Yes, Robert Mitchum.

I watched the original Cape Fear (black and white), (film noir), (1962), on TV the other night, and I was very much moved by Mitchum’s performance.

Mitchum plays the character Max Cady. Max Cady is a criminal who serves 8 years in the penitentiary, jail, slammer, pen, big house, cooler, joint, can, hoosegow for attacking a young woman. He spends those eight years (presumably) thinking about the testimony that convicted him, and the man who testified against him. Revenge, baby, revenge.

Director J. Lee Thompson whose directorial career included such cinematic gems like Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972), Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), and some Charles Bronson flicks: 10 to Midnight (1983), and The Evil That Men Do (1984), among many films in four decades or so of some of the most critically-derided filmmaking. Cape Fear was his magnum opus.

The original Cape fear is beautifully infatuated with its own obsessiveness. From the characters, to the atmosphere, and even the musical score, but Mitchum's Cady stands out.

Looming, sassy, muscular, prowling, seductive, Mitchum gives a much more nuanced performance than the Henry Rollinsesque performance by Robert Deniro in the 1992 (?) Scorsese remake.

(In spite of yourself) He made you like the bad guy.