You wouldn't expect to run across local tales of Robert Mitchum in Talbot County, Maryland, a sleepy land of farming, fishing and vacation homes less than two hours from Washignton, DC. But nestled near the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, in the country hamlet of Trappe, stands a four-star eatery called Mitchum's, named after the A-list film star of the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

John, who tends bar there beneath a giant screen playing Mitchum's Hollywood classics, says the restaurant wasn't owned by the actor. But its big movie posters and red-meat menu take inspiration from the star of The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Thunder Road (1958), the original Cape Fear (1962), TV's The Winds of War (1983) and many others.

Mitchum, who died in 1997 in Santa Barbara at the age of 79, was known around town as the purchaser of a 28-acre estate in Maryland, where he lived with his wife and sons for about 11 years, starting in 1959. Folks still talk about how Mitchum, famous for being a Hollywood bad boy and a briliant actor, got thrown out of nearly every bar in the area.

"One time he was at a big, fancy party dancing too close with somebody's wife and he got decked," recalls John. "But then he got up and shook the guy's hand. He knew he'd gone over the line. He would get out of hand, but he was also a good guy."

After eating a tasty crab-cake plate at Mitchum's, my appetite was satisfied, but not my curiousity about Robert Mitchum. Arguably the first major actor busted for pot, Mitchum faced a felony narcotics charge from his notorious 1948 arrest in a house in Laurel Canyon, a neighborhood in Los Angeles where the star was found smoking marijuana with actress Lila Leeds and two others.

Mitchum, married with kids at 31 at the time, told reporters, "Sure, I've been using the stuff since I was a kid. I guess it's all over now. It's the bitter end. I'm ruined."

The actor could've used his connections to get a light sentence or even cover up the arrest, but he decided to pay his dues - a harsh sentence of two years probation including 60 days in jail just for holding a few joints. His wife claimed he was "sick" and big-time producer David Selznick told him to go to a sanitarium, the 1940s version of rehab.

At his sentencing hearing, Mitchum promised not to smoke again, but maintained that weed wasn't harmful. "The only effect that I ever noticed from smoking marijuana was a sort of mild sedative, a relase of tension when I was overworking," he explaind. "It never made me boisterous or quarrelsome. If anything, it calmed me and reduced activity."

In the 1984 biography, Mitchum, author George Eells maintains the star put on a brave face for most of the ordeal. But once inside the L.A. County Jail, he collapsed to the floor and screamed with rage when officials shackled him and tried to march him past photographers. Mitchum didnt' want his sons to see him getting humiliated in a perp walk in chains. The most famous photos of the star in jail - showing him dressed in prison clothes, drinking a cup of coffee and sweeping the floor - ran in LIFE and the tabloids.

While serving his time, snitches tried to get him into trouble by hiding joints in his bed for searching guards to find. But Mitchum quickly learned how to make his bed in a secret way so he could tell if anyone messed with it. While anti-pot crusaders tried to use Mitchum's arrest to discredit Hollywood, his popularity rose and subsequent films did well at the box office.  

Fresh out of jail after 43 days in early 1949, Mitchum shot My Forbidden Past with Ava Gardner and encountered crowds of fans in public appearances. "Mobs of screaming, swooning women blocked the stage doors wherever he played," Eells writes. "Heads, as marijuana users were then called, jammed theaters and were forever trying to give him grass by palming it off during a handshake, wrapping it with a gift, leaving it in his mailbox at the hotel or rapping on his door."

Mitchum's arrest remains Hollywood lore, so much so that it was referenced in Curtis Hanson's Oscar-winning L.A. Confidential (1997). Mitchum helped the pot movement as a star that popularized the growing weed culture of Hollywood of the late '40s. Prohibitionists hoped to bring him down, but marijuana was already more widely popular than many realized and he ended up winning more fans who appreciated his devil-may-care attitude. Unfortunately, the film industry never truly recognized the iconic actor, who only once was nominated for an Academy Award (for The Story of G.I. Joe).

However, to potheads eveywhere he'll always be considered Hollywood's first CelebStoner.

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