James Mitchell (actor)

James Mitchell died on January 22, 2010, a month before his 90th birthday, in Los Angeles. His death came after suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease complicated by pneumonia.

He was hired in 1979 as self-made millionaire Palmer Cortlandt on ABC's long-running soap opera All My Children. Initially hired for only one year, he remained on contract through 2009. For much of his first decade on the show, Palmer was a ruthless villain, totally possessive of his daughter, Nina and violently threatening his ex-wife Daisy with being attacked by dobermans when she came back from the dead. After the introduction of David Canary in December 1983 as Adam Chandler, Palmer remained ruthless in business dealings, but toned down in romantic relationships. His old ways returned several times, such as when he was revealed to be hoarding stolen artwork and when he tried to kill his last wife, Vanessa, after falsely believing that she had cheated on him. His final appearance as a contract player was September 19, 2008, although his retirement was not made official until September 30, 2009.

However, after Mack & Mabel flopped in 1974, Mitchell's performing career nearly ended altogether. He earned a BA from Empire State College and an MFA from Goddard College in order to teach full-time at the college level, and taught movement for actors at Juilliard, Yale University, and Drake University. After a few years of almost no work – although he was a guest star on Lou Grant and Charlie's Angels in the late 1970s, he once summed up the 1970s as "I cried and did a lot of gardening".

While studying drama at Los Angeles City College, Mitchell was introduced to modern dance at the school of the famed teacher and choreographer, Lester Horton. After receiving his associate degree, he joined Horton's company, where he remained for nearly four years. While working with Horton, he became a close friend of dancer Bella Lewitzky; in the 1970s, he became President of the Board of Directors of her Dance Foundation, and afterwards remained a "major longtime [...] supporter" of hers. In 1944, Horton took Mitchell to New York with him to form a new dance company, but the venture abruptly collapsed.

Mitchell worked consistently on stage in both musicals and straight dramas until the late 1970s, including numerous regional theatre roles across the country. His other significant credits include Broadway appearances in Carousel, First Impressions, and The Deputy; off-Broadway appearances in Winkelberg, The Threepenny Opera, Livin' the Life, and The Father; L'Histoire du Soldat at New York City Opera; and national tours of The Rainmaker (with future All My Children co-star Frances Heflin), The King and I, Funny Girl, and The Threepenny Opera. A character based on Mitchell appears in Anderson Ferrell's biographical dance play, Dance/Speak: The Life of Agnes De Mille, which debuted at New York Theatre Ballet in 2009.

Besides performing, Mitchell occasionally worked as a director and choreographer, particularly in the late 1960s and 1970s. He staged musicals at the Paper Mill Playhouse, the Mark Taper Forum, and The Muny, among other theatres. In 1956, he and Katherine Litz co-staged The Enchanted for American Ballet Theatre.

On television, Mitchell was considerably more active, especially in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition to working regularly as a dancer, he played dramatic roles in a number of television films and prime-time series, as well as in the anthologies that were once so popular, such as Play of the Week, Gruen Guild Playhouse, and Armstrong Circle Theatre. In 1964, he took his first contract role on a soap opera in The Edge of Night, as the corrupt Captain Lloyd Griffin. In 1966, he appeared in an episode of the espionage drama Blue Light. This was followed by a role in the entire run of the soap opera Where the Heart Is (1969–73), in which he played the male lead, Julian Hathaway.

After several months, Mitchell eventually made two films for Warner Brothers, including Raoul Walsh's Colorado Territory, before following Curtiz to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. At MGM, he played supporting roles in six films between 1949 and 1955, most notably Anthony Mann's Border Incident, Jacques Tourneur's Stars in My Crown, and Vincente Minnelli's critically lauded The Band Wagon (1953), in which he played the unsympathetic role of choreographer Paul Byrd — an experience he loathed so much that he refused to see the film. He did not work for the studio again after appearing in the infamously over-budgeted flop The Prodigal (1955). Mitchell's film career ended abruptly after he starred in Hal R. Makelim's Western The Peacemaker (1956), the only time he was ever billed above the title, as he played the lead, gunfighter Terrall Butler. After that, it took over two decades before he made his next and what proved to be his final appearance on the big screen, The Turning Point (1977). He also co-starred with Thelma "Tad" Tadlock in the famous sponsored film A Touch of Magic presented by General Motors at the 1961 Motorama.

Bloomer Girl (1944) began an important artistic partnership with de Mille that lasted from 1944 to 1969 and spanned theater, film, television, and concert dance. De Mille's biographer, Carol Easton, describes him as the "quintessential male de Mille dancer" and de Mille's "closest confidant" in her artistic life. In one of her autobiographical volumes, de Mille herself said of Mitchell that he had "probably the strongest arms in the business, and the adagio style developed by him and his partners has become since a valued addition to ballet vocabulary."

As a film performer, Mitchell had only moderate success. In the early 1940s, he did both chorus dancing and extra work in a number of minor musicals and westerns. In 1949, he starred in The House Across the Street. On the strength of his award-winning performance in Brigadoon, he was scouted by producer Michael Curtiz and signed to a contract at Warner Brothers. Curtiz initially intended to put Mitchell in a picture with Doris Day that never materialized.

James Mitchell (February 29, 1920 – January 22, 2010) was an American actor and dancer. Although he is best known to television audiences as Palmer Cortlandt on the soap opera All My Children (1979–2010), theatre and dance historians remember him as one of Agnes de Mille's leading dancers. Mitchell's skill at combining dance and acting was considered something of a novelty; in 1959, the critic Olga Maynard singled him out as "an important example of the new dancer-actor-singer in American ballet", pointing to his interpretive abilities and "masculine" technique.

Mitchell was born on Leap Day, 1920 in Sacramento, California. His parents emigrated from England to Northern California, where they operated a fruit farm in Turlock. In 1923, Mitchell's mother, Edith, left his father and returned to England with Mitchell's brother and sister; she and Mitchell had no further contact. Unable to run a farm while single-handedly raising his remaining son, Mitchell's father fostered him out for several years to vaudevillians Gene and Katherine King.