Jimmy Stewart

by Marc Eliot

  “I did as he directed and jumped back to hold his hand as the monstrous engine thundered past us, pulling a glass-windowed observation car, in which we saw the flag-draped casket, guarded by two Marines, their glistening bayonets at attention. I could hardly breathe, so overwhelming were the sight and sound. After the train had roared off into the night, I retrieved the two flattened pennies from the track. Dad put one in his pocket, and I kept the other. As we drove home, I examined mine and found the Indian’s features had been spread and the few feathers of his headdress had become a great plume. On the other side, the two slender stalks of wheat had grown and burst, as if the seed had ripened and scattered. For years, Dad and I carried those coins flattened by the weight of history. And the knowledge that what was in my pocket was also in his made me feel very close to him.”

  By the time Jim had started helping out after school, the family business had become more than the county’s hardware supply outlet. Through the years the store had gradually turned into the town’s official, if informal, meeting place, a version of other burgs’ local saloon, only without the whiskey and the beer. Here, the male citizenry of Indiana, the county seat, could get together and discuss business and local issues, often the same thing, over coffee, even play some no-stakes cards in the back.

  Alexander often led these politically oriented meetings, and proved so good at it that every so often one of the other townsmen in attendance would urge him to run for office, an idea he always rejected with a smile, a headshake, and his hands held up in the air, palms toward the heavens. It was one thing, he knew, to help out neighbors, for instance to let them pay on credit when they had no money, or to allow them to trade services for goods, even meet at the store to discuss the problems of the day. Politics, however, was a different game altogether. The way he remembered it from stories Bessie’s father had told him, holding office meant being strangled in bureaucratic red tape, or having to collect taxes from good friends, even relatives, whether they had the money or not. Alexander wanted none of it. He preferred other, more useful forms of public service, actions not only practical and worthy, but that he could enjoy openly as well, such as being a member of the Indiana mounted volunteer fire brigade, for which he declared a reluctant Jimbo, amidst bellows of laughs from the other volunteers, its mascot.

  The hardware business continued to prosper, and in 1918 Alexander moved the family into a grand new Dutch Colonial home in Indiana on Vinegar Hill, just two blocks north of Philadelphia Street. This was both good news and bad for ten-year-old Jimmy. On the one hand, he hated leaving the only home he had ever had. He knew every crack, every corner, every little hideaway in the house, the special places he liked to go to whenever he needed to get away from the others. On the other hand, the big new dwelling offered the opportunity for the kind of privacy the smaller one lacked.

  The move also necessitated a change of schools. Jimmy was now eligible for and promptly enrolled in the Model School, an adjunct of the Indiana State Teachers College, reserved for the brightest or most privileged children in this new and upscale neighborhood. It was at Model that he met a trio of boys with whom he would remain friends for the rest of his life: Joe Davis, Hall Blair, and the one he would become closest to, a budding amateur magician by the name of Bill Neff.

  And Jim discovered something else he liked at Model, the pretty, flame-haired little girl who sat three rows over from him. During his first year he was invited by his teacher to play one of the spear-carriers in the school’s Spring Festival pageant. Afterward, at the cast party, the red-haired girl stood next to Jimmy and politely offered him half her cake. The two quickly became inseparable, and while there was never anything between them that could be described as intimate as even dating, the girl with the red hair was, nevertheless, the trigger that fired the opening round of what would prove to be the awkward and difficult years of adolescence for young Jimmy Stewart.

  Things became infinitely more complex for him when, without warning, everything in his life was suddenly turned upside down. It happened one day in 1918 when Alexander came from the hardware store to announce to the family that he had enlisted to fight in World War One. The news, coming after the fact, left no room for discussion or debate about a decision that would deeply affect all of their lives.

  The family gathered to see him off to Camp Dodge, Iowa, where he was to undergo military training before being shipped off to France. Just before he boarded the train, he knelt and told young Jimmy, “You are the man of the house for now, so act accordingly.”

  This was a great honor and Jimmy took his assignment quite seriously, but it was also one that filled him with a certain dread. Alexander, despite (or because of) his strong, manly camaraderie and endless protection and encouragement, always seemed more deity than daddy. Now, present in spirit but missing in body, Alexander became to Jimmy a Presbyterian spirit of majesty and mystery, an even more powerful presence because he was not there. There was no way, he believed, that he could adequately fill his father’s formidable shoes. A lifetime of being “the mascot” had assured him of that, as did his father’s stentorian manner and formidable physical prowess. Besides, he had no idea how he could possibly “protect” a houseful of women his father had so easily and willingly left behind. From what?

  As any boy who has grown up with sisters knows, there is a certain mystery that is missing from an adolescent’s blossoming imagination about the excitement of the opposite sex, a mystery solved by knowing how they look in the morning without makeup, how they smell without perfume, what they talk about when other, i.e., “real” boys aren’t around, what their rooms are like, their moods, their fights, their pouts, their frowns. For ten-year-old Jimmy the onset of puberty brought about an acute sense of hormonal self-consciousness, sexual urges he was beginning to feel but had no idea what to do with. Surrounded by women in a house where he was now both “husband” and “father” as well as brother infused these urges with a particularly thick overlay of guilt and shame. Even before Alexander had left, Jimmy tried, without success, to talk to him about the new feelings he was having. Years later, he told fellow actor, friend, and roommate Myron McCormick about the difficulties that the onset of adolescence had brought. “There were…things I couldn’t talk to Dad about—like playing with yourself [sic] and what to do about girls or about other people who would approach me in a funny way in the woods or at the toilet in the town hall.”1

  Also later on, close friend Henry Fonda would remember Jim’s describing to him his adolescence as impossibly inhibiting and his boyhood one of family-imposed chasteness: “Jim claimed that he never attended a circle-jerk [sic], though I’m sure that, alone, he did what all of us did. If he didn’t, he was either an adolescent saint or a eunuch.”

  The only actual response young Jimmy had gotten from Alexander before he left was a stiff admonition to just let things work themselves out.

  But what things? And how? Although he was not at all satisfied (or relieved) by these answers, Jimmy had dared not press his father any further, and then he was gone. Like most boys of that age and that time, he found the answers he needed at school from boys his own age, even if they were likely as ignorant as he was in the ways of sex. Nevertheless, they spoke with school-yard authority when they warned him to be careful not to “catch” anything from girls, who were all dirty and carried horrible diseases, and who liked to “do things” to boys. They also told him to steer clear of the town toilet, that it was a bad place where bad men took bad girls and bad boys when they wanted to have sex with them.

  More confused than ever, an acutely embarrassed Jimmy finally went to his mother for answers. Bessie, always aware of her children’s behavior, knew by now that her son was having a difficult struggle with adolescence (she was also the household laundress). One thing that no one could miss was the sudden spurt of physical growth that stretched him to well over the six-foot mark (on his way to a full six-foot-three, one inch shorter than Alexander), accompanied by an equally
dramatic sudden loss of his baby fat. Finally, in the most general and gentle of ways, Bessie sat Jimsy down and calmly told him to always remember to keep pure and clean, to “save” himself for the girl he would one day marry, that his body was a temple that should always be properly cared for and worshipped.

  At the same time, she began to stuff him with as much food as he could eat, which was a lot, always insisting Jimsy finish double portions of oatmeal in an attempt to regain some of his lost weight (a ritual that left him with a lifelong aversion to the hot cereal). Nothing helped, and for the rest of his days, the tall Stewart remained scrawny, nonmuscular, and underweight, with narrow shoulders, no hips, and a chest that seemed at times to be so hollow it bordered on the concave.

  Bessie’s motherly advice helped lead Jimmy to find other safer and cleaner outlets for his newfound energy and desires. Not long after his father left, he decided to put on a series of live solo “shows” in the family basement. He both wrote and starred in these, occasionally strapping on the accordion and enthusiastically pumping himself into and out of his original specialty numbers. These shows always had the same topic, World War One, with props supplied from the many souvenirs Alexander continually sent home from France—German gas masks, helmets, and blades.

  The first full-scale, fully cast production by the founder and star of the Stewart Basement Players was “To Hell with the Kaiser,” in which Jimmy played a heroic American soldier, assigning his friend Bill Neff and his sisters all the other parts. The show proved a hit, even with the penny admission Jimmy charged the other boys and girls in the neighborhood, many of whose fathers had, like Jimmy’s, gone off to fight the war. When “To Hell with the Kaiser” had its run, he went directly to work on another production. He called this one “Slacker,” about a reluctant war hero who gets decorated by General Pershing himself, the supreme commander of the American Expeditionary Forces.

  In both of these shows, Jimmy was, perhaps without even realizing it, blossoming as something of a local “star” while idealizing the image of his absent father. Years later he would talk about the fear he had during those times that his father might never come back (a fear that in psychological terms might also have been a suppressed wish).

  Alexander Stewart returned to Indiana from the war on May 1, 1919, a year after his enlistment. At first he seemed unchanged, as strong and sure of himself as ever, but it soon became evident, at least to Bessie, that he was not exactly the same as he had been before. He spoke a bit more quietly now, and less often, especially about the business and the town’s local issues.

  Jimmy noticed it, too. Whenever he tried to talk to his father about what being in battle had been like, Alexander would look away and answer in the most indirect of ways, leaving out any of the specifics of what he had experienced. Instead, he told his son that whenever things seemed most dire or hopeless, he put his faith in God. It was God, not the surrender of the Germans, that had brought him home.

  At the age of thirteen, Jimmy discovered a new thrill, going to the movies, when he took a summer job at the Strand, the local Indiana nickelodeon, as the theater’s weekend projectionist. This allowed him to watch the same films over and over again, and he marveled at the way the actors performed for audiences through the eye of the all-seeing but invisible camera. In these early days of theater cinema, projectors were still hand-cranked, used dangerously hot carbon-arc lamps, and required the changing of colorizing “tinting plates” as instructed by the studio in a set of printed instructions, all of which Jimmy quickly mastered. It was his hardest job to date, but the one he loved the most. If it were up to him, his summer at the Strand would last until he was old enough to run the family business, then find himself a wife, have children of his own, and live happily ever after. His ultimate dream, unlike most of his ancestors, was to stay firmly rooted to the family. As far as he was concerned, he never had to see Paree.

  However, Alexander had other plans for his only son. He wanted him to follow in his footsteps and attend Princeton. About this there could be no discussion. The one time young Jimmy suggested to his dad, ever so politely, that he might want to go to Annapolis instead, to pursue a career in the navy and possibly become a pilot, Alexander slammed the door shut. His boy was Princeton bound, end of story.

  There was, however, one small problem that might still upend the grand family plan. Jimmy was, at best, an average student. With his popularity having grown among the other students due to his one-man shows at the same time his father had gone off to war, he had slacked off on his studies, to the point where it appeared he would not likely be accepted at the famed Ivy institution. To solve that problem, upon his graduation from Model, Alexander enrolled Jimmy in Mercersburg Academy prep school, a hundred miles southeast of Indiana.

  And so it was that in the fall of 1923, fifteen-year-old Jimmy Stewart left home for the first time, leaving behind his sisters, his mother, and his father for what would be a five-year residence at Mercersburg Academy. The occasional holiday visit and one extended convalescence were the closest he would ever get to returning to the life he dreamed of living in Indiana, Pennsylvania, filled with “hard work, community spirit, God, church and family.”

  In the years to come, he would unfailingly recall his youth with affection and melancholia, particularly when he spoke of his father and how he had left once to go off to war, only to return to say good-bye again, this time when he sent his only boy, Jimmy, away by himself to a far-off place called Mercersburg, a hundred miles east of Eden.

  2

  “There wasn’t a role for me in the first play, so I was assigned to play my accordion in the Old Silver Beach Theater Tearoom next to the theater. The patrons talked right through my playing, in fact, some just told me to shut up. So I bowed out…deeply humiliated, and took to building sets, painting scenery and was sweeping out until they had some bit roles for me…. Anyway, I’m grateful to [those] patrons, because they were really responsible for my career as an actor.”

  —JIMMY STEWART

  Mercersburg Academy is located in the small town of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, not far from the Maryland border. In 1923 it was considered one of the most prestigious prep schools in the Northeast, known for its ability to place a large number of its all-male graduates in Princeton and other Ivy League universities. The majority of its students were from well-to-do families, the sons of the wealthy who perhaps needed and could certainly afford a little extra attention and assistance to qualify for entrance into their family’s preferred university.

  Nevertheless, Mercersburg had not been Alexander’s first choice for Jim. He’d preferred Kiski Prep because of its strong athletic program, believing football training would build up Jimmy’s tall but still slight physique. However, Kiski wouldn’t accept the boy because of his poor academic record, and at first neither would Mercersburg, until Alexander called in a favor from the Indiana Presbyterian Church, whose influence extended from the steps of the prep school straight to the ivied halls of Princeton.1

  Mercersburg had begun as a German Reform seminary, and Presbyterianism remained a heavy presence on the school’s campus. “Offenses” such as student drinking, gambling, or, as stated in the catalog, “other signs of immorality” were not tolerated. First offenders were subject to weekend-long sessions in detention; repeaters faced irreversible expulsion. None of this posed any threat to Jimmy in the five years he spent at Mercersburg, from the age of fifteen until he graduated a young man of twenty. Despite his raging hormones, he not only never had a steady girlfriend, but also, to the best that anyone who was there has ever been able to recall, never went on a single date. It wasn’t that he didn’t have time for socializing. Rather, he feared going out with the “wrong” type of girls, the ones his high school friends had warned him about—as had his parents, if more discreetly, no less effectively. Moreover, his father had jokingly told him shortly before he left for Mercersburg that if he didn’t do well there, he would shoot him.

  The regime
n at Mercersburg was tough. By the end of the first year, a full quarter of the freshman class had been given their walking papers. Even the highly supervised social program was no walk in the sun. Carefully prescreened females, the young daughters of the most prominent families in Chambersburg, were bused in on Saturday nights, invited to attend unremittingly formal “mixers.” All the Mercersburg boys were required to be present and wear full tuxedoes, the women ball gowns, and the only physical contact allowed between them was when their fingertips touched during fast-dancing to such in-person big-band stars as a very young Jimmy Dorsey.

  The following Mondays always saw a rise in “private consultations” between the boys having the most difficulty dealing with their fully charged batteries and the school’s religious advisors. Prayer was the answer, they were told, along with a healthy dose of active patriotism to burn off their “extra energy.” Allegiance to God and the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt, in that order, were Mercersburg’s prescribed cure-alls for any and all nonspiritual thoughts, feelings, or urges.

  When Jimmy wasn’t holed up in his room studying, he thought about joining one of the school’s mandatory extracurricular teams or organizations. Developing teamwork skills was considered an essential part of the Mercersburg program, especially for students like him who, unless forced to, would prefer to never leave their rooms except to go to class. He half-heartedly tried out for the football team, knowing his slight, nonmuscular 140 pounds did not work to his advantage. He made third string, but only because the school did not allow for the absolute rejection of any student who tried out for anything. However, everyone knew that third string meant no string, and he soon voluntarily quit.