Jimmy Stewart at 100, Part 1

James Maitland Stewart just celebrated his centenary,
presumably in that corner of the afterlife reserved
for modest, underrated actors and war heroes.  Stewart
was, if not the greatest male star of Hollywood’s
golden age then certainly a leading man in more
undeniable classics than any of his contemporaries.
His trademark drawling speech patterns and hesitant
delivery style proved surprisingly versatile in an
almost sixty year career that saw him develop from a
callow, impassioned youth into a more complex, nuanced
and even tortured figure in post-war American cinema.

Stewart’s strength was forging close working
relationships with the key directors of his time.
After an uneasy apprenticeship in the mid-1930s,
including a low-point in which he was badly miscast in
a musical, he became a star under the tutelage of
Frank Capra.  More than holding his own in Capra’s
ensemble fable “You Can’t Take it With You”, the best
picture winner of 1938, Stewart then was given the
defining part of his life in the director’s most overt
political fantasy, “Mr Smith Goes to Washington”.  As
the naive scout leader turned senator whose idealism
is put to the test by the corrupt political machine,
Stewart had plenty of opportunity for patriotic
speechifying, especially in the film’s climatic
filibuster.

Two other 1939 classics, the screwball comedy “It’s a
Wonderful World” and the comic western “Destry Rides
Again” helped solidify Stewart’s stardom even if he
missed out on that year’s oscar.  In a text book
instance of the kind of delayed recognition often
practiced by the Academy Stewart won the Best Actor
award the year after for “The Philadelphia Story”,
despite the fact that his equally legendary co-stars,
Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, had better parts.

Interrupting his career just as it was peeking for the
kind of selfless war service avoided by the likes of
John Wayne, Jimmy flew numerous bombing missions over
Germany.  He returned to again work with Capra, in
their most mature and dark film, the personal
favourite of both men, “It’s A Wonderful Life”.
Vestiges of his pre-war persona remained in the
character of Frank Bailey, a would-be world beater
consigned to being a big fish in his home town small
pond, but Stewart now had an embittered, cynical edge.

Bailey is a man driven low by frustration, one capable
of screaming at his children, assaulting a
comic-relief uncle and attempting suicide.  For all
its supernatural and fake religious moments the movie
shows up ideological tensions at the heart of the
middle class American dream in a way that is both
illuminating and disturbing.  Stewart would only once
more plumb such emotional depths, twelve years later
when working for Alfred Hitchcock.  More of that next
week.

All films mentioned above maybe rented from Auteur
House.