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Toronto Star (08/Mar/1987) - Jimmy Stewart: The 'aw shucks' American hero

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Jimmy Stewart: The 'aw shucks' American hero

In Hollywood's heyday the lines were clear: Cary Grant was too smooth and sophisticated to represent Middle America; John Wayne too cool and macho; Gary Cooper too emotionally controlled; Spencer Tracy too urbane. So for almost five decades the epitome of the American Everyman has been one person — the rawboned, awkward, beanpole with the agonizingly slow drawl — James Maitland Stewart.

This descendant of Scottish-Irish Pennsylvanians was everything Americans thought they were in their finest moments — straightforward, honest, loyal, ethical, puritanical, naive, unsophisticated, hardworking and, above all, lovers of God and country. And so, onto the bony shoulders of Stewart fell the burden of representing for a number of great directors an idea, a symbol onto which an audience could project its hopes and fears.

For director Frank Capra (It's A Wonderful Life, 1946), he represented the endangered American values of family, community, friends and love of country. For the British-born director Alfred Hitchcock (Rear Window, 1954), he was the vulnerable American whose openness put him at risk. He was everything they asked of him and more. On the silver screen, as director George Stevens (Vivacious Lady, 1938) said, "he extinguished disbelief."

Tribute Friday

Now, at almost 79 (in May), there is time to accept the accolades being bestowed on him. The Santa Barbara International Film Festival paid tribute to him last night, and the Public Broadcasting Corp.'s Great Performances focuses on more than four decades of Stewart's career on Friday.

Hosted by Johnny Carson, the program features clips of Stewart's movies, rare photographs and interviews with directors, friends and stars such as Katharine Hepburn, Walter Matthau, Richard Dreyfuss, Clint Eastwood, Carol Burnett, Lee Remick, Sally Field and Gene Kelly. It seems appropriate to this man of few words that his life story should be told in pictures.

Sitting in the book-lined den of his gracious English-style home in Beverly Hills, surrounded by family photos and memorabilia, he says, "Working in movies all your life, instead of writing a book or talking to an author about your life, you just put it on film. It struck me as being all right."

Being all right has been something of a Stewart credo. Sitting comfortably in the corner of a chintz-covered sofa, he is as thin as when he played the idealistic young senator in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939), as clear-eyed as George Bailey saving his town in It's A Wonderful Life. But his gray hair is thin on top, and his hearing is helped by a hearing aid. He had to give up flying his plane a few years ago when he could no longer hear the instructions from the control tower. He is frail, and the world's most famous drawl is even slower nowadays.

Guest spot

The last acting job he had was a guest spot on television's Remington Steele in 1985. More interesting, perhaps, was his last movie Right Of Way, a film for Home Box Office he made in 1983 with Bette Davis about an elderly couple living in Los Angeles, determined to end their lives with dignity by committing euthanasia. As always with Stewart it was an utterly believable and sympathetic portrayal, if somewhat surprisingly downbeat.

"I did it," he says simply, "because it meant I had a chance to work with Bette Davis. I'd been waiting for that chance for 45 years. In the old days we couldn't do that because Bette was with Warner's and I was with MGM. In those days you didn't pick your parts. They came up to you and said, 'Here's the script — go to costume, get measured and the picture starts Monday."

The fact that the story was controversial never occurred to Stewart, he says.

"I didn't look at it that way. I liked the writing. It's not something I'd like to go out and do a tour with or make speeches about. But I thought it was a very reasonable and interesting way of looking at it. I suppose you could say it was sort of like the opposite side of It's A Wonderful Life."

It is his old pictures, however, that wowed audiences. In late 1983 the four films he did for Hitchcock — Rope (1948), Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and Vertigo (1958) — were re-released throughout the United States and abroad. The revenues they generated were tremendous, helped by the fact that Stewart toured with them to several countries. He enjoyed the chance to re-evaluate those films, he says, explaining, "In the old days when I made a picture and saw the preview I would only look at myself with terrible criticism. Why did I do this? Why did I do that? And the whole experience was very, very disagreeable. Now, looking back, a lot of times it turns out to be very pleasant. Now, instead of just worrying about myself, I can sit back and enjoy the picture."

All that, however, is in the past and Stewart in no way regards his career as over.

"I've never said I'm retiring," he insists. "I'm certainly not ready to do that. I still read scripts. I've no very definite idea about the type of thing I want to do. I get a lot of grandfather parts, but let's face it, that's what I am."

In fact, he has two grandsons, ages 1 and 3, from one of his twin daughters and two teenage grandchildren from his stepson Michael McLean, who teaches in Arizona. His other stepson Lt. Ronald W. McLean was killed in Viet Nam in 1969 when he was 25.

Stewart, Hollywood's most determined bachelor, married Gloria Hatrick McLean, a divorcee with two young sons, when he was 41. That was almost 38 years ago. They still live in the house they moved into after their wedding.

Fonda painting

There was also a horse named Pie that Stewart rode in all his westerns. (Yes, he made quite a few, including The Man From Laramie, 1955.) A watercolor of the faithful beast, painted by Stewart's friend the late Henry Fonda, hangs over the television in the den, opposite a magnificent oil of two lions in the veld (the Stewarts are avid wild-animal photographers) and two Oscars — one for The Philadelphia Story (1940), and the other, an honorary award for his film work, which was presented to him during the Academy Awards in 1985.

One of the first actors to enlist in World War II, he signed up with the Army Air Corps nine months before Pearl Harbor, flew 25 bombing missions over Germany and reached the rank of brigadier general before he retired in 1968.

It has been a life full of honors and awards, among them the Distinguished Flying Cross with two oak leaves, the Croix de Guerre with palm and the Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award.

Perhaps his most prized honor is the bronze statue of himself in his hometown of Indiana, Pa., which was unveiled in honor of his 75th birthday. The statue stands on Main St. (Where else?)

America did not adopt Stewart as a national symbol at random; it took enormous skill on Stewart's part, which he reminds us of in his understated "Aw shucks" way.

Taking a turn slowly round the den, he says, "The secret was you don't let the acting show. If you can do that, then believability starts working in. If you can make people believe what they see up there on the screen, you are in very good shape."

Come to think of it, that's not a bad way to go down in movie history: James Maitland Stewart, he made us believe.