“That’s the great thing about the movies… after you learn — and if you’re good enough and God helps you and you’re lucky to have a personality that comes across — then what you’re doing is — you’re giving people little, little, tiny pieces of time, that they never forget.” -JIMMY STEWART, quoted by Peter Bogdanovich
"I think it would be true to say that Jim actually has gone out of his way many times to be particularly attentive to me. The more beautiful and glamorous his leading lady was, the more attention he paid to me. I asked him once why he did that, and he said, ‘Because I want you to never feel anything less than the most special thing in my life". -Gloria Stewart
These are the spectacular and spectacularly disturbing opening moments of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic Vertigo, in which James Stewart, at the absolute peak of his acting form, plays the tragically flawed, insanely obsessed, and deeply existential John “Scottie” Ferguson. In Vertigo, Stewart’s style of acting perfectly reflected not only his familiar cinematic persona—the ordinary man adrift, perhaps trapped in an abnormal world, longing to find his rightful physical, emotional, and spiritual place in it—but also to a greater degree than in any other movie he made, his real-life personality.
Jimmy Stewart in 'Vertigo' (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
The crucial difference between the character Scottie and the actor Stewart lay in their relative sanity. Scottie’s ultimate undoing is brought about by his belief in the power of possessive, obsessive sex as a curative, a liberating, redemptive act even after it has caused the death of his (so-called) loved one, a fatal trap disguised as a letting go that leads him eventually to the brink of suicide. The foundation of Jimmy’s sanity, meanwhile, lay in his abject refusal to ever let go of his unwavering faith in the curative, redemptive liberation of love as the reflection of the moral righteousness of Western Christian ideology. These beliefs, in turn, helped him realize the power of his continual on-screen persona, that of a spiritually based, romantic all-American beacon of enlightenment to millions of Americans for more than half a century of turmoil and upheaval.
In Stewart’s best work, the amazingly expressive eyes and face helped define his characters’ quests to maintain their moral purity, their innocence threatened by an attractive if corrupting temptation that was almost always sexual in nature. In Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) and Rear Window (1954) it takes the human form of the director’s familiar, fetishistic icegoddesses (Kim Novak and Grace Kelly), in other films it manifests itself in alluring objects— the eponymous experimental plane in Billy Wilder’s The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), the phallic rifle in Mann’s Winchester ’73, a seat in Congress in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington(1939). These external manifestations triggered moral conflicts that repeatedly brought Stewart’s characters to the brink of selfinflicted, near-crucifixionlike tragedy, until they were in the end rescued, redeemed really by the sheer force of their own will, the visible power of their inner spirituality (except for Vertigo, which makes the point by the sheer absence of redemption).
He was the only son of three children of Alexander M. and Elizabeth Stewart. Alex, as his charismatic father was known, owned and operated a popular hometown hardware store, but was, at heart, an adventurer who loved to periodically run off to play soldier as much as, if not more than, staying close to home and protecting the nest. When he was around, he proved a tough taskmaster who ruled his brood with an iron heart. When he was gone, his absences caused young Jimmy to assume the filial duties as “the man” to his mother and two sisters, a task that left indelible marks on his malleable personality, instilling at once a sense of manly responsibility and a resistance to the overly protective instincts of the women of the house. The result was the development of a Presbyterian courtliness and sexual aloofness in the boy that would, one day, form the basis for Jimmy’s on-screen persona.
Five years and dozens of combat missions later, including one final bombing sortie into the heart of Berlin, Stewart returned to America a highly decorated, if extremely war-weary, hero. Indeed, despite all the smiles and the post-mission medals, it was apparent to even the most casual of observers that the ravages of combat had profoundly changed him, both physically and psychologically. The boyishness of his face was finally gone, replaced with a tougher, more grimly etched visage. His body seemed stiffer and more defensive. His demeanor was no longer that of a callow youth but a hardened man.
At Fox, Henry Fonda had first struck up a relationship with Lucille Ball, who then fixed up her girlfriend, twice-divorced Ginger Rogers, with Fonda’s roommate, Stewart. Rogers had recently dissolved her marriage to actor Lew Ayres. For Jimmy, dating a hot beauty like Rogers was an especially unbelievable rush, for it was not so very long ago, while still a student at Princeton, that he had sat alone in the Arcade Theater, mind-lusting after the young blond beauty. Now here he was, getting personal lessons from her at some of Hollywood’s most famous nightclubs on how to do the carioca.
Not surprisingly, he was totally smitten with Rogers, the first woman to bring his long-suffering manhood to the altar of love. With the quiet, assured logic that Fonda would become known for on-screen, he tried to alleviate the massive dose of postcoital guilt Stewart was reeling from by reminding him over and over again that he wasn’t Rogers’s first and that she wouldn’t be his last, and the world hadn’t come to an end because of what happened.
Margaret Sullavan had been in Hollywood for three years working steadily at Universal. After starring in John Stahl’s Only Yesterday (1933), the screen adaptation of the play she had appeared in on Broadway, she made William Wyler’s The Good Fairy (1935), a weeper about a girl from an orphanage who becomes the “good fairy” to others, notable for the real-life romance it produced between the director and his leading lady. Sullavan and Wyler were married during the making of The Good Fairy.
James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in "Next Time We Love" (1936) directed by Edward H. Griffith
In fact, the catalyst for Sullavan’s lobbying for Jimmy had been a chance encounter between the two one afternoon on Hollywood Boulevard, where Sullavan, being driven to the studio from her Beverly Hills home, happened to spot him walking along by himself, hands in his pockets, head down. She had the driver pull over, rolled down her window, and called him over. Soon he was sitting alongside her, reminiscing about New York City and Broadway. Jimmy, whose relationship with Rogers had by now begun to cool—she found him just too inexperienced— was ripe-ready for the return of Sullavan in his life, in any form, while for her, Jimmy was not exactly the one who had gotten away, but one of the many she liked and for one reason or another had let get away. With him, though, she was careful about breaking a heart so tender, one that he wore so plaintively on his sleeve. It was that very nonvoracious quality about him that she had always been attracted to. “She was protective, loving, maternal toward him,” Myron McCormick told Sullavan’s biographer. “She wasn’t usually like this with most men. If she wasn’t getting sexually predatory with them she was indifferent, or contemptuous.”
Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart in "The Mortal Storm" (1940) directed by Frank Borzage
Stewart remained oblivious to the whispers floating around that the nights he was spending with Sullavan had less to do with rehearsals than romance. Being close enough that he could smell the perfume of her shampoo while she carefully tutored him was intoxicating and, for Jimmy, an act more intimate to his way of thinking and feeling than any he had ever done with Ginger Rogers. And, as a result, he would never be quite the same way as he was before, not as an actor and not as a man. “I’ll never marry until I find a girl like Margaret Sullavan,” Jimmy told a reporter from a Hollywood fanzine.
“I loved being in pictures. Right away—didn’t miss the stage at all. Loved it. All that stuff ya hear ’bout how the big studio was nothing but an enormous factory—this just isn’t true… it was wonderful.” —JIMMY STEWART
His nonsexual on-screen persona had by now led Mayer to wonder if, in fact, there was something “wrong” with him. Whereas other MGM names had to be literally pried loose from the bevy of starlets they were bedding, despite the fact that the men were all married—such as Gable; Franchot Tone, whose suavity had led him into the arms of some of Hollywood’s most fabulous beauties; Spencer Tracy, a known womanizer from the moment he first stepped on a sound stage — Jimmy kept himself away from all of that, preferring the company of one steady woman, and if he didn’t have one, he was content to have none, rather than five.
Six days before Navy Blue and Gold opened, Stewart began work on George Stevens’s Vivacious Lady, which was to be his last role of 1937. It was another loan-out, this time to RKO where he costarred with his ex-lover Ginger Rogers. Although he was, at first, hesitant to take the part, he did so on the advice of his new agent, Leland Hayward, who also just happened to have recently become Margaret Sullavan’s third husband. The picture is a light, breezy romantic comedy involving a shy botany professor, Peter Morgan (Stewart), who falls in love with a dazzling New York nightclub singer, Francey Brent (Rogers), marries her, and then frets over how to tell his gruff father and his sickly mother. Yet again, the parallels to Jimmy’s own family life helped him imbue his acting with an impressive emotional depth. His performance was so good in Vivacious Lady that Stevens gave him equal co-billing with Rogers. Their unexpected on-screen chemistry was so powerful, it delighted audiences; the film did remarkably well, and Rogers once more shimmered in the starlight she craved.
Sullavan had developed a formidable reputation as a man-eating manipulator and a woman who married to advance her own ambitions. Many critics saw her character in The Shopworn Angel as an extension of Sullavan’s public persona, a further cashing-in on the reputation she had built. She more or less plays with the Stewart character, and marries him partly out of the need to want to see him stay alive, but also partly as a joke to be shared with Sam Bailey. However, a deeper look at Sullavan’s Daisy reveals a more complex character. Full of life, talented, famous, and funloving, she is in a relationship with a man she doesn’t love (in many ways a Wyler substitute) and is attracted to and reinvigorated by a younger, innocent boy.
And, of course, there is Jimmy’s portrayal of the soldier. His unrequited love for Sullavan is mirrored by Pettigrew’s for Daisy. Key to the film, Sullavan’s life, and Stewart’s, is the vague sexual relationship that drives the story. Here is what Pidgeon later told interviewer Lawrence Quirk: 'It was really all Jimmy and Maggie, and that was the way it should have been. It was so obvious he was in love with her. He came absolutely alive in his scenes with her. I felt she was more emotionally involved, off-screen, with Jimmy than she consciously was aware she was. Or maybe, being the flirtatious Southern belle she was, in most situations, she got some ego-kick out of his adoration of her. Sullavan was in love with love, and she loved Jimmy being in love with her; it enhanced her feelings about herself.”
Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart as Klara Novak and Alfred Kralik in "The Shop Around The Corner" (1940) directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Alfred Kralik: There might be a lot we don't know about each other. You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.
Klara Novak (Miss Novak): Well I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I'd find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter... which doesn't work.
Where everyone else saw a light, all-American type, Capra picked up on Stewart’s darker, more anguished turn in the film Navy Blue and Gold. “I had seen Jimmy Stewart play this sensitive, heart-grabbing role and sensed the character and rock-ribbed honesty of a Gary Cooper, plus the breeding and intelligence of an ivy-league idealist. One might believe that young Stewart could reject his father’s patrimony [in You Can’t Take It With You], a kingdom in Wall Street.” It was Jimmy’s strong performance that convinced Capra he could turn the gawky, shuffling, stuttery, underused, and overlooked contract player into the most popular movie star in the world.
Although 'You Can’t Take It With You' made James Stewart a top-of-theline star, he was not considered for an Oscar for his performance (except for Spring Byington in the Supporting Actress category, no one else in the cast was even nominated). Robert Riskin was nominated for Best Screenplay, but did not win; nor did Joseph Walker, also nominated, for Cinematography. It is all the more surprising then that the movie itself managed to win Best Picture and brought Capra his third Academy Award for directing.
“I liked taking Marlene out to dinner and to dance back in the days of 'Destry Rides Again' and so we dated quite a few times, which was fairly romantic… I was taken off guard by her adult concept of life.” -Jimmy Stewart
It took less time than it would to remove a six-gun and garter belt before Dietrich had taken Jimmy to her bed and showed him the way European women treated their men. If other women had been turned off by Jimmy, disappointed by his shyness or mistaking it for a rural aloofness, Dietrich was driven crazy by it. She loved playing the temptress, the seducer, and the more passive he was, the more aggressive she delighted in becoming.
'It’s a Wonderful Life' opened in theaters on December 21, 1946 (at the Globe in New York City, and three days later at the Pantages in Los Angeles. The day after Christmas it went into nationwide release). Reviews were mixed. The New York Times began its review with tongue firmly in too sugary a cheek when it said, “The late and beloved Dexter Fellows, who was a circus press agent for many years, had an interesting theory…that the final curtain of every drama, no matter what, should benignly fall upon the whole cast sitting down to a turkey dinner and feeling fine." Bosley Crowther, did however, single out Jimmy for doing a “warmly appealing job, indicating that he has grown in spiritual stature as well as in talent during the years he was in the war.”
The Hollywood Reporter called it “just a wonderful picture.” United Press’s reporter wrote, “Never in all my years of covering Hollywood have I been so moved by a movie as by It’s a Wonderful Life. The Capra film is the season’s climax.” The New York Sun called it movie-goers’ “finest Christmas present.”
James Stewart in "Harvey" (1950) directed by Henry Koster
Despite Harvey’s financial failure, it was part of a film deal that finally gained Stewart entrance into the millionaires’ club, thanks in large part to Lew Wasserman’s adjusted gross clause. After the studio recouped its original production costs, Stewart received 50 percent of the two films’ profits with net limited to 25 percent for distribution and studio overhead. While this may not seem like much today, it was revolutionary at the time. For a film that cost a little over $900,000 to make — the so-called negative cost of Winchester ’73, Stewart eventually earned more than $600,000, a figure that would have been inconceivable as a prefigured salary on a film with that kind of budget. With the added $200,000 plus percentage he earned for Harvey, the two-picture deal for the first time put him over the magical million-dollar figure in earnings for a single year.
The Jimmy Stewart Show (so named because, as Kanter put it, “the deep think boys at NBC gave a great deal of thought and research to the title and discovered the word ‘show’ is known to everyone”) debuted September 19, 1971, and did not do well in the ratings. Early on, while still trying to make up his mind whether or not to go into television, he had talked it over with good friend Fred MacMurray, who told him it was the easiest thing he had ever- And it was, for MacMurray. He had been doing it successfully for twelve years and had had it written into his contract that all his scenes for the complete season of his sitcom, My Three Sons, be shot together, with the rest of the cast doing the daily/weekly/monthly fill-ins. -"Jimmy Stewart: A Biography" (2006) by Marc Eliot
"Back on North Roxbury Drive, the death of Ronald (Gloria's son who had been adopted by Stewart) seemed to echo through every room in the Stewart house. "We were just getting on each other's nerves," Gloria told. Jim tried to stay out of Gloria's way by playing golf each morning with Fred MacMurray at the Bel Air Club." -"Jimmy Stewart: The Truth Behind the Legend" (2006) by Michael Munn
Both Jimmy Stewart and Fred MacMurray were Republican, had conformed that 'nice guy' movie image, both had taken risky shifts in their film careers, and had played opposite some of the most gorgeous leading ladies of the Golden Era. Some stills of actresses with whom Stewart and MacMurray shared the silver screen:
Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart in "Destry Rides Again" (1932) directed by Benjamin Stoloff
Fred MacMurray and Marlene Dietrich in "The Lady Is Willing" (1942) directed by Mitchell Leisen
Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert in "The Gilded Lily" (1935) directed by Wesley Ruggles
James Stewart and Claudette Colbert in "It's a Wonderful World" (1939) directed by W.S. Van Dyke
Fred MacMurray and Katharine Hepburn in "Alice Adams" (1935) directed by George Stevens
James Stewart and Katharine Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) directed by George Cukor
Fred MacMurray and Carole Lombard in "Hands Across The Table" (1935) directed by Mitchell Leisen
James Stewart and Carole Lombard in "Made for Each Other" (1939) directed by John Cromwell
James Stewart and Joan Crawford in "The Ice Follies of 1939" (1939) directed by Reinhold Schünzel
Fred MacMurray and Joan Crawford in "Above Suspicion" (1943) directed by Richard Thorpe
James Stewart and Jean Arthur in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) directed by Frank Capra
Fred MacMurray and Jean Arthur in "Too Many Husbands" (1940) directed by Wesley Ruggles
James Stewart and Rosalind Russell in "No Time for Comedy" (1940) directed by William Keighley
Rosalind Russell and Fred MacMurray in "Take a Letter Darling" (1942) directed by Mitchell Leisen
Paulette Goddard and James Stewart in "Pot o' Gold" (1941) directed by George Marshall
Paulette Goddard and Fred MacMurray in "Suddenly It's Spring" (1947) directed by Mitchell Leisen
Lana Turner and James Stewart in "Ziegfeld Girl" (1941) directed by Bubsy Berkeley
Lana Turner and Fred MacMurray in "The Rains of Ranchipur" (1955) directed by Jean Negulesco
Betty Hutton and Fred MacMurray in "And The Angel Sings" (1944) directed by George Marshall
James Stewart and Betty Hutton in "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1952) directed by Cecil B. DeMille
Fred MacMurray and Helen Walker in "Murder, He Says" (1945) directed by George Marshall
Helen Walker and James Stewart in "Call Northside 777" (1948) directed by Henry Hathaway
Fred MacMurray and Kim Novak in "Pushover" (1954) directed by Richard Quine
James Stewart and Kim Novak in "Vertigo" (1958) directed by Alfred Hitchcock
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