Thunder Road

Arthur Dewitt Ripley was a film screenwriter, editor, producer and director. In 1923, he joined the Mack Sennett studio as a comedy writer. In the 1920s he worked closely with Frank Capra churning out screenplays for many movies. After breaking with Capra and the Mack Sennett studio, Ripley again... returned to being a gag writer, screenwriter and occasional director, making short films with such comedians as W.C. Fields and Edgar Kennedy. His directorial work in the 1940s, Voice in the Wind and The Chase , were both critical successes, but neither film were box office hits. Ripley entered the world of academia, helping to establish the Film Center at U.C.L.A. while also working occasionally on TV. Ripley returned to directing one more time, at the request of Robert Mitchum, for Thunder Road before returning to U.C.L.A. and working until his death in 1961.
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Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time. Mitchum rose to prominence for his starring roles in several major works of the film noir style, and is... considered a forerunner of the anti-heroes prevalent in film during the 1950s and 1960s. Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, into a Methodist family. His mother, Ann Harriet , was a Norwegian immigrant and sea captain's daughter, and his father, James Thomas Mitchum, was a shipyard and railroad worker. A sister, Annette, was born in 1914. James Mitchum was crushed to death in a railyard accident in Charleston, South Carolina, in February 1919, when his son was less than 2 years old. After his death, Ann Mitchum was awarded a government pension, and soon realized she was pregnant. She returned to her family in Connecticut, and married a former British Army major who helped her care for the children. In September 1919 a second son, John, was born.
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