by Marc Eliot
The next thing fifty-two-year-old Jimmy Stewart did was to appear as an aging cowboy on an episode of one of NBC’s hour anthologies, Ford Startime. He followed that by playing himself, with Gloria at his side, on yet another hilarious episode of the Jack Benny Program.
PART SEVEN
Valor and Death, Disillusionment and Resurrection
As Sam Burnett, the aging cowboy, in Andrew V. McLaglen’s
The Rare Breed (1966).
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“Of the westerns, I did one with John Ford, Two Rode Together, that I liked…there was one very long sequence of Widmark and me by the river, done all in one take. It was early in the morning and [Ford] was sort of grouchy and he walked out and for some reason put the camera in the river…. [The actor-director relationship] is a very good one when it works, when you get the thing working.”
—JIMMY STEWART
The woman many considered to have been the only true love of Jimmy’s life, Margaret Sullavan, died by her own hand in the early hours of January 1, 1960. The official cause was listed as an overdose of barbiturates, the intention left purposely vague on the death certificate. Later on it was revealed that she had lost most of her hearing, which made acting live on stage all but impossible. Toward the very end, desperate to get back on the stage, she had taken up lipreading and had landed a part on Broadway in Sweet Love Remembered, a bittersweet title for the movie star who had been unhappily married four times.1 Finally, when she could no longer hear the other actors, she took an overdose of sleeping pills and never woke up.
The news of Sullavan’s passing devastated Jimmy. As was his style, he said nothing about it to the public.
“I love him. That’s…that’s first of all. And that is, of course, intermixed with respect and admiration. He’s just a genius. The way he’ll do a script. Gets it across visually. Hates talk. I just wish there were more people like him…I think he is the best man doing the job.” Jimmy was speaking to Peter Bogdanovich, not about Alfred Hitchcock, as one might expect, or Frank Capra, not even Anthony Mann. He was, instead, referring to John Ford. He had come relatively late to Ford (in both their careers), and was profoundly attracted by what Andrew Sarris later described as the director’s poetic melancholia: “In accepting the inevitability of the present while mourning the past, Ford is a conservative rather than a reactionary.” This perceptive description of the director goes a long way toward explaining how both he and Jimmy were perceived in Hollywood at the dawn of the sixties. Both were aware their star time was nearly over, and yet neither made an attempt, as so many others did, to repeat earlier success, to recapture “the good old days.” Ford especially, but in his way Jimmy as well, made films with an increasing sense of graceful aging about them, as a way to remain dignified in an industry and the culture it reflected that tended to shove the aged to the side like the fallen dead leaves of a season gone by.
When it finally did come to him, Jimmy jumped at the chance to work with Ford, among the most talented of all the directors to emerge during Hollywood’s golden age. He had six Oscars, more than any other director, and in his body of work managed to create a world on the screen in which the action on the screen represented the world, populated with his famous stock company, led by John Wayne, and at various times Ward Bond, Henry Fonda, Harry Carey (Senior and Junior), and John Carradine, among others.
Although each had made dozens of movies, Ford’s and Jimmy’s paths had never cinematically crossed, mostly because of studio restrictions, and that was probably not a bad thing. In retrospect, “Pappy” was a filmmaker for whom physical toughness represented spiritual strength, with the sensitivities of his rugged leading men protected, even if sometimes buried, beneath their actions. One thinks of the fistfight between John Wayne and Victor McLaglen in The Quiet Man(1952) as much a revelation of love as the moment when Wayne sweeps Maureen O’Hara into his arms against the howling winds. Jimmy’s characters, meanwhile, were for the most part just the opposite, men with quiet exteriors, all the rage buried deep within their souls.
In 1960, an independent, low-budget producer by the name of Stan Shpetner had made his reputation by putting out a cheap quickie film built around the Kingston Trio hit song “Tom Dooley.” After two or three more nondescript films, all of which showed a profit, Shpetner acquired the rights to a Will Cook Western novel, Comanche Captives, and brought it to Wasserman and MCA for packaging. Wasserman promptly turned it into a vehicle for the currently out-of-work Stewart and the aging but still viable Ford. He then added Richard Widmark to the mix and sold the film, retitled Two Rode Together, to Columbia, the only studio willing to take a chance on the project, the same studio that had successfully produced Shpetner’s Tom Dooley.2
“I remember the first day I was ever on a set with Ford,” Jimmy later recalled. I was the sheriff in an old Western town and I’m in front of the bar that I own. Ford said, ‘Put your feet up on the bar and put your hat down. You’re sort of snoozing.’ And he didn’t say anything else. He went back and said, ‘Are you ready?’ And this is all there was. I didn’t have anything else to do so I yawned, but I did an immense yawn. My hat almost fell off. Then he said, ‘Cut!’ And I waited for something, and I looked; but he was gone. The cameraman was gone. They went somewhere else to shoot something else. Three days later we were in a different location—I was on a horse or something—Ford came up and said, ‘I liked the yawn,’ and went away. All I ever heard.”
The main problem with the film was Ford’s general lack of interest in it. Jimmy had a conversation with him during production when this first became apparent. “I went up to his office to see him about costume,” he later recalled. “For this first picture we did [together], and of course, he didn’t talk about costume at all. He talked about the Navy…about the war…then a little about…the Navy…and a little more about…the war…he mumbled, and that handkerchief he’s always chewing on…then finally he asked what I oughta wear in this picture. I thought, and he said, now, before you say anything I’ll tell you what you’re going to wear! And he sent the wardrobe man out, brought back a costume and this, this hat!…He asked me what I thought. I said I don’t know and he says, do you have hat-approval in your contract? I said I didn’t know and everybody [started] looking for the contract and they couldn’t find it ’cause I didn’t have one…. [A]fter a while I went out-and I brought my old hat, the hat I’d worn in every Western…old when I got it. So, I put it on. He kinda looked at it for a few moments and then he says, you have hat-approval.”
Ford never felt completely comfortable working with Jimmy, and even less so with Widmark, whom the director considered one of the new generation of too-liberal-leaning actors who had, in his opinion, taken over and subsequently ruined Hollywood.
Two Rode Together was a self-imitative meditation on Indians as seen by those who have suffered at their hands; it paled in comparison to the many films it superficially resembled, including Ford’s own The Searchers (Ford, like Hawks, was fond of doing vague remakes of his favorite movies over and over again). Lacking in Two Rode Together was the majesty, the scope, the depth, and the sense of justice that fueled the emotions of The Searchers’ existential heroes as they wandered through the wilderness looking for spiritual redemption in the form of physical rescue. In Two Rode Together, the motivation is bounty money.
Halfway through production, word reached Ford that his good friend Ward Bond had dropped dead of a heart attack, after which he quickly wrapped the film.
It didn’t open until almost a year later, the end of July 1961, traditionally a time when those films not considered prime summer blockbuster material are released. It was met with critical indifference and generally ignored by audiences, which was fine with Ford, who responded to a critic’s query about it by describing the film as nothing but “a load of crap.”
Stewart was, perhaps not surprisingly, less than enthralled with his experience on the film, and insisted his entire salary be given in his and Gloria’s name to St. Joh
n’s Hospital in Santa Monica, a nonprofit health care center in which they were heavily involved. He had little more to do with movie-making the rest of the year, until November, when he was honored by the Screen Actors Guild for his “outstanding achievement in fostering the finest ideals of the acting profession.” The award was presented by Charlton Heston.
Jimmy finished out the year working on the narration of a documentary salute to former President Dwight Eisenhower, Tribute to a President, broadcast on NBC.
Later in 1961, Jimmy participated in a Cinerama triptych called How the West Was Won, with each of its three segments helmed by a different director, George Marshall, John Ford, and Henry Hathaway. Jimmy did a cameo in Hathaway’s segment, playing the fictional Western pioneer Linus Rawlings (at thirty-four, twenty years younger than Jimmy was at the time) who courts and marries the symbolically named Eve, played by thirty-year-old Carroll Baker, and starts a family whose history parallels the so-called conquest of the West.3 Until production actually started, Jimmy devoted much of his time to the air force. He spent most of February in Washington, D.C., at the Pentagon, amidst all the pageantry and fresh-air optimism of Kennedy’s “Camelot.”
He returned home in April, and even before he had fully unpacked his bags, the Academy asked Jimmy to accept Gary Cooper’s Honorary (noncompetitive) Lifetime Achievement Award “for his many memorable screen performances and the international recognition he, as an individual, has gained for the motion picture industry” because, they said, the actor was too ill to attend. As Jimmy had presented Coop with his Best Actor Oscar in 1942 for his performance in Sergeant York, the Academy thought it would be a nice gesture to have him accept the honorary Award for him.
Although the public did not know it, it was no secret to anyone in Hollywood, including Jimmy, that Coop was on his deathbed. The tall, lean, still-handsome actor, unlike most “honorary recipients,” had actually won two Best Actor Oscars, one for Sergeant York (1941) and another for his portrayal as Sheriff Will Kane in Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952). On-screen he had come to typify the All-American, tall, silent, righteous fellow who would never start a fight but never lose one when provoked. In real life he had been a legendary rabble rouser, a ladies man par excellence (known throughout Hollywood as the actor who talked softly and carrieda big dick), and early in his career a paramount-sized headache for Adolph Zukor, yet no one either in the industry or out of it (except Zukor) ever had a bad word to say about him.
The ceremonies were held on April 17 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, thanks to the many televised industry events, the most famous high school assembly hall in the world. Thousands of “civilians” circled the grounds outside to see what was promised to be Elizabeth Taylor’s first appearance since her near-death the year before following an emergency tracheotomy (that assured her a Best Actress Oscar for her phone-in on Daniel Mann’s adaptation of John O’Hara’s risqué story of a New York City prostitute, Butterfield 8).
After Billy Wilder won Best Director for The Apartment, William Wyler was introduced by the show’s familiar and always funny host, Bob Hope, and somberly walked to the podium. He was there, he explained, “to give an Honorary Oscar to the kind of American who’s loved in the four corners of the earth.” Everyone present knew who he was talking about. When the applause died down, Wyler informed the audience, that “a close and worthy stand-in” would accept the award in Coop’s stead. When Wyler said the name “James Stewart,” an even more thunderous round of applause came forth.
Jimmy walked slowly to the podium, took the Oscar from Wyler, made the usual thanks, then looked directly into the camera, which closed in tight on his face, revealing tears streaming down from both eyes. In a cracked voice, Jimmy said, “I am very honored to accept this award tonight for Gary Cooper. I’m sorry he’s not here to accept it, but I know he’s sitting by the television set tonight, and, Coop, I want you to know I’ll get it to you right away. With it goes all the friendship and affection and the admiration and deep respect of all of us. We’re very, very proud of you, Coop…. We’re proud of you, Coop…all of us are tremendously proud…” Unable to continue, Jimmy lifted the statuette over his head, turned, and walked off the stage, leaving the audience in stunned silence, as the network faded silently to a commercial break.
During his final weeks, Cooper was visited by a host of friends, including Audrey Hepburn and her (then) husband Mel Ferrer, Sam and Frances Goldwyn, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, Bill Goetz and Jerry Wald, Robert Stack, Billy Wilder, and Gloria and Jimmy. After delivering the award Jimmy spent nearly all day, every day, at Coop’s bedside, talking, reading the Bible to him, and listening to classical music, right up until the end. Less than a month after he had won his Honorary Oscar, Gary Cooper was dead.
Production on How the West Was Won was completed in July 1962 and Jimmy decided to take Gloria and join Fran Kirk and Bess Johnson on safari in Africa.
The trip proved an enormous delight even though the Stewarts insisted they would, at no time, bag any game, as neither believed in sport hunting for blood. This wasn’t the case with the Johnsons. Bess took down a leopard, water buck, and elephant, and Fran killed an eland, a rhinoceros, and an elephant of his own.
What appealed to both Gloria and Jimmy was the sheer beauty of the wild. He loved being so close to nature, with all its dangers, both natural and man-made. Safari also allowed him to forget, a least for a while, about Hollywood and all its bottom-line tensions, and next-picture paranoia. It also permitted him to go about freely, without his obligatory movie toupee, which, whenever he had to wear it, annoyed him to no end. By the end of the safari, Jimmy had told Gloria that from now on, Africa would be the place they would come to whenever they wanted to get away from everything and rediscover themselves.
On June 29, in Nairobi, Kenya, the private plane Jimmy had commissioned for the group crash-landed in Nigeria, near the site of a former Mau Mau death and torture camp. Miraculously, all four aboard escaped serious injury. Jimmy was shaken up, and there were momentary flashes of the worst of what he had gone through during the war, but in the end he managed to slough off the damage as if it were nothing more than surface dust on his safari jacket.
Back in Hollywood that fall, Jimmy started work on what would prove to be his last great motion picture, the fascinating, enormously complex, beautifully shot, and powerfully affecting The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, John Ford’s elegiac view of the old West, his not-so-fond farewell to the Hollywood he knew.
The film was a powerful return to form for Ford, who, this time, had been actively involved in putting together the project from its inception, raising half the film’s initial budget—$1.6 million—to match Paramount’s share, the kickoff to a new multipicture contract he had signed with the studio. He then quickly acquired the rights to the original short story by Dorothy M. Johnson, first published in Cosmopolitan in 1949. He supervised all the script rewrites, and cast John Wayne and Jimmy first, in the two pivotal roles of the film. He later chose Vera Miles to play the woman they compete for, and finally (and superbly) he cast Lee Marvin in the ironically named title character, a role so unforgettably menacing that Marvin would find himself parodying it three years later in Elliot Silverstein’s Cat Ballou (1965). Filling out the cast were various members of the Ford family of fine actors, including Andy Devine, Woody Strode, John Carradine, and Edmond O’Brien. Ford chose to shoot the film in black and white, to further link it to a time and a place firmly set in the past.
The casting of Wayne and Jimmy was no accident. Ford was after the opposing balance the two offered—Wayne (Tom Doniphon), the gentle giant, hulking, street-smart; and Jimmy (Ransom Stoddard), diminutive in build, tall, slight, with a sharp, well-educated mind. One was all brawn, the other all brain, and both would have to eventually, if somewhat begrudgingly, work together to conquer the brute force of Liberty Valance, who represented all that was evil, lawless, rough, and tough in an American frontier on the verge of civilizing itself.
> The film is so gorgeously ambiguous that the interpretation as to what happens during it varies widely from critic to critic. To Bogdanovich, for instance, the film holds elements of assassination and conspiracy, as in the death of Marilyn Monroe and the murder of John F. Kennedy, and of what he refers to as Robert Graves’s “single poetic theme”: a triangular love story of two men in love with the same woman. Surely there are elements of this, as well as echoes of Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon: two protagonists, one old (Cooper in High Noon, Wayne in Liberty), one young (Lloyd Bridges as the hot-headed sheriff in High Noon, Jimmy Stewart as the young lawyer in Liberty); both in love with a chaste, antiviolence blonde (Kelly in Noon, Miles in Liberty); and a romantic triangle upset by the looming threat of a showdown with the town’s most evil citizen (Frank Miller, menacingly played by Ian MacDonald in Noon; Liberty Valance, Marvin in Liberty). Both films are shot in high-contrast black and white, and both films deal with political agendas that will heavily affect the future, all of which—money, power, industry, and lawfulness—is threatened by the misanthropic villainy of their respective antagonists that represents the hard-dying past.
That, however, is where the similarities end. The difference between Zinnemann and Ford lies in the invisibility of the town, i.e., the extended family of man; in High Noon, Marshal Kane realizes he must go it alone, while in Valance, the entire town rallies around the opportunity to stand up and be counted. Because of it, Valance’s Doniphon, who personifies the old and ossifying West, all that was good about it and all that was bad, is slowly eliminated from the town’s plans for its future, in favor of the smarter, more “civilized,” if decidedly calculating Stoddard. Also, unlike the resolution in High Noon, in Valance it is the younger man who wins the girl away from the older one, even though he was the one who saw her and had her first.
