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Toronto Star (16/Sep/1990) - Video industry honors 'regular guy' Stewart

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Video industry honors 'regular guy' Stewart

James Stewart, famous for his "aw shucks" persona, has cancelled a scheduled appearance in Toronto tomorrow to receive a lifetime achievement award from the video industry at Focus On Video, a trade show at the Regal Constellation Hotel.

The tribute will go on without him.

Here's a look at Stewart's films available on video.

You Can't Take It With You (1938) is stridently anti-big business, but the cast is delightful in the story of the daughter of a mad New York family falling for a rich man's son.

Lots of corn and naivete abound in Capra's Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939) as a young senator exposes Washington corruption. James Stewart and Jean Arthur, with a strong supporting cast, keep it moving along effectively.

It's A Wonderful Life (1947) is more Capra corn about an angel preventing Stewart from committing suicide by showing him what his presence in the world meant. Everybody's favorite Christmas movie is always entertaining.

Playing much the same sort of character — timid, hesitant of speech, but morally sound with a sense of justice — Stewart is perfect in The Shop Around The Corner (1940). Director Ernst Lubitsch was far more sophisticated than Capra, and undercut what might have turned sentimental with healthy doses of irony and wit. In Budapest a new floorwalker (Stewart) and a sales clerk (Margaret Sullavan) in a small shop detest each other. They each fall in love with a pen pal, not knowing for a long while they are writing to each other.

Stewart plays something of the same sort of role with a good deal more urban sophistication in The Phildelphia Story (1940). It is largely over-praised, but when it works it sparkles. Katharine Hepburn plays a self-centred divorcee about to marry No. 2 in spite of still being in love with her first. The film has all the elements, but it isn't screwball enough.

Stewart used his boyish charm to play detectives and cowboys, returning to his earlier persona only for sweet biopics like The Glenn Miller Story (1954) which had little to do with its subject, and everything to do with the cuteness of Stewart teaming with June Allyson.

Stewart was perhaps just a touch too young to play the amiable middle-aged semi-alcoholic whose best friend is a seven-foot white rabbit in Harvey (1950). But his innocent persona is perfect. More glorious is Josephine Hull as the addled sister who tries to have him committed. The film is more charming than hilarious.

Stewart's work for Alfred Hitchcock is among his best. Rope (1948) remains an interesting experiment (no cuts and reel time equalling real time) in style. However, 1948 meant that the homosexual content of the tale had to be suppressed. Much better is Rear Window (1954) in which Stewart plays a press photographer who observes a possible murder across the courtyard from his apartment. The film is a meditation on voyeurism (including watching films), and is exciting melodrama, but its chief charms are Stewart and Grace Kelly.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) also has its charms, with Stewart and Doris Day attempting to save their child and stop an assassination. Unfortunately, it slows down to include tourism footage from Morocco and other locations, and nearly stops dead in its tracks to allow Day to "sing."

Arguably Hitchcock's finest film, Vertigo (1958) merges most of the director's obsessions in a film both romantic and sinister. Stewart falls in love with a woman, only to fail in saving her life, and then forces another woman to take on her identity. Kim Novak proves here that you don't have to know how to act to be powerful on the screen.

Stewart was also in some of the finest westerns ever made. He supported director Anthony Mann in attempts to make the genre more realistic and psychologically credible. The list is long, but all fine: Winchester 73 (1950), Bend Of The River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953) and The Man From Laramie (1955).

He played a meek sheriff who finally explodes over local corruption in Destry Rides Again(1939), but it is more than a standard western. It has comedy, romance, music and lots of action.

The greatest maker of westerns, John Ford, did not get to Stewart until late in the careers of both.

However, their collaboration brought about one of the best American films ever made, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Stewart plays the Easterner who disapproves of violence, only to take advantage of a false reputation for shooting an outlaw. John Wayne is incredibly moving as a rancher, ex-gunman who has no place left in society. The film is a dark look at America, its morality, and its mythmaking. It also is a touchingly bittersweet romance.

Stewart worked with Ford in several others with less quality: Two Rode Together (1961) — he and Richard Widmark are well matched as they negotiate with Commanches for prisoners but it's all fairly dull; How The West Was Won (1962) — Cinerama was dreadful for dramatic films, so that, except for spectacular bits, the film is distant; Cheyenne Autumn (1964) — well meaning and boring, with Stewart in a minor role as Wyatt Earp.

He played another minor role in The Shootist (1976), as the doctor who tells John Wayne he's dying of cancer, but this beautiful autumnal tale belongs to Wayne.

There are oddities through Stewart's career. Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show On Earth (1952) had him as a doctor on the run for manslaughter and disguised as a clown. The film is as silly as DeMille usually was but it works as various stars go through circus routines.