Personal Lives
Twice-divorced Jim lived for years with Lisa Adams, a former porn starlet and O'Farrell dancer. He and his second wife Mary Jane had four children; one of them, Meta, is now the O'Farrell's general manager. Artie was the father of six, three with his first wife, Meredith Bradford (who retained her maiden name and insisted that their children go by Bradford), and the others with Karen Hassall, whom he divorced in the mid-1980s. Meredith attended law school at her husband's expense and, upon graduating, represented the Mitchells until Jim fired her over a conflict involving his children's manners at her family's Massachusetts vacation home.
Jim's son James was recently convicted of murder.
In Bottom Feeders, John Hubner characterizes the Mitchells as frequently quarreling with each other (and everyone else), alternately stingy and profligate, at odds with each other and society at large and sometimes misogynistic. In Hubner's book, the O'Farrell Theatre is a mirrored house of sleaze, filled with bikini-clad predators hustling money from men too insecure or ugly to get girls any other way. The Mitchells' company is a model of inefficiency, with its top members, almost invariably boyhood friends of the brothers, spending their office hours taking drugs, drinking beer and playing pool.
In contrast, McCumber's X-rated focuses mainly on the personal foibles of Artie Mitchell; indeed, Jim Mitchell is portrayed as surmounting many personal obstacles, such as overcoming drug addiction through voluntary rehabilitation.
Read more about this topic: Mitchell Brothers
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