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| Leeds and Mitchum with their lawyers at their 1949 marijuana trial. |
On the evening of August 31, 1948, movie star Robert Mitchum went to visit 20-year-old starlet Lila Leeds at her bungalow at 8334 Ridpath Drive in Los Angeles. "Unbenownst to them, two officers, A.M. Barr and J.B. McKinnon of the Los Angeles Police Department's Narcotics Division, were hiding in the yard. The two had been conducting surveillance for eight months on members of the film industry and their hangers-on," writes George Eels in his biography of Mitchum.
Mitchum frequented after-hours clubs in LA that served grass, according Eels. "His use of grass earned him membership in a group that considered themselves hip and scorned nonusers as square johns and janes....Yet even they were taken aback by Mitchum's increasing boldness. Never before had they seen a prominent star make himself such a high-visibility risk, strutting around as he did in a straw Stetson and cowboy boots, with a reefer tucked behind each ear or carrying a package of cigarettes in which the regular ones were alternated with hand-rolled joints."
"When Mitchum arrived [at Leed's house], he flopped on the sofa and tossed a pack of cigarettes onto the coffee table," Eels continues. "Barr claimed Leeds picked it up and looked inside. 'Oh, you've got brown ones and white ones too,' she said, 'I want some of the white ones.' She took two joints from the pack, lit them and gave one to Mitchum." Barr and McKinnon were let inside by Leeds's roommate and made their high-profile arrests.
According to the forthcoming book Lila Leeds: Marijuana Martyr by Chuck Harter, one week before the bust, "Lila filmed a scene for a Warner Brothers’ feature, 'House Across the Street.' She was funny and delightful as a ditzy girl friend. The Director and Producer were very impressed and Lila was told her next role would be a big one and the breakthrough." Elsewhere it's said Leeds was the first choice for a starring role in the first movie from Burt Lancaster's production company, until it went to contract player Joan Fontaine.
After the arrest, Stephen Crane fled to Europe rather than become entangled in the scandal involving his fiancée. There he tried his hand at writing a gossip column titled, "Champagne and Vinegar." In his debut column he wrote about the bust, saying, "Yet if Mitchum should come to Paris he could attend a small private jive club on the Left Bank where waiters come around to the tables and roll the marijuana cigarettes for you." No less than three Hollywood stars, he noted, were seen entering the place the previous week.
MITCHUM SWERVES, AND SURVIVES
On October 7, 1983 Mitchum received the third Lifetime Annual Achievement Award of the American Theatre Arts. Mayor Tom Bradley proclaimed a Robert Mitchum Day and the actor received messages or tributes on stage from the Secretaries of the Army and Navy, the Governor of California, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, and many others. The next year he got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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| Mitchum poses for cameras in jail. |
At L.A. County Jail, the laid-back actor, who had just turned 31, greeted newspaper reporters and photographers with, "Yes, boys, I was smoking a marijuana cigarette when they came in," adding, "I knew I'd get caught sooner or later." When the booking officer asked his occupation, Mitchum replied, "Former actor." Sergeant Barr chilled Hollywood with his statement, "We're going to clean the dope and the narcotics users out of Hollywood! And we don't care who we're going to have to arrest." Mitchum, meanwhile, was stripped and shackled, and left stark naked to be questioned by a psychiatrist. The next morning he cancelled a speaking engagement scheduled for the steps of City Hall to celebrate National Youth Day.
At that point, the film industry had around $5 million worth of investment tied up in Mitchum's unreleased films. Howard Hughes's RKO and David O. Selznick's Vanguard studios shared Mitchum's contract, and the studios asked the public to withhold judgement against their star. The young actor had received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his strong and sensitive portrayal of a war hero in the 1945 film The Story of G.I. Joe, about the beloved war correspondent Ernie Pyle. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who would later ban Mitchum's films from the White House, called it the best war movie ever made.
LILA'S CAREER NIPPED IN THE BUD
Leeds, born Lila Lee Wilkinson in Dodge City, Kansas, was a former dancer and hatcheck girl who was under contract to MGM, playing bit parts like the receptionist in Lady in the Lake (with its unique camera perspective, above), and as a Eurasian woman who drugs the leading man and rolls him in the Lana Turner vehicle Green Dolphin Street.
"Lila had always been jazz-happy and she knew many of the local musicians. She smoked reefers with them in their dressing rooms and in the parking lots, even at the tables if the owners were cool," Lee Server wrote in Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don't Care. "I smoked socially," Lila said. "The way some people take a drink. Pot doesn't affect me much--just makes me sleepy and relaxed."
Considered a Lana Turner look-alike, Leeds was engaged to Turner's ex-husband Steven Crane at the time of her arrest. Cheryl Crane, Lana and Steven's daughter who stabbed her mother's gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato to death when she was 14, wrote in her book book Detour: A Hollywood Story: "Dad knew that Lila had smoked pot ever since she tried it at a St. Louis party three years before with members of the Stan Kenton orchestra, and sometimes she overdid it....She was often stoned, and his friends cautioned Dad that she had a problem, but he knew pot was no enslaving 'devil's weed,' as it has been painted in the unintentionally hilarious 1936 cautionary film Reefer Madness."
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| Leeds takes a toke in "She Shoulda Said No" (1949) |
Mitchum and Leeds stood trial in January 1949 and were pronounced guilty of conspiracy to possess marijuana. On February 9, they were each sentenced to two years probation and 60 days in jail. Mitchum was immediately taken to Los Angeles County Jail and later transferred to an honor farm in Castaic, which he called, "just like a weekend in Palm Springs…only you meet a better class of people."
Other than starring in the horrid Reefer Madness-style film She Shoulda Said No (aka The Devil's Weed), Leeds never had another film role. The movie was marketed both as a cautionary tale and a good-time party film, and her expressions while taking a toke in it demonstrated her acting ability and were included in the recent Oakland Museum cannabis exhibit.
Cheryl Crane wrote that Lila was introduced to heroin by fellow inmates while serving time for her marijuana bust at the LA County Jail, and it lead to addiction. She was arrested for having heroin and a hypodermic needle in her bra in 1953, and became so destitute that she hocked the three-carat diamond ring Stephen had given her for $750. In the '70s, she worked as a faith healer for addicts.
The day after the bust, Hearst newspaper chain's syndicated motion picture columnist, Louella Parsons, called the charge "shocking" and claimed Mitchum was "in a state of mental collapse." She quoted Selznick saying he believed Mitchum should enter a sanitarium at once "to undergo treatment for his shattered nerves." Later in the story she reflected, "None of the executives at RKO or Selznick studios is willing to believe that Mitchum is a real addict. They say he never gave any signs of being doped, and that he turned in some very fine performances."
A moralistic press offensive launched "vociferous" opposition to RKO's subsequent release of Rachel and the Stranger, in which Mitchum starred. But everywhere crowds lined up to see the film. In Los Angeles, "sustained, lusty applause" greeted Mitchum's first appearance in the movie. It was even held over in conservative Boston. Jane Greer, who appeared in Mitchum's next film, The Big Steal, reported that locals were constantly trying to foist joints on him while filming in Mexico.
Instead of heroic roles, Mitchum played a lot of bad guys after his bust, most memorably in The Night of the Hunter (1955) and Cape Fear (1962). Although he often astonished directors with his ability to memorize multiple pages of scripts, even in foreign languages, when he didn't like the script Mitchum barely prepared and openly expressed his displeasure to the studio and the press. He continued to enjoy and sometimes grow marijuana throughout his life. Read more.
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| The scene of the bust: 8334 Ridpath Dr. in LA |
It looks like the bungalow where the arrest happened sold in May for $1.25 million and is being refurbished.
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