Jimmy Stewart

by Marc Eliot

  Just behind the reporters were a group of Jimmy’s female fans squealing at the sight of him. Young girls flashed their smiles his way, while the older ones in the crowd were equally enthusiastic, if less demonstrative, about seeing Stewart. “I’ve followed Jimmy through all of his pictures,” sixty-six-year-old Mrs. G. S. Carney told the Los Angeles Examiner, having traveled all the way from Milwaukee just to see her favorite “boy” take the oath of induction.

  All of which bothered Jimmy. He thought he was entering the army, not shooting a new movie, that he was now James Maitland Stewart of Roster #35, Company B, not James Stewart, movie star. This was about a real war. Didn’t anyone get that?

  He spent his first few days at Fort MacArthur, in California, a holding camp where the aptitude of the draftees was tested before their assignments were handed out. He was subjected to the usual itinerary of new inductees: KP (close-order drilling, guard duty, and kitchen police, better known in the army as potato peeling). One afternoon during KP he was instructed to peel a small mountain of potatoes. The next day, after another, double dose of the same chore, Jimmy decided maybe he ought to try to transfer to the Air Corps, at the time a more elite branch of the regular army, where the grunts preparing potatoes took a backseat to the glamour boys who flew the B-17s and B-24s. He certainly felt qualified, having logged more than four hundred hours in the air as a private pilot.2

  Despite Jimmy’s desire to, however, there were obstacles that made it unlikely the army would let him. The first was his fame. If anything happened to him, it would be a public relations disaster. The second was his relatively slight frame. According to the military, combat flying required a certain ruggedness no one thought he had. The third was his age. At thirty-two, he was six years over the standard pilot ceiling. For the first time, he decided to use some of the considerable studio influence that he had to this point disdained. He made a few calls to MGM, and a day later, without explanation, he was allowed to transfer to Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, California, just south of San Francisco, where he began training for service in the army’s Air Corps. At Moffett, Jimmy was housed in a small tent with four other soldiers, as the regular barracks were overflowing with wartime recruits. He was overjoyed, believing he had gotten around the army’s rules. And for the moment, it appeared that he had.

  The first couple of weeks, a steady stream of reporters came by to try to catch a glimpse of Jimmy, and get him to say a few words. The lucky few who did all wound up filing essentially the same story, the fish-out-of-water celebrity angle, with Jimmy modestly insisting he was “just one of the boys.”

  As these first weeks passed, he began to sense that something was wrong, that he was being given an especially easy pass through his basic training, that he was little more than a celebrity recruitment poster boy. It was a situation that reminded him of the plot of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, only this time he was being made to play the dupe in real life. Even when it seemed every other soldier he knew was being assigned to immediate overseas duty, he remained stateside. With an increasing steadiness, he began to return to Los Angeles, in civilian clothes, to hang out with his friends and occasionally drop by the studio to see what was happening.

  Meanwhile, the Hollywood PR machine rolled on. In April, Jimmy’s salary, it was reported, had gone from a princely $3,000 a week to a soldierly $21. The facts, however true, were embellished with the “scoop” that every week he sent Leland Hayward a check for $2.10, representing his agent commission on the new salary. Cute, patriotic, and utterly false. Nevertheless, the army made sure the note to which Jimmy supposedly attached his first check somehow found its way into the national press:

  Dear Leland:

  Enclosed find $2.10 which is commission owed you by me from my salary of the month just passed. Leland, I would like to go into a little matter with you. Matters have come to such a point that I must get in touch with you about the situation in the thing I am doing now.

  Now, Leland, you know me, I never complain about anything and no matter what the conditions are I don’t make a fuss; but just go along and make the best of things without a kick. You know that Leland, and I don’t think you could say that since you have been my agent, I have made unreasonable demands or in any way gotten that—that—well—star complex. I hate to use the word “star” because you know how I hate that word.

  But, Leland, to get to the point, I am not happy in this thing I am doing now. This is for several reasons. Now they seem very small unimportant reasons, but I assure you they are not, because you know me, Leland. I don’t let little petty things bother me like some actors and actresses I could name. Now I’ll just take one of those reasons I’m unhappy. Well—it’s the dressing room they have given me over here. It’s a great big barn of a place, but I wouldn’t mind that because you know me, but the thing is that they have put 30 guys in here with me. Thirty guys, Leland. I don’t know who they are—they aren’t actors—and they have brought beds in here and are lying around. I don’t know. I was treated much better than this when I was over at Warner Bros.

  You can say what you want to, Leland, you have to put up a front in this business…now the other reason is a bigger reason, Leland. It’s about the salary you got me for this job. Just look at the commission I have enclosed—and think it over—two dollars and 10 cents!!! Now I could go up to the front office and raise hell myself, but I remember when I signed with you, you said that any time I had any problem to just come to you and you would go up and talk to them about it, and get it straightened out. So I hope you will attend to this at once.

  Well, fellow, I’ll see you soon. Your client and pal.

  JIMMY STEWART

  The widespread May publication of the “note” turned Jimmy’s personal irritation into a full-blown rash of annoyance, and a nasty one at that, especially since it was most likely written by MGM’s PR department, or the army, or even, possibly, Hayward himself, as part of some overall plan to publicize and exploit Jimmy during his military service.

  That June, he attended a party at Judy Garland’s house.

  Over Christmas he was given a two-week leave, when he went to L.A. and stayed with the Fondas (Henry was also on leave); he dressed up as Santa Claus on the big day to entertain the Fondas’ two young children, Jane, four, and Peter, a tender one.

  In September, he was given special permission to travel to Indiana, Pennsylvania, to appear at a weekend benefit for the Allied Relief Fund, where he performed some magic tricks with childhood friend and now professional magician Bill Neff. The local press had a field day, but Alexander was not pleased that Jimmy had performed out of uniform. It was, in fact, hard to catch Jimmy anywhere in his military uniform, a conscious decision he made in the hopes that it would lessen the barrage of photographers who were always skulking, hoping to get a PR shot of him decked out in full military regalia. Not long after, Alexander and Bessie came to California, to Moffett Field for a visit, and over dinner Alexander pulled out a photo that he had ripped from the local Indiana newspaper showing Jimmy in civvies at a local Hollywood nightclub with actress Frances Robinson. Despite his protest that the girl was an MGM starlet and that he had been asked by the studio while on leave to accompany her for the evening, Alexander was not satisfied. This was not soldiering, he told his son. It was something, but not soldiering, at least not the Stewart-Maitland way.

  In December, he was ordered by the army to participate with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Walter Huston, and Lionel Barrymore in an all-networks live radio propaganda broadcast entitled “We Hold These Truths.” Ostensibly to commemorate the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Bill of Rights, it really was to focus the nation’s anger on the Japanese for the bombing of Pearl Harbor and rally a united domestic front to support America’s entrance into World War Two. Jimmy’s contribution to the show came down to these words, referring to the famous McCarthy marionette: “In our efforts to make the Army Air Corps the finest in the world, we�
��ve enlisted men from the backwoods. We’ve enlisted men from the front woods. But this is the first time we’ve ever enlisted the woods themselves.” Despite the frivolity of his comments, he was quite moved by the show’s overall theme and he reportedly broke down in tears after it was broadcast.

  In January 1942, a month after the Japanese attack, Jimmy attended a birthday party at Hollywood’s famed Roosevelt Hotel in honor of President Roosevelt. Because it was now officially wartime, he was instructed by the army to show up in full military regalia and ordered to have his picture taken by any and all reporters present. The next day it was plastered on the front page of dozens of newspapers across the country.

  That same month Jimmy received his commission as a second lieutenant, Army air force.

  On February 26, 1942, he was asked by the Academy to present the Best Actor award at the upcoming annual Oscars ceremony. The organization’s president, Walter Wanger, made one special request—that he show up in uniform. He felt he had no choice but to comply, amid a couple of other side skirmishes already taking place that night. The first was the battle between Joan Fontaine (nominated for Best Actress, Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion) and her sister Olivia de Havilland (nominated for Best Actress, Mitchell Leisen’s Hold Back the Dawn). This was one fight that Stewart was loath to take sides in. The other, even bigger story, at least within the walls of the studios, was between William Randolph Hearst and Orson Welles over the fate of Citizen Kane. Hearst, having failed to buy back the negative to destroy it, was threatening not only to withhold any advertising for the film in his all-powerful news organization, but to ban all ads from the studio, something that could conceivably bankrupt RKO.3

  Amidst these internecine struggles, no one, it appeared to Jimmy, had any concern or made any reference to the war. The Academy had decided a banquet was perhaps not the best format in light of the current events, and wanted to avoid making it appear that Hollywood was fiddling while Hawaii burned. At the last minute, the banquet was called a dinner, and everything else went on as if Hollywood operated in a cultural vacuum. Once again, the site was the Biltmore Bowl, with Bob Hope officiating.

  Jimmy appeared in full dress uniform, down to the same necktie he wore every time he flew, an old superstition that remained with him for the rest of his life. He was at the Biltmore only a few minutes when he ran into his pal Burgess Meredith, who, as it turned out, was Olivia de Havilland’s official escort that evening. When Burgess told him he was being inducted into the army the following morning, Jimmy broke into a huge grin, shook his hand, and congratulated him. Only then did he turn and nod once, wordlessly, to de Havilland.

  When it was Jimmy’s turn to give out an award, traditionally announced by the previous year’s winner, he strode up to the podium and received a standing ovation. Once the applause subsided, he quickly opened the envelope, looked up and out into the audience, and announced that Gary Cooper had won the Best Actor Oscar for his role as the reluctant war hero in Howard Hawks’s Sergeant York. Not lost on Stewart was the confluence of ironies, as precisely overlapping as the rhythm section of an army band. Hawks’s movie saluted a World War One draftee, played by Gary Cooper, a real-life civilian actor who had never served a day in the military now being awarded for playing a soldier by a real-life one who was a temporarily sidelined actor.

  Following Cooper’s “aw shucks” acceptance speech, the two men walked off the stage, both of them forgetting to take the Oscar with them.

  For the rest of 1942, Jimmy did little more than make personal appearances as required by the army—most of which took place in Hollywood, which was why, instead of assigning him flight duty overseas, the powers-that-were stationed him in Stockton, California, at the military air field. On March 15, he appeared on a radio program called “Plays for Americans” broadcast nationally on NBC, in which he played a soldier who writes back home to his family to explain to them why he was fighting in a far-off land. Again, the irony was almost too much for Jimmy to bear. On April 4, he narrated an episode of the weekly war documentary This Is War on the radio.

  In April, he was transferred to Mather Field, near Sacramento, California, for further classes in flight training. However, his duties were kept minimal, as the army still considered him a major PR tool. At some point while at Mather Field, before he made the actual move, he spoke at length to Leland Hayward about the increasing frustrations of being used as a military figurehead. Leland happened to know a couple of senior Air Corps officers, who in turn went to Gen. Kenneth McNaughton, who then helped arrange for Jimmy to be transferred from Mather to the Kirtland Bombardier Training School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he would have the opportunity to do hands-on training for bombardier students.

  Throughout this time, Jimmy continually made visits to the Los Angeles home of Leland Hayward, Margaret Sullavan, and their newborn baby. One evening Hayward invited Dinah Shore to join them for dinner. A pop crooner and a minor movie star, she had become involved with the Hollywood Canteen, a social hangout for GIs frequented by celebrities who did all the serving. A romance between Shore and Jimmy began that night, serious enough for Shore to begin making regular visits to his base, often staying at a nearby hotel with him. Friends later reported that Stewart had intended to marry Shore in Las Vegas during an upcoming weekend leave, but supposedly when they got as far as Highway 15, the main link between L.A. and the gambling mecca, he got cold feet and called off the ceremony.4

  In July, he appeared in the first of two military-funded propaganda shorts, Winning Your Wings, an Army Air Force training film made by the First Motion Picture Unit of the army, produced by Warner Bros. and the War Activities Board of the Motion Picture Industry, aimed at recruiting young men. Colonel Henry “Pop” Arnold, who would later become the Air Corps chief of staff, credited Jimmy’s performance in the film with helping to recruit more than a hundred thousand enlistees. One of the technical advisors on it was a young actor Jimmy had gotten to know a little in Hollywood. His name was Ronald Reagan.

  The second film, Fellow Americans, recapped the attack on Pearl Harbor, meant to remind America of why it had gone to war. By this time, Stewart was totally fed up with what he felt was the army’s endless exploitation of him. When he had the opportunity during filming to speak directly with Colonel Arnold, he was, for once, told the truth: the War Department thought the actor too big a risk to send into action. Should anything happen to him, it could demoralize the entire nation. This filled Jimmy with an even deeper despair. He decided to make one last, desperate appeal to his commanding officer, who listened patiently at his desk as Jimmy stood before him and poured out his heart.

  At the end of their meeting, Colonel Arnold promised the actor he would not have to make any more public-relations appearances. He kept his word; from that point on, Jimmy was not seen or heard again in any army promotional vehicles for the duration of the war. To underscore that promise, he personally assigned Jimmy to Hobbs Field, New Mexico, to learn how to fly the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator. Only those sent overseas were trained on these heavy bombers. Many of those Jimmy trained with went directly into combat and died. The list of casualties was filled with men he’d gotten to know, men he’d personally taught how to fly the war machines. It unnerved him to the point where, despite the fact that he hadn’t been inside any house of worship for years (except for weddings), he began attending regular Sunday-morning Protestant services.

  He was officially billed as “Lieutenant James Stewart” on July 20, 1942, when the army granted him permission to reprise his role in The Philadelphia Story along with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, as part of a “special victory show” radio version of the hit movie. Jimmy believed it would be his last acting assignment before being sent overseas, though instead of a combat assignment, he was sent to Gowen Field in Boise, Idaho, to instruct pilots of the 52nd Squadron of the 29th Bombardment Group. Filled with despair, Jimmy called Colonel Arnold, who told him he was being classified as “static personne
l,” army lingo for designated stateside duty. The truth was, the colonel told him, even if he wasn’t going to be used for propaganda purposes, he still was far too valuable to the morale of the country to be sent into combat.

  And then, in August, everything changed. Col. Robert Terrill, Commanding Officer of the 445th Bombardment Group (Heavy), a squadron that had been formed only four months earlier, was looking for a new squadron operations officer good enough to be able to lead his men into combat and get them home safely, even if their planes were hit. Colonel Arnold called Colonel Terrill, who was a close friend, and told him Captain Stewart was, without question, the best qualified man for the job. Not long after, Jimmy was officially transferred to the 445th, based in Sioux City, Iowa, and began preparations for active duty. A few weeks after his arrival in Sioux City, he had impressed Colonel Terrill enough to be placed in command of the 703rd Bomb Squadron division, consisting of a dozen B-24 bombers and 350 soldiers and fliers.

  In October, just weeks before he was scheduled to leave the country, Jimmy received a surprise visit at Sioux City from his parents, Alex and Bessie. Unspoken words between father and son made it a difficult time but one that meant everything in the world to Jimmy. On the last day of their visit, just as he was preparing to leave for the airport, Alex handed his son a letter. That night, alone in his bunk, he read it. “My dear Jim boy,” it began. “Soon after you read this, you will be on your way to the worst sort of danger. I have had this in mind for a long time and I am very much concerned…but Jim, I am banking on the enclosed copy of the 91st Psalm. The thing that takes the place of fear and worry is the promise of these words. I feel sure that God will lead you through this mad experience…I can say no more. I only continue to pray. Good-by, my dear. God bless you and keep you. I love you more than I can tell you.”5

  It was the first time his father had ever actually told Jimmy that he loved him. When he finished the letter, he cried himself into a deep and fitful sleep.