L.A. Celebrity Justice, 1948

11 June 2007 |permalink | email article

Los Angeles in the late 1940s was a great newspaper town. Angelenos read about crime, corruption, sports and juicy gossip on Hollywood and celebrities tangling with the law in the Examiner, Times, Herald-Express and Daily News.

Switch reels. Cable television, the Internet, YouTube, TMZ and the paparazzi now all combine to form a kind of perfect celebrity journalism unimaginable before the electronic age.

That Paris Hilton, the narcissistic young heiress and savvy businesswoman, was surprised that she became the center of a three-ring media circus involving the criminal justice system, says much.

But Hilton’s plight is chump change compared to the 1948 arrest of the rising young actor Robert Mitchum, 30, for conspiracy to possess marijuana.

It’s a cautionary tale about how “celebrity justice” was dispensed back then except for the occasional pampering of jailhouse guests like the gangster Bugsy Siegel.

As Mitchum was being booked he told reporters that “I’m ruined…I’m afraid this is the bitter end of my career.” But his wife and two film studios to whom he was under contract stood by him.

But an angry public deluged authorities with letters saying that letting Mitchum off too easy would set a bad example for America’s young people.

Not wanting a drawn out trial by jury which could hurt his career, Mitchum received two years on the conspiracy to possess charge from a judge, all but sixty days of which were suspended.

Mitchum’s two-month sentence began at the downtown Hall of Justice. When told he would be transferred to the sheriff’s honor farm in Castaic, he protested.

“I would rather stay here. I was pretty happy down there in the tank. The men have made me a trusty.”

When he was released, Mitchum said, “Jail is like Palm Springs without the riffraff. A great place to get in shape, only you meet a better class of people.”

Celebrity riffraff remains alive and well in L.A. 

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