James Stewart was so familiar to so many people for so long that it is hard to believe his talents might not have been adequately appreciated. But in fact, the folksy “Jimmy” (who made sure he was never billed as that in screen credits) was a fiercely meticulous actor whose dramatic range and emotional vulnerability were unmatched by contemporaries in Hollywood’s big-studio era and made him the artistic rival to Marlon Brando in the initial years of independent-film production.
The Stewart of Mister Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, and It’s a Wonderful Life amounted to just one act in the star’s career. A second came from the westerns he did for director Anthony Mann, in which he usually portrayed a passionately embittered character. Then there was the Alfred Hitchcock Stewart, a remote, often-cold figure who once inspired the director to say that “when I want a protagonist I would like to be, I cast Cary Grant; when I want one I think of as myself, I go to Stewart.”
The Stewart away from the camera was often larger than the one in front of it. He served as a bomber pilot in World War II, but few realize that he was so sure of his abilities to command that when questionable weather intervened, he had little trepidation about calling off one of the most massive assaults planned against Nazi Germany. It was also such experiences that went into his career-long refusal to appear in war movies, calling them “too fake.” Though a noted backer of the Republican Party, he did not let that prevent him from physically tossing from his home a representative of President Richard Nixon during the war in Vietnam.
Among James Stewart’s personas, many of them had little to do with the grandfatherly actor who appeared regularly on the Tonight Show to read his whimsical verse to Johnny Carson. He had years when he was known as one of Hollywood’s most active Lotharios, and had a bank account that attested to the profits to be amassed from taking a percentage of a film’s revenues rather than working for a straight salary.
With the help of film clips from both his famous and lesser-known movies, as well as rare photographs, Stewart biographer Donald Dewey offers a portrait of the rich, picaresque—and yes, wonderful—life of James Stewart.
Other Connections
For all his multi-faceted screen personas, there’s one for which James Stewart is far lesser known: as a singer who introduced a Cole Porter standard. Here, he gamely delivers “Easy to Love” to Eleanor Powell, his co-star in Born To Dance from 1936.
