He belonged on a stamp. Ask a random bunch of Americans who represents them best, some
will say the still controversial John Wayne, others might name the somewhat unjustly forgotten
Gary Cooper, but James Stewart probably came closest to playing the classic American better than anyone. Stewart was born one hundred years ago on May 20, 1908. Only yesterday, literally and figuratively, yet a world away from this time and place.

Through the odd alchemy of
his nature, his subtle art and the long memory that film has given us, this man’s work and life has a resonance that still touches many of us. Though I’m not given to compiling top ten lists, several of his films are inevitably among the top ten on almost any list of great American movies. Among them are his iconic roles in Vertigo (1957), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), Winchester ’73 (1951), and Rear Window (1956). Ford, Hitchcock, Capra, Cukor, Mann, and Preminger were among the top
rank directors who were lucky enough to have the man as their star.

Look a little closer at that image he projected in his films and, for that matter, on that stamp that the USPS issued last year to honor the actor. That’s his endearing, familiar likeness there, but there’s a shrewd glint of canniness in his eye as well. The “aw-shucks” persona that he is fondly remembered for always had a bit of steel beneath it, and as he grew more in control of his own, hard-to-define gifts, a darker, more complex side would emerge on screen. He may conjure up what has come to be termed “Americanism”, but there was always an ambivalent aspect to
his behavioral acting. Once directors such as Anthony Mann and Alfred Hitchcock tapped into that dark vein in his characters, the results had a truly dark edge of willful, sometimes comic, and often tragic madness in films such as Harvey (1950) and Vertigo (1957).

The many words that have been written to try to define this actor’s curiously different appeal, his ability to portray deeply flawed men who were sometimes overwhelmed by doubt, rage, and hesitancy have never been adequate. The only actors who worked in a similar vein were probably
Gary Cooper, Montgomery Clift, and Stewart’s oldest and best friend, Henry Fonda–though each of these men
brought more elegance to the American screen than the gangly, often uncomfortable in his own skin Stewart
could to his many roles.

Stewart was different. Awkward when young, less so as he grew older. The dividing point in his life and career seems to be the War. Prior to the Second World War, his directors were challenged to get the nervous actor to be still on camera. George Cukor in particular took great pains to reassure the actor during filming of The Philadelphia Story (1939)
that he could convincingly perform a drunken love scene with the
intimidating Katharine Hepburn, spouting heartfelt but slightly foolish sounding Philip Barry lines–”You’ve got fires banked down in you, hearth-fires and holocausts”–and, for his trouble, won Stewart an Oscar. Truthfully, with one notable exception, I find Stewart difficult to watch during this period. Seemingly eternal, awkward boyishness in many of these pictures isn’t just painful to watch, but downright tedious at times. Difficult as I may find him in his most sentimental roles, when the flinty honesty shines through in his acting, he’s remarkable.

His coltishness lasted until his thirties. The hems and haws of his speech might still linger, but in its place was a newfound ability to express anger, wistfulnesss, and longing–sometimes all these emotions could arise within one scene–that was uniquely his own. I won’t waste words trying to define his difference, but will mention two of his less celebrated performances that have made this most tentative of leading men close to my filmlover’s heart, both of them opposite blonde, petite actresses who seemed to bring out the best in the actor.

The Mortal Storm (1939): Director
Frank Borzage‘s adaptation of Phyllis Bottome’s popular novel was not a major success when it first came out. Focusing on the impact on one family of the events surrounding the rise of Adolf Hitler just a few years before, it seemed a bit old hat to American audiences by 1940. With much of Europe under German domination and France and Britain struggling for their lives in a seemingly futile war against the Nazis, The Mortal
Storm, may not have made as much money as other MGM fare of that year. The lack of enthusiasm by the MGM management for the
film may have contributed to the film’s meager success, (and that ad campaign probably didn’t help a bit–a sample of which can be seen
at the right, seemingly emphasizing some non-existent romantic comedy aspects of the movie). Given the fact that this film, despite the
relative timidity of the filmmakers, as evidenced in the fact that the word “Jewish” is never used, (Margaret Sullavan‘s father in the film, a professor who is forced to resign his university position, played by Frank Morgan in a beautifully realized performance, is described as “non-Aryan”), is the first mainstream American movie to depict the 1933 book burnings by the Nazis, to show the casual, everyday brutality of the SA and the SS, and to depict a Concentration Camp on film.

MGM, a notoriously cautious and conservative studio in general, deserves to be credited for producing this movie, though they certainly expected the resulting banishment of all their products from Nazi Germany anyway, particularly with the outbreak of war in September, 1939. A significant film in cultural history–though unlike Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), or The Man I Married (1940) that followed it into theaters, The Mortal Storm still has the greatest dramatic power, 68 years later, largely due to the focus on people over issues. There is a stoic heroism at the dramatic heart of the story which might be encapsulated in Frank
Morgan‘s line, “I’ve never prized safety, either for myself or my children. I’ve prized courage.” As every familiar touchstone of the character’s lives is overturned by fascism, the love that unfolds between the characters played by Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart is the key to the movie’s still significant power.

Borzage, a true romantic, had previously set two of his best and most prescient sound films in the Weimar Republic. Little Man, What
Now?, Three Comrades and The Mortal Storm are deeply romantic films in the sense that they are concerned with what critic Andrew Sarris identified as “the invasion of the emotional privacy of individuals, particularly lovers, those blessed creatures blessed with luminous rapport.”
Yet, rather than creating a dream world for the lovers to escape to, Borzage employed the romantic’s soft focus and fluid camera work to illuminate the quality of the inner life of two people whose kinship transcended everyday life.

Borzage‘s depiction of that everyday world in early Nazi Germany was enhanced by the chemistry displayed by Jimmy Stewart, as a farmer and
veterinary student at the same university where Morgan teaches
and his co-star, Margaret Sullavan, who played Freya Roth, Morgan’s half-Aryan daughter. The pair acted together 3 times on screen before this movie, in Next Time We Love (1936), The Shopworn Angel (1938) and The Shop Around the Corner (1940). This film would be their last together, but it is my favorite.

Off-screen, there were many who knew them well who claim that
Sullavan, who projected such an apparent self-assurance on screen, may have been the idealized love of Stewart‘s life, though she, it is often emphasized, would not have been interested in the reserved young
man. Married briefly to Jim’s best friend Henry Fonda since their days together with The University Players on Cape Cod; who would describe the Southern-born actress as “Scarlett O’Hara before Margaret Mitchell ever thought of her”, and later to director William Wyler and agent Leland Hayward, even Margaret Sullavan‘s children by Hayward noticed the mutual affection that enveloped the pair years later. Despite the fact that the actress is not remembered well today, Margaret Sullavan‘s distinctively throaty voice and golden aura wrapped up in her liberated yet coquettish persona helped to make her a screen star in the ’30s. Privately, she sometimes claimed in an imperious manner, to hate acting, the star system, and Hollywood. In her films with Stewart, whom she coached and encouraged constantly privately and on the set, his tenderness as well as his quiet strength come out, as in the melodramatic scene when a birthday party is interrupted by the news of Hitler’s ascension to power over the radio. While part of the group erupts in joy, Stewart, who has been relatively quiet throughout the scene, until he remarks pointedly that “I believe peace is better than war.” He is the
least emotional actor in the scene. Yet, with that one line, he becomes
its moral and dramatic center. The Mortal Storm is only available currently on vhs, but is shown periodically on TCM.

The Stratton Story (1949):
Ten years later, James
Stewart was MGM studio’s third choice for the lead as former Chicago White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton. After Van Johnson and Gregory Peck passed on the role, Stewart’s crack at playing the
real life ball player proved to be fortuitous. Stratton, who at 6’5″ tall, had pitched with the Sox until 1938, when a hunting accident led to the amputation of his right leg, said, “When I saw
Jimmy on the screen, I wept. He was more me than I am!” Stratton, who would go on to pitch successfully in the minor leagues despite his artificial leg, was given a dignified yet deeply felt portrayal by the actor, whose experiences on screen and in life made it possible for Stewart to pare down his earlier mannerisms by the time of this production. Stewart, who was said to have worked for months to perfect his pitching and worked with physical
therapists to portray his handicap realistically, brought a depth of
feeling to his part that might not have been possible before the war.

No longer under contract at MGM, Stewart, after serving with distinction in the U.S. Army Air Corps during the war, had struggled to find his niche
in post-war Hollywood. Grayer, and profoundly affected by the sometimes
harrowing experiences as an officer guiding missions over Nazi territory
in Europe, the actor was rumored to have suffered a breakdown following
his service, though, like many returning veterans, he very rarely
referred to it afterwards. The mark that these experiences left on him
informed all his characters afterward. As he tried to explain the change
in him once, “I had never experienced the total responsibility I did in the war…never experienced the realization that it was up to me physically to make a thing work, to survive.”

Married to June Allyson in the film, (they would appear together in the highly successful The Glenn Miller Story in 1953 and the jingoistic
Strategic Air Command in 1955), the story spotlights his domestic relationship with her. In the early scenes in the movie, Stewart as
his character struggled with despair and bitterness following his
accident is played beautifully by both actors, particularly in one
sequence at night when the restless, moody Stratton may be contemplating
suicide.

Where before, Stewart would embody the naive, confused American perplexed by life outside his insular world, in The Stratton Story, he is clearly playing a man confronting his own limitations. His troubled, querulous protagonist, torn between determination and vulnerability. He was ready for the worldly, struggling characters he would play in his best work to come with Mann and Hitchcock in the decade to come. Describing his own take on his acting years later, Stewart said
that he was an “inarticulate man who tries [without] all the answers, but for some reason, somehow, I make it.” He offered his criterion for success: ”If you can do a part and not have the acting show.” The Stratton Story is available in a beautiful transfer on dvd.

Stewart’s Victory Lap:
In 1989, James Stewart, published a book of poems called “Jimmy Stewart
and His Poems”. Amazingly, to me, he appeared and signed his books at a Walden Books near where I worked in the heart of Boston at the time. I was too shy to approach the actor during this tour, (or was it a victory lap?), but stood at the edge of the crowd that rainy Wednesday in ’89. You could literally feel the affection of the
people crowded into the bookstore that day for him and his 60 years of
work. Those who did have the nerve to ask him for a signature on their little book told me that he was very deaf,
(“Damn airplane engines, don’t ya know” he’d drawl in way of explanation), rather sweet, in a slightly salty way, and quite frail looking, all of which didn’t matter when he took the time to look a fan in the eye that day and smile.

By his estimation, it was stretching it to call his funny and touching bits of doggerel by the word “poetry”. Yet like the actor himself, there was more than a little art and a great deal of humanity in his amusing riffs on a dangerous step at a hotel in Argentina or his random musings on a visit to Africa or, best of all, perhaps, his dog Beau.

When he died in 1997 at 89 this clip of Mr. Stewart reading his ode to “Beau” on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was played on the news. If you watch it, one warning: it’s a killer. Hankies ready?

For those of you who can’t
see the clip, I’ll post the poem below. Perhaps it’s best if you
can imagine his voice reading it in his inimitable, halting style, with
every inflection deeply felt evidence of this man’s graceful talent.

“Beau” by James Stewart

He never came
to me when I would call
Unless I had a tennis ball,
Or he felt like it,
But mostly he didn’t come at all.

When he was young
He never learned to heel
Or sit or stay,
He did things his way.

Discipline was not his bag
But when you were with him things sure didn’t drag.
He’d dig up a rosebush just to spite me,
And when I’d grab him, he’d turn
and bite me.

He bit lots of folks from day to day,
The delivery boy was his favorite prey.
The gas man wouldn’t read our meter,
He said we owned a real man-eater.

He set the house on fire
But the story’s long to tell.
Suffice it to say that he survived
And the house survived as well.

On the evening walks, and Gloria took him,
He was always first out the door.
The Old One and I brought up the rear
Because our bones were sore.

He would charge up the street with Mom hanging on,
What a beautiful pair they were!
And if it was still light
and the tourists were out,
They created a bit of a stir.

But every once in a while, he would stop in his tracks
And with a frown on his face look around.
It was just to make sure that the
Old One was there
And would follow him where he was bound.

We are early-to-bedders at our house–
I guess I’m the first to retire.
And as I’d leave the room he’d look at me
And get up from his place by the fire.

He knew where the tennis balls were upstairs,
And I’d give him one for a while.
He would push it under the bed with his nose
And I’d fish it out with a smile.

And before very long
He’d tire of the ball
And be asleep in his corner
In no time at all.

And there were nights when I’d feel him
Climb upon our bed
And lie between us,
And I’d pat his head.

And there were nights when I’d feel this stare
And I’d wake up and he’d be sitting there
And I reach out my hand and stroke his hair.
And sometimes I’d feel him sigh
and I think I know the reason why.

He would wake up at night
And he would have this fear
Of the dark, of life, of
lots of things,
And he’d be glad to have me near.

And now he’s dead.
And there are nights when I think I feel him
Climb upon our bed and lie between us,
And I pat his head.

And there are nights when I think
I feel that stare
And I reach out my hand to stroke his hair,
But he’s not there.

Oh, how I wish that wasn’t so,
I’ll always love a dog named Beau.

Sources:
Fishgall, James,
Pieces of Time: The Life of James Stewart,
Scribners, 1997.
Quirk, Lawrence J.,
Margaret Sullavan: Child of Fate, St. Martin’s
Press, 1986.
Sarris, Andrew,
The American Cinema: Directors and Directions,
1929-1968, Octagon Press, 1982.
The Jimmy Stewart
Museum