In 1984, Robert Mitchum‘s family persuaded him to check into the Betty Ford Clinic and try to quit drinking. “When he got back, I said, ‘What did you learn over there, Bob?’” fellow actor Stuart Whitman recalled, “and he said, ‘More ice.’”

Defiant to the end, Mitchum died in 1997. “The night he died,” his son recalled, “he sat right over there in his chair and there was a stubbed out Pall Mall and an empty glass that reeked of tequila. He got up during the night, knocked off a shot, smoked a cigarette, got in bed, and died in his sleep.”