Gordon Mitchell, beefy film actor, 80

By Myrna Oliver, Los Angeles Times, 9/28/2003

MARINA DEL REY, Calif. -- Gordon Mitchell, a bodybuilder who joined entertainer Mae West's buffed all-male chorus line in the mid-1950s and went on to make about 200 B-movies, excelling in the "sword and sandal" genre, died Sept. 20 at his home, apparently of a heart attack. He was 80.

Of all the European spaghetti westerns, sci-fi flicks, and fantasy adventures on his resume, Mr. Mitchell's most noted film was probably Federico Fellini's 1970 "Fellini Satyricon," in which he played a robber. Mr. Mitchell, who lived in Italy and filmed there from 1961 to 1989, was featured in the Swords & Sandals Festival presented in June by the Film and Television Archive of the University of California, Los Angeles. His showcased film was the 1961 "The Giant of Metropolis," in which he portrayed the title's prehistoric, loincloth-clad muscleman who endures torture in a weird futuristic world.

"I did my own stunts. I tried to make everything real," Mr. Mitchell told the Los Angeles Times during the festival, adding that he often worked on three films at once and trained constantly off-camera, often lifting rocks when no barbells were available.

West noticed Mr. Mitchell among the bodybuilders working out at Muscle Beach in Venice, and helped get him some uncredited movie roles during the 1950s. But he didn't give up his day job as a Los Angeles high school teacher and guidance counselor until 1961, when he moved to Italy and really started making movies. His first starring role was as Maciste, a strongman of Italian folklore turned into the better-known Atlas for American audiences in what was titled in the United States "Atlas Against the Cyclops."