Jimmy Stewart at 100, Part 2

Whatever the subsequent cult status of “It’s a Wonderful Life” on first release it was a box office disappointment and marked the end of James Stewart’s working relationship with director Frank Capra.  The harder edge evident in Stewart’s Frank Bailey characterisation was however a feature of most of his post war career, beginning with a minor film noir classic for Henry Hathaway, “Call Northside 777″, in which he was cast as a crusading cop.

The same year, 1948, saw the first of his four collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock.  In “Rope” Stewart is an unconventional university professor whose cynicism finds its limits when two of his former students commit murder as a Nietzsche inspired exercise in amorality.  Stewart shines in an ensemble cast, stressing his character’s guilt-by-association.

At the dawn of the 1950s he took another of his trade mark parts, one he was to reprise later on stage and even television: the title role in “Harvey”, a delusional who believes himself befriended by a giant white rabbit.  While a partial return to Capraesque whimsy, Stewart continued to demonstrate his range, branching out in Westerns like “Winchester ‘73″ and “Broken Arrow”, and an early disaster movie, “No Highway in the Sky”.  His American ‘everyman’ side saw him repeatedly cast in biopics, playing real life figures as diverse as rifle pioneer David Williams (”Carbine Williams”), one legged baseballer Monty Stratton (”The Stratton Story”), aviator Charles Lindbergh (”The Spirit of St Louis”) and, most profitably, big band leader Glenn Miller (”The Glenn Miller Story”).

Not all of these movies were necessarily of the first order but Stewart himself was at the height of his game.  His most consistent work was for Hitchcock and Anthony Mann.  “Winchester ‘73″, both a critical and popular hit, inspired four more unusually nuanced westerns directed by Mann in which Stewart played good men soured by personal loss and out for revenge.  There is little to chose between “Bend of the River”, “The Far Country”, “The Man from Laramie” and “The Naked Spur”, though the first is the most picturesque and the last offers a superior villain in Robert Ryan.

Hitchcock employed Stewart in one slight entertainment, “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, and two of the best pictures ever made, “Rear Window” and “Vertigo”.  Usually cast as the master’s alter-ego (as opposed to Cary Grant’s more idealised, conventional leading man roles for Hitch), Stewart is the director-like photographer with the broken legs in “Window” and the tortured ex-detective undone by a blond obsession in “Vertigo”.

If “Vertigo” represents something of peak Stewart had still more to offer.  In “Anatomy of a Murder” he’s perfectly used by Otto Preminger as a canny, under resourced attorney looking to do his best for a dodgy client (even if it means holding up some ‘panties’ in court, a bit of vulgarity that saw the star’s aged father publicly denounce the film).  And in John Ford’s last masterpiece he memorably co-stars with John Wayne, stealing the Duke’s thunder (and girl) as “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”.

The balance of the 1960s saw Stewart wind things down with some lesser if sometimes amusing westerns.  Perhaps his final leading role of substance was in the action picture “The Flight of the Phoenix”, cast to type as pilot whose nerves are shot, but a cameo in Wayne’s swan song “The Shootist” a decade later nicely closed the book on both icons’ immeasurable contribution to the genre of the west, and cinema in general.

Many of the titles alluded to above may be rented from the Auteur House.