Millard Mitchell was born of American parents in Havana, Cuba. He was a popular stage and radio actor in the 1930s in New York. His first cinema appearances were in industrial short features, filmed in New York. His first Hollywood role was in Mr. and Mrs. North (1942). After World War II, Mitchell acted in a goodly number of movies, often cast as sardonic, stolid characters. Although dressed as a cliché in the Anthony Mann western, The Naked Spur (1953), he eluded the usual geezer-sidekick persona as an old prospector who falls in with James Stewart as a bounty-hunter after laughing villain Robert Ryan. He received top billing in 1952's My Six Convicts (1952) but musical-goers most admired his screen role as movie-mogul "R. F. Simpson" in the classic, Singin' in the Rain (1952). A heavy smoker, Millard Mitchell died too soon of lung cancer at the age of 50.