by Marc Eliot
21
“I’ve never got much out of rehearsing because the camera isn’t going. I need to hear lights-camera-slate-speak to trigger me. All these fellows talk about why so many takes. Well, it’s giving you a chance to stumble upon that moment that works. I’m suspicious when somebody says, ‘We rehearsed three weeks, shot in ten days.’”
—JIMMY STEWART
Stewart took some of the earnings he had made with The Glenn Miller Story and Rear Window and bought out his neighbor on North Roxbury Drive. He then tore down the existing house and turned the property into an enormous planting garden for Gloria to use as her retreat, especially when he was off on location and she wanted some privacy from the children and their governess.
He also bought himself a new Volvo, his modest preference over a Mercedes, the usual auto de rigueur for someone of his stature in Beverly Hills. He preferred the boxy, cranky Swedish car, he said, because it had a high roof that accommodated his height and lots of legroom. He drove this first one for six years before finally and reluctantly replacing it—with another Volvo.
After the fevered, curved-wrists-and-darting-eyes display he had put on for Rear Window, Jimmy wanted to turn down the heat a bit and deal with a subject he was (at least consciously) more familiar with. The film was to be about the Strategic Air Command, a vital new addition to the nation’s military forces during the early years of the cold war. Jimmy was an impassioned supporter of SAC, as it was known, and said so to Newsweek, declaring, with what was for him unusually hyperbolic fervor, that it was “the biggest single factor in the security of the world.” He managed to convince Paramount to make the film on the basis of its political importance (although the studio, riding the crest of Stewart’s success, would likely have made a film out of the phone book if he had asked them to).
In subsequent interviews before, during, and after the making of the movie, Jimmy continually stressed its political importance as a way to convince the public of the necessity of spending millions of dollars to develop weapons delivery systems. He was always careful to differentiate between what he called a service film, which, as everyone in Hollywood and the government knew, was code for “propaganda,” and an out-and-out war film, which he still steadfastly refused to do: “For a long time I wanted to make a service film, but it was tough. There’s been so many good pictures about all branches of the army and navy and marines and air force. And I didn’t want to do another war story. Then I thought about SAC. Nobody knew anything about SAC, the air arm entrusted to deliver the atom or hydrogen bomb. The bomb’s no good if it can’t be delivered.”
Jimmy had other reasons for wanting to make this film, one of which had to do with his strained relationship with Fonda. It had not been overlooked by Jimmy that Fonda had been away on Broadway for years playing the ultraliberal Mr. Roberts in the play of the same name, and had received raves in the Josh Logan production that now seemed headed for the movies. On one of the few times they had gotten together during Fonda’s New York run, Jimmy had told him the play was too preachy, too political, and wouldn’t make a good movie, to which Fonda scoffed. Also, as early as 1951, against Jimmy’s advice, Fonda, in New York, led and spoke at a series of Times Square rallies urging people to vote for liberal Democrat nominee Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 presidential campaign, which added a few degrees to the chill between them. Jimmy was an ardent supporter of the Republican nominee, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. After the election, Jimmy believed there was no need for direct celebrity campaigning on the issues of the day, which is why his military movie, unlike the play Mr. Roberts, dealt with programs he felt were necessary to fight the cold war. The result was what amounted to a two-hour Technicolor, wide-screen piece of propaganda to show off the American military might, carrying the not-so-subtle title Strategic Air Command.
The film contained echoes of many of Jimmy’s previous postwar hits, in its attempt to humanize a story that was essentially mechanistic in nature. Once again he was a major league baseball player, recalling his portrayal of Monty Stratton, only this time a reservist with both legs intact recalled to active duty. The script was written by Beirne Lay Jr., a longtime friend who was, like Stewart, a colonel in the Reserves, and Valentine Davies, who had cowritten The Glenn Miller Story. June Allyson was drafted to service once again as his devoted, if decidedly maternal, let-me-fix-your-collar Protestant housewife.
Sensing the film would need some heft to hold up the integrity of its preachy message, Jimmy prevailed upon Anthony Mann to helm it, which Mann agreed to do, providing that Jimmy, continuing hot as a six-gun at the box office, promised to return the favor and appear in at least one more movie for him. Jimmy said yes immediately. When producer Sam Briskin went to the air force to get its permission and cooperation, Gen. Curtis LeMay enthusiastically assured him everything would be done to make the film as authentic as possible, that is, as long as the military had final say over the script. As for Jimmy, his only proviso was that the film have heroic combat scenes that glorified war.
The film, released in the studio’s new wide-screen Academy Award–winning screen process VistaVision, appeared to be about little more than a bunch of planes, its human characters practically afterthoughts in the majestic presentation of American military might.
The critics were united in their feeling that the film had no blood, no emotion, no story, and no drama, and that both its leads were far too old for the parts they were playing (Jimmy was forty-seven when he made it and looked every day of it, despite the fact that his character was supposed to be an active major league pitcher; Allyson, at thirty-seven, was still playing the young, sweet, childless housewife). Nevertheless, America’s preoccupation with the cold war was supercharged with enough high-test to jet-propel Strategic Air Command to the sixth-highest-grossing-picture spot of 1955.
The ongoing screen “affair” between Jimmy and Allyson became something of a joke in both the Dick Powell/June Allyson and Jimmy Stewart/Gloria Stewart households, a joke, that is, with a slight pinch. This is how Allyson recalled that period: “When Richard [Powell] and I got together with our friends Jimmy and Gloria Stewart, Richard kidded Jimmy and me about the string of hit movies that had made us the reigning romantic team in Hollywood. As Gloria put it, jokingly, but with just a bit of an edge, ‘June is Jimmy’s perfect wife—in movies—and I’m his imperfect wife.’ And one time Richard [at a banquet] said in front of our whole table, ‘June here must be a good wife. Jimmy Stewart has married her three times.’”
That same year, 1955, Ernest Borgnine won Best Actor for the title role in Delbert Mann’s Marty, which also won Best Picture. A young, up-and-coming comic performer by the name of Jack Lemmon won a Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in John Ford’s screen version of Mr. Roberts, which starred Henry Fonda, who re-created his award-winning Broadway performance for the screen. Neither Fonda, back in Hollywood after seven years on its “gray” list, nor Jimmy Stewart, voted the most popular actor in Hollywood, were nominated for anything.1
Bill Goetz left Universal late in 1954 to pursue what he believed were the greener pastures of the movement toward independent production, wherein a feature was produced with little or no financing from a studio, and then leased back at a profit, gaining distribution by giving to the studio a piece of the action. Goetz then struck a deal with Columbia to distribute two films that would prove to be the final collaborations between Anthony Mann and Jimmy Stewart. It was Mann who discovered the source for the first, a novel by Thomas T. Flynn called The Man from Laramie, which, at least to his way of thinking, had distinct echoes of King Lear, the Shakespearean play he had long wanted to bring to the screen. In Laramie, Jimmy once again plays a Mann-sized, grizzled, embittered loner out for vengeance, this time as a cavalry officer in mufti looking to avenge his brother’s death. As critic Richard Jameson described the film, “The classical base of the drama remains strong as bedrock, and no one who witnesses it ever forgets the most striking moment of physical ago
ny in all Westerns: Stewart’s horror and rage as [Alex] Nicol deliberately shoots him through the palm of the hand.”
Much of the film, yet another of Mann’s Oedipal-sibling rondos, was shot on location in the New Mexico town of Coronado, on land owned by the Pueblo Indian Nation, and in Santa Fe. In it, Jimmy and Mann appeared to be in a macho sibling rivalry–like dueling contest to see who was going to outlast the other. Mann’s sadistic streak, always lurking just below the surface, hit its peak during Laramie, complemented by Jimmy’s willingness to please. As Elliot Stein pointed out, “In The Man from Laramie, the last of the Mann-Stewart Westerns, Stewart isn’t from Laramie, or anyplace else in particular—he’s as rootless as all of Mann’s other heroes and has come to town to track down the man responsible for his brother’s death. There are more warped sadistic characters and Freudian tangles here than anywhere else on Mann’s map of the West—Stewart is humiliated, lassoed, dragged through salt flats, and in the most brutal scene in any ’50s western, shot in the hand point-blank.”
Mann told one interviewer that The Man from Laramie was his grand summation of the five-year collaboration with Jimmy as he described with great relish what he had put him through this time around: “That [film] distilled our relationship. I reprised themes and situations by pushing them to their paroxysms. So the band of cowboys surround Jimmy and rope him as they did before in Bend of the River, but here I shot him through the hand!…I benefited from CinemaScope and from a perfectly harmonious crew…[and was gratified that at the end of our run] Jimmy wound up…in first place in the Top Ten!”
Jimmy, for his part, had little to say about the grueling experience. Approaching fifty, he could hear as well as feel his bones begin to creak, and upon completing The Man from Laramie graciously surrendered the chance to play in the next scheduled film of Mann’s two-feature deal for Columbia, The Last Frontier. (After trying and failing to get Jimmy to change his mind, a disappointed Mann then turned to Victor Mature for the part. When the film opened, without Jimmy’s chemistry to ignite Mann’s explosive vision, it slipped quickly into oblivion, where it remains to this day.)
The Man from Laramie finished production in November 1954; three weeks later, after what was for him a disturbing phone call from his eighty-two-year-old father back in Indiana, Jimmy immediately packed up the family and headed home. Over the phone, Alexander had, almost matter-of-factly, as if he were ordering a barrel of roofing nails, informed his son that he was getting remarried.
The news shocked Jimmy, who listened silently as his father described his bride-to-be, a seventy-six-year-old Canadian widow by the name of J. J. Stothard of St. John, New Brunswick, Canada. Barely a year had passed since Bessie’s death, and here was his father taking another woman. And one whom he had known for at least six years. Why? Jimmy wondered. What was the reason? What was the point?
As was his way, he kept his feelings to himself, said nothing to Alexander, and even agreed to serve as best man at the small reception planned for later that month. If he felt a sense of betrayal in the air, Jimmy wasn’t really certain who was being betrayed.
Jimmy, Gloria, and the kids left for Indiana on December 12, and had hardly had any time to meet the bride before the ceremonies. After the wedding, Alexander announced to one and all he was going to take his new wife to Hollywood for Christmas, so she could spend time with his boy’s family.
Jimmy said nothing, just nodded his head up and down in apparent agreement.
Also invited both to the wedding and the reception that followed were Leland Hayward and Margaret Sullavan. Although divorced, they remained on friendly terms. Hayward, eager to get back into the picture business, had just acquired the rights to the story of Charles A. Lindbergh’s historic 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic, which had become the greatest media story of all time, one that transformed the skinny kid from St. Louis into an international icon. After selling his agency and moving east to accommodate his wife’s desire to play on Broadway, Hayward once more wanted to produce movies, and he felt that the Lindbergh saga was a can’t-miss vehicle.
As soon as Jimmy arrived back in Hollywood, he had Wasserman get Jack Warner to approach Hayward about the possibility of his playing the lead. There was a reason Jimmy didn’t go directly to Hayward; in reality, there was little chance he could get to play the part of a character twenty-five years his junior, once nicknamed the “flying fool” because of his idealistic youth and the folly of his dream. Jimmy wanted to spare Hayward (and himself) the embarrassment of what was almost certain to be a turn-down.
He was right; it was. Wasserman then urged Jimmy to talk directly with Hayward, which he reluctantly agreed to do. Hayward dealt straight and tough with Jimmy, telling him that he was approaching fifty, looked it, and that there was no longer anything dreamlike about him. Sorry, impossible.
“Lindbergh’s flight was a great event in history,” Jimmy told an interviewer. “But my good friend Leland was dead set against me because of my age. Then, last fall, when my eighty-four-year-old dad came out to Hollywood on his honeymoon, he busted everything wide open.”
A few days later, with Alex and his bride still in town, Hayward invited them, Jimmy, and Gloria out for a dinner in Beverly Hills, during which, to Stewart’s mixed feelings of pride, hurt, and embarrassment, Alexander continued to lobby for Jimmy to get the part. “My dad had found out that I wanted to play Lindbergh, but there wasn’t a prayer of it. You can imagine how I felt when he suddenly whispered to me in the middle of dinner, ‘Son, I’m going to fix things for you.’ Then, before I could stop him, he asked Hayward his plans for the coming movie, and listened only until Hayward said he was looking for a young, unknown actor to play the role.
“Dad acted as if someone had shot him out of a cannon. Smacking his fist on the table, he leaped to his feet and began shouting at Hayward, ‘Unknown young actor, indeed! What’s the matter with my boy Jimmy? You’ve been his best friend for years, and now you’re deserting him! There’s only one man who can play Lindbergh—my son!’
“Of course, I was dying with embarrassment throughout all this commotion. I kept muttering, ‘Now Dad…’ But he went on ranting.”
It was an altogether humiliating evening for Jimmy, and everybody knew it. The next day, Leland quietly took him to lunch with Billy Wilder, the director and co-writer already hired for the film. Jimmy remembered his throat feeling as if a vise had it clamped shut, with every bite of food he took having to fight its way down to an already queasy stomach. They talked about everything that afternoon except the film and who was to play young Lindbergh. And with good reason. At the time Lindbergh was lobbying hard for Hayward to cast John Kerr to play him in the film; he was a young, good-looking actor just breaking into bigger films and far closer in age and temperament than Stewart was.2
Alexander, meanwhile, continued on in Hollywood, taking up one cause after another. As Jimmy later recalled, “One Sunday morning, he got up and said, ‘Where’s the church?’ He could only mean the Presbyterian church, of course. I stalled, saying, ‘It’s a long way over that direction. I—I haven’t exactly located it yet.’
“He left the house with a purposeful step. Two hours later, he returned, trailing four men behind him. They entered the living room, and Dad said briskly, ‘I guess you didn’t search in the right direction, Jim. The church is two blocks to the north.’
“‘Oh,’ I said, unable to think of any other reply.
“‘These gentlemen are the elders,’ Dad continued. ‘And they told me they are having difficulty raising funds for a new church building they need. I told them I had a son who was a movie actor and making a lot of money and might be willing to discuss their problem with them.’ Thereupon, Dad marched out of the room, leaving the embarrassed elders and me facing each other. We did discuss the problem, and I joined the fund drive; and I joined the church.”
In March 1955, eager to get away from everyone and everything having to do with the movie, entitled The Spirit of St. Loui
s, Jimmy took Gloria and the kids and flew to Tokyo to attend the opening of Rear Window. He was surprised and delighted at the reception he got there, considering his strong war record (even though he had fought exclusively in the European theater). When asked by a reporter if he felt any resentment from the Japanese, Jimmy replied, “None whatsoever. The United States was very wise in letting Japan keep its Emperor and not imprisoning him or putting him to death…and they all adore General MacArthur, who did such a magnificent job for our country and for Japan. The Japanese people realize the United States wanted to do its best for them. When General MacArthur first took over, they thought they’d probably all be killed.”
The Stewarts also made stops in Macao, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. In Macao, Jimmy was able to look over the border into what he called “Red” China, and spoke of Mao’s Communist revolution having done nothing so much as renewed his and the free world’s belief in democracy, and how important it was to continue to spread the message of freedom to the four corners via American movies.
“You can hardly compare Hong Kong and Japan,” Gloria told Louella Parsons, who had accompanied the family on the trip to report on it for the Los Angeles Examiner. “Hong Kong is completely cosmopolitan and is made up of all races and nations. In Japan there are only Japanese, but in Hong Kong you see Arabs, Chinese, Africans, Americans and English. There is a great air of mystery and intrigue about it, too.” Turning to her husband, she then urged Jimmy to tell Louella “about the self-appointed spies who come from Red China with secrets to sell!”
Jimmy smiled in agreement but said nothing.
Upon his return to the States, Jimmy accepted an offer to appear on TV as a guest on the struggling Ronald Reagan–hosted G.E. Theater, a half-hour anthology of the old West whose stories always carried a message underscoring individualism, freedom, and democracy. Jimmy, among the hottest actors in the movies at the time, always maintained that he did the appearance as a personal favor to Reagan, one of his oldest and dearest friends, who happened to be the coldest actor anywhere at the moment, his last gig prior to the TV series a nightclub act in Las Vegas.3 Just the mere acceptance of a dramatic part on the tube (as opposed to the jokey guest shots on Jack Benny’s show or the journalistic Sunday-night Sullivan hour) was enough to trigger talk in the trades that Stewart was having career problems as well. He was, after all, never a conventional leading man, those marshmallow bags around his delicate WASP eyes had begun to thicken and droop, those veins in his complexion had become more visible, and his cheekbones looked to have exhaled, sending billows to his jaws like coming attractions of jowls. His shoulders, never broad, began to ever so slightly stoop. The diminutive TV screen, whether intended or not, regularly reduced flaws like these, which is why it became the perfect cosmetic for many of the aging male and female stars of Hollywood, who found second wind for their fading film careers and became huge TV stars on the smaller-than-life medium (among them Dick Powell, Ward Bond, George Montgomery, Loretta Young, Lucille Ball, and dozens of others). Those able to resist the tube did, including Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, and Cary Grant.
