by Marc Eliot
As for Fonda Sr., he, too, felt the consequences from Firecreek’s failure, blaming himself for believing he could get away playing a murderer against someone as beloved by his fans as Jimmy Stewart. “Jim and I played in a thing called Firecreek,” he later recalled in his memoirs, “You know, someone had the bright idea of making me the villain. I played a bad guy who tried to kill Jim Stewart. Now, any man who tries to kill Jim Stewart has to be marked as a man who’s plain rotten. You can’t get much worse than that.”
In June of 1967, upon his completion of studies at Orme, Ronnie McLean Stewart was formally inducted into the United States Marine Corps as a second lieutenant, his bars personally pinned to his uniform at the colorful ceremonies by his father, Brigadier General James Stewart. It was an exceedingly proud moment for Jimmy. As he stood in the gleaming sunlight, he shook Ronnie’s hand, pulled him in close, wished him well, and promised that he would come visit him first chance he got, no matter where in the world he wound up being stationed.
That no-matter-where turned out to be Vietnam.
Jimmy had begun to make annual visits to the troubled Asian country in his official capacity of brigadier general. In 1966, the year before he was scheduled to retire from the Air Force Reserve, he had volunteered to lead a B-52 bombing raid out of Guam over North Vietnam, after which he visited every American air base in South Vietnam and Thailand. Having promised Gloria he would see no further action, he went on an inspection tour for the Office of Information for the Pentagon, a “handshake” operation as they were known, during which he met with as many individual soldiers as possible.
Upon his return, he was given an unexpected honor. With mandatory retirement upon him, the Senate, where so much controversy had once swirled about his promotion to brigadier general, now chose to honor him, first with a spoken tribute by former Hollywood song-and-dance man Sen. George Murphy (R-California) for his “matchless record he has compiled of service to our nation and to the motion picture industry…. His face and his voice have become known to people in every country of the world and he has, through his profession, become one of the best international ambassadors of goodwill we could present abroad.” In his speech, Murphy made note of the fact that Jimmy was only the second Air Force Reserve officer in history to be rewarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Then, on June 25, 1968, Jimmy Stewart was written into history on the pages of the Congressional Record, which headlined his retirement and honored him with an editorial, excerpts of which included the following:
RETIREMENT OF BRIGADIER GENERAL JAMES STEWART FROM U.S. AIR FORCE RESERVE
On May 31, 1968, James Stewart formally retired as a brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve…As one who has long considered Jimmy Stewart his friend, I am proud of the matchless record he has compiled of service to our Nation and to the motion picture industry. I congratulate our good friend and there being no objection, the [following] Citation [is ordered to be printed in the] Record as follows:
Brigadier General James M. Stewart distinguished himself by exceptionally meritorious service to the United States in his mobilization assignment as Deputy Director, Office of Information, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force from 17 June 1959 to 31 May 1968. During this period General Stewart selflessly devoted his time, knowledge and broad experience in a concerted effort to publicize the Air Force contribution to our nation’s security. As a result of his personal efforts he has brought about a greater awareness, throughout the nation, of the significant contributions Air Force personnel have made toward our country’s defense. His sincerity, dedication and ability to communicate to people young and old, were significantly responsible for the general public’s appreciation of the Air Force role in safeguarding freedom throughout the world….
Jimmy was humbled to tears when he received this honor, but for the rest of his life made little mention of it, once again insisting that his military record not be used to promote any of his past or future movies.
As if to underscore the fact that he had not retired from his other career, show business, he booked a personal appearance on Dean Martin’s surprisingly successful NBC variety TV show, taped in the summer of ’67 and shown as the first episode of the ’67–68 season. He did impersonations of James Cagney and Bette Davis that sounded nothing like the celebrities and everything like Jimmy Stewart.
Martin greatly enjoyed having Jimmy on his show, and Jimmy loved doing it so much that they decided to make a film together, Andrew McLaglen’s Bandolero! It was Jimmy’s third and Martin’s first with McLaglen. In it, Martin, nine years younger than Jimmy in real life, played his younger brother in the movie. The fact that Raquel Welch was in the film had a lot to do with Martin and Jimmy having more fun off-set than on it, as the three went out drinking almost every night. However, despite a screenplay by James Lee Barrett, who had written the far superior Shenandoah, Bandolero! creaked where it should have snapped, and in June 1968 the film opened to near-instant obscurity.
Not long after Bandolero! wrapped, Jimmy and Gloria decided to spend Christmas in Kenya. Upon their return to Los Angeles, Jimmy, both rested and restless, started looking for new projects to keep him busy. One of the things they both loved to do was go to see the Dodgers, Gloria’s favorite team. Jimmy rooted for the Yankees, but it made no difference; they liked going to Dodger Stadium at Chavez Ravine and drinking beer while sitting in the special seats kept for Hollywood royalty. They often ran into Cary Grant there, another intense baseball fan who spent many afternoons watching games in the warm sun with his wife, Dyan Cannon, and their baby daughter, Jennie.
About this time, Jimmy also agreed to join the American Red Cross as a fund-raiser, signing on to narrate a TV documentary, after which he was notified that he was to be honored by the British Film Institute, an award that meant a great deal to him because of the time he had spent in London during the war.
As 1968 turned into 1969, with no new feature film looming on the horizon, Jimmy signed on with the USO for a winter tour of Vietnam. This time he took Gloria along to accompany him for another round of handshakes with the troops. He later claimed to have shaken more than twelve thousand soldiers’ hands during the trip. At one point, he broke away from the other entertainers, and Gloria, to visit the war zone and, although he had promised his wife he wouldn’t, he unofficially accompanied a bombing crew on a mission along the Cambodian border.
The real reason he had taken Gloria along at all was that the air force had assured him that a visit with Ronald would be arranged, despite the fact that he was currently stationed closer to the DMZ—the demilitarized zone that officially separated North Vietnam from South Vietnam—than the military normally allowed any entertainers to get. Ronald, a member of the 73rd Reconnaissance Battalion of the 3rd Marine Division, was stationed at Dong Ha, 10 miles south of the DMZ, 406 miles north of Saigon. When his parents arrived, a surprised and delighted Ronald greeted them and barely had enough time to pose for a photo with his mom, before, all too soon, she and Jimmy were whisked back to safety.
Upon their arrival back in the States, a beaming Jimmy gave a press conference in which he lauded the outstanding valor and commitment of the servicemen and -women he had recently met. After settling back onto Roxbury, they began making final preparations for the upcoming marriage of their other son, Michael. Tension still rippled through the relationship between this son and his father, but Jimmy had promised Gloria to try to effect some kind of truce.
In mid-June, Kelly and Judy were both preparing for their graduation prom at Westlake High; Michael was already in Arkansas, where the bride’s family was from; and Gloria and Jimmy were alone in the house on North Roxbury Drive when the knock came at the front door. They were both in the living room and glanced quickly at each other. No one ever knocked on their door without prior notice. Jimmy said nothing, went, and opened it. There before him stood a contingency of dress marines, and he knew. Gloria came up beside him and listened quietly as the spokesman for the organization recited
the official notice. He began with the awful words “We regret to inform you…”
Ronald had been killed the day before by hostile machine-gun fire during an encounter with the enemy in Quang Tri province, along the DMZ. He and five other marines had been lured into an ambush by the North Vietnamese, even as half a dozen U.S. helicopters engaged the enemy in an attempt to save the men. They managed to get out all but Ronald.
He was twenty-four years old.
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“People ask if we’re bitter about having [the war] hit so close to home. Neither my wife nor I have any bitterness. We’ve gotten hundreds and hundreds of letters about it, but there was no bitterness in any of them. I don’t think [Ronald] died in vain. I believe in the cause that he died for. The war has been a trial, and a tremendously difficult thing for the nation. But if there is a tragedy about it, it is the national tragedy that there has been so much sacrifice without a unified nation behind the cause. These are patriotic kids, patriotic Americans. All you have to do is go to Vietnam to see that the kids are still patriotic today. Everybody says that the war wasn’t even declared. Well, I don’t think wars will be declared anymore. It’s like the old duel thing, where a man hits another in the face with a glove and says, ‘Have your second ready in the bushes.’ It’s just a different world today….
“There’s our son, he wanted to be a marine. He was a good marine. I think of him all the time. It was a terrible loss, but I don’t see it as a tragedy. He went to college for us. He wasn’t a very good student. He said he didn’t want to be drafted, he wanted to be a marine. He became a good marine. He conducted himself honorably on the field of battle. You can’t consider that tragedy….
“But losing a boy like that, you never get over it.”
—JIMMY STEWART
The death of his stepson had brought the war home, but Jimmy was determined not to allow himself or Gloria to surrender to grief. Instead, they continued to prepare for Michael’s wedding and insisted it take place as scheduled, three weeks hence, and they also planned on attending the girls’ high school graduations as proud parents to cheer them, even as Jimmy quietly and methodically made arrangements to have Ronald’s body returned to the States and prepared for burial.
Nor did the tragedy of Ronald’s untimely passing immediately change Jimmy’s politics. If it did anything at all, it pushed him even further to the right. To the public, he insisted that his son died a patriot, and for a good and just cause, and that he gave his life for his country and for freedom.
As his daughter Kelly remembered in a sad and poignant way, the loss of Ronald would serve to bring an end to the growing distance between Michael and Jimmy. This was, after all, at the core a close-knit, loving family, brought together by tragedy, in the kind of tight-lipped, stoic fashion that was the foundation of Jimmy’s Presbyterian upbringing.
It was a shared grief that each member suffered from in his or her own way. “For me,” Kelly said, “unlike Father, who was firmly set in his political ways, I was still developing my value systems, and the initial impact of Ronald’s death was to turn me fully into the nihilist I was already leaning toward becoming. What’s the point of believing in anything, I kept telling myself. Mom, too, had a change of her thinking, though not as severely as what I was going through. She became less political, and stopped believing in ‘beliefs.’ It took longer for Dad, but I think he did, too.”
One thing Jimmy kept insisting, to friends and family alike, and to himself really, was that Ronald had not died in vain. However, if there were any cracks in the emotional armor that went up at the Stewart household, it was in the disappointment Jimmy felt from anyone who tried and failed to ease his way through this difficult time. The Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church, for instance, completely messed up the funeral ceremony. They were unable to unlock the massive organ, thus causing the services to take place without musical accompaniment. While never a regular churchgoer (Gloria was the one who directed that part of their Sundays, and also the one who stopped going to church for good after the funeral), his grief and anger lingered on this one incident for months, until he began attending services alone at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood instead.
Not long after, the marines sent a representative to the Stewart home who said he was there at the urging of the Nixon administration, which wanted to publicize Ronald’s death, with all of Jimmy’s conservative (pro-war) friends rallying to the cause, the entire horse-and-martyr show captured on film and distributed free throughout the media. In one of his very few displays of open anger, without saying a word Jimmy took the marine firmly by his elbow and threw him out of the house.
Next came the producers, the movie and TV big shots, all of whom wanted to make a feature motion picture about the life (really the death) of Ronald. Jimmy turned them all down, and threatened to sue anyone who tried to do it without the family’s consent.
Tears, never something that flowed easily in the Stewart household, came nightly to Gloria who, it was reported by friends, cried herself to sleep for months after the death of her son. Jimmy as well could hardly keep his composure, breaking out in tears at the most unexpected (and sometimes expected) times and places, particularly in whatever dressing room he might be in when preparing to shoot a scene or make an appearance. Anything with the slightest references to sons, war, violence, or loss could set him off. He took to isolating himself, and kept out of the eye of the public more than usual. He spent numberless hours watching television, often with tears running silently down his cheeks. He moped around the house and began acting out the anger that lay atop his grief by bickering with Gloria. When he did go out, it was mostly to play a foursome of golf with Fred MacMurray, Bob Hope, and President Nixon. And his drinking increased dramatically.
It was, finally, Henry Fonda, who, when he got word of the depth and severity of Jimmy’s depression, urged him to resume working on the film they had started before Ronald’s death, The Cheyenne Social Club, which had temporarily shut down production when word of the tragedy arrived.
The film, an unrepentantly antique Western, was meant to provide a showcase for the friendship as well as the comic talents of its two stars. A couple of old cowboy coots think they’re inheriting a ranch but actually gain possession of a whorehouse, Hollywood style, of course, where the women are all young and beautiful, wear expensive frilly white corsets and tons of lingerie, are intelligent, helpful, and having the time of their lives—and never seem to actually have sex with anyone. The madam was played by squeaky-clean Shirley Jones.
The film had been originally given the go-ahead by Jimmy himself, intending it to be directed by McLaglen. When he proved unavailable, Gene Kelly signed on as both producer and director. The aging Kelly had lately begun to appear in nondancing roles and to direct several movies, many of which he had starred in. He was eager to disappear from the screen altogether as a way of extending his timeless cinematic presence. A tongue-and-cheek look at a bygone era by a couple of Hollywood gray-hairs seemed to him to be the perfect vehicle. Production had just begun when word of Ronald’s death hit the set, and production had temporarily shut down, with no guarantee when or if it would resume.
“The picture was rolling along fine,” Fonda recalled, “when Jim and his wife, Gloria, suffered the worst kind of loss when their elder son was killed in action with the marines in Vietnam. Here we were, making this comedy, when the Defense Department notified them. Jim tried hard not to spread his grief through the company. He and I avoided discussing the war before the tragedy. Now, I did everything I could to take his mind off it. We chawed about old times at the Madison Square Hotel in New York, and our early bachelor days living together in Brentwood.”
When production did finally resume, Fonda noticed that “Stewart would slip away each day with an apple or a piece of watermelon or a carrot in his hand. And I learned that he’d walk two or three blocks to the corral where the horses were kept. And he’d give a goodie to [Stewart’s regular film horse] Pie
. That’s when I began to realize what Pie meant to him. His boy was gone, and I couldn’t do anything about that, but now seeing the expression on Jim’s face when he reached for something to take to his horse—I had an idea. On Sundays, when we weren’t working, I’d have the wrangler bring Pie out and stand him in front of the barn. And then I made sketches of the horse, the barn, a carriage, and the gate. I planned it to be a surprise for Jim. I finished the watercolor after I got home. I had it framed and gave it to Jim. He was surprised all right. He just dissolved when he saw the painting…old Pie died about ten days later.”
Jimmy’s recollection of the making of the film focused on the laconic preparation, indicating how little either he or Fonda was actually interested in the content of the project. “I’d say to Fonda, ‘Do yuh, do yuh want to go over this scene?’ He’d say, ‘No, no…uh, if you want?’
“I’d say, ‘No, no…’
“‘Don’t you know your lines?’
“‘Yes! I know my lines!’
“‘Well, uh, what, uh, uh, what are we rehearsing for?’”
The Cheyenne Social Club finished production late in the fall of 1969, and Jimmy decided to take Gloria and the two girls to Sun Valley, Idaho, for the Christmas holidays. The family, Jimmy realized, was slowly dissipating: Ronald was gone, Michael was married, the girls were off to college. He wanted one last time together with them. The only diversion he allowed himself on the trip was a rereading of Harvey, the play he had done on Broadway twenty-two years earlier and had made into a movie. Jimmy was considering once again playing the role of Elwood P. Dowd. Slipping backward in general held appeal to him, just as working and hanging out with Fonda on the set of The Cheyenne Social Club had allowed the both of them to cinematically time-travel to a simpler, happier time in their lives. A healthy dose of theatrical unreality obtained by cozying up to the private world of a giant rabbit nobody else could see convinced Jimmy to seriously consider reviving the play for another Broadway run.
