.<\/p>\n

In the film, Field played a young woman named Mercy McBee, one of a band of settlers travelling on the Oregon Trail in 1843 led by Mitchum\u2019s Dick Summers. <\/p>\n

\"Oscar-winningOscar-winning star Sally Field (Getty)<\/p>\n

During her downtime, Field, overwhelmed by the filming experience, would often sit alone, but would be joined by Mitchum, whose credits included Out of the Past (1947), The Night of the Hunter (1955) and the original Cape Fear (1962). The only problem was that Field could never work out what he was saying to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cMitchum would sit with me, and I never could understand a single word he said,\u201d Field told Talking Pictures<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn’t know what he was saying. I don’t know if he was stoned or what, but I couldn’t string two words together. And I would go, \u2018yeah, yeah,\u2019 and [I\u2019d laugh] and pretend I understood what he said.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she got the sense that Mitchum was being \u201cgood to me\u201d and \u201cthat he was somehow accepting of me\u201d, adding: \u201cThe only thing that I understood that he said to me \u2013 and then I thought, did I understand that right? \u2013 he said, \u2018You know, you’re one of us.\u2019 And I went, \u2018Well, OK.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Field said she \u201cdidn\u2019t really know\u201d what Mitchum meant at the time, but took it as the actor stating \u201ca fact\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt certainly wasn’t overly sentimental or overly flattering. He said, \u2018You know what, you’re one of us.\u2019 And I just said thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SallySally Field couldn’t understand a word Robert Mitchum said (Getty)<\/p>\n

Field hit the big time in the 1970s, with starring roles in Smokey and the Bandit, Hooper and 1976 miniseries Sybil, for which she won an Emmy.<\/p>\n

She won two Oscars in the 1980s \u2013 for Norma Rae and Places in the Heart \u2013 and racked up credits in films Murphy’s Romance (1985), Steel Magnolias (1989), Mrs Doubtfire (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994).<\/p>\n

Despite being one of the most acclaimed film stars of all time, the memorably deadpanned Mitchum never won an Oscar \u2013 and received just one nomination, in the Best Supporting Actor category \u2013\u00a0for his role in 1945 war film The Story of GI Joe.<\/p>\n

Throughout his five-decade career, he worked with screen icons including Katharine Hepburn (Undercurrent, 1946), Marilyn Monroe (River of No Return, 1954), Rita Hayworth (Fire Down Below, 1957) and John Wayne (El Dorado, 1966).<\/p>\n

But his most defining screen partnership was with his close friend Deborah Kerr, with whom he starred in four films: Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957), The Sundowners (1960), The Grass is Greener (1960), and Reunion at Fairborough (1985). <\/p>\n

\"RobertRobert Mitchum and close friend Deborah Kerr in 1984 (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

He died in July 1997 from complications of lung cancer and emphysema, with his wife of 57 years by his side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-641667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}