TMS Spotlight: Jimmy Stewart's Appeal and Longevity

(via tcm.com)

Throughout decades, we’ve gotten actresses labeled the ‘perfect wife’ or ‘quintessential girl-next-door’ based on their screen personalities, going all the way back to Myrna Loy in the 1930s-1940s and Donna Reed in the 1950s. Rachel McAdams is a star from my generation who seemed to usually be placed in that category by male film fans in the 2000s-2010s. But what about the ‘perfect husband’ in pop culture? There have been a lot of reports and articles on the perfect leading man in cinema, but the phrase ‘dream husband’ doesn’t seem to be as common as ‘dream wife.’ Rather than examine why this might be, I’m going to analyze who I have always considered the perfect movie husband: Jimmy Stewart [or James Stewart, professionally]. Movie star, Oscar winner, honored WWII vet, family man and reported all-around solid guy. It didn’t hurt that he was easy on the eyes too. Jimmy’s presence and ‘everyman’ characters really seemed to resonate with early 20th century movie viewers, and still continues with old Hollywood fans today.

Amusingly in retrospect, MGM Studios didn’t seem to really know what to do with Jimmy at the beginning of his career in the mid-to-late 1930s; whether it was casting him as a rare villain in WS van Dyke’s sequel After the Thin Man (1936), or as the male lead in Roy del Ruth’s movie musical Born to Dance (1936). Director Frank Capra would speedily be the person to utilize the actor’s qualities best, starting with the family ensemble You Can’t Take It with You (1938), and even more successfully in the political dramedy Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Both films, but especially Mr. Smith, exemplified the idealistic, wholesome values both Frank and Jimmy would be known for by movie fans. Jimmy was one of the first Oscar winners to be considered a ‘makeup win,’ with a lot of viewers assuming the Academy gave him Best Actor for George Cukor’s romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story (1940) as a compensation after choosing Robert Donat for Sam Wood’s Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), instead of Jimmy for Mr. Smith the previous year. Whatever the case, both Mr. Smith and Philadelphia Story turned out to be natural classics. Jimmy even got an additional holiday hit with Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940) during the same period.

But before Jimmy could fully become fans’ favorite leading man, he was called upon to serve in the second World War from 1941 to 1945 as a pilot for the US Army Air Force. His return to the big screen was, unsurprisingly, a reunion with Frank on the family drama It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Initially given a lukewarm reception by both RKO Radio Pictures and general audiences, the now beloved film is one of the most popular movies to air on TV every December. The protagonist, George Bailey, gradually eclipsed Jefferson Smith as Jimmy’s signature role, and is still the character that calls to mind when people see the name ‘James/Jimmy Stewart.’ That familiar ‘aw, shucks’ quality of Jimmy’s was personified by modest, well-meaning George and it feels like no one but the star was destined to portray him.

(Keystone-France)

Not long after It’s a Wonderful Life, Jimmy soon switched genres and led many hit westerns directed by Anthony Mann and John Ford in the 1950s-1960s, such as Mann’s Winchester ’73 (1950) and Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962); and formed an artistically lucrative partnership with the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, that includes the classics Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958). Despite his boy-next-door appeal on film, Jimmy himself didn’t settle down as a family man until 1949, when he married socialite Gloria Hatrick, whom he would raise four children with. During the prime of his stardom, Jimmy was actually quite the bachelor and dated co-stars like Eleanor Powell and Ginger Rogers, as well as participated in a secret love affair with Marlene Dietrich during filming of George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again (1939). By those associated with the legend, Jimmy was supposedly the only man in his peer group of A-list actors to not openly mess around during marriage, which might accentuate why it took so long for him to tie the knot with Gloria. As someone who has long considered Jimmy her favorite male actor and legitimately likes to think he lives up to his all-American, upstanding image; finding out his marital commitment was a nice discovery.

Much like his on-screen persona, Jimmy kept to himself off camera in his later years, and rarely talked about his home life, or even his service in WWII. Though the latter would be revealed years later to be because Jimmy experienced serious PTSD returning home from the war, and getting back to acting [particularly on It’s a Wonderful Life] helped him cope with the effects. Part of an era where mystique was a majority of a celebrity’s public perception and appeal, Jimmy completely pulled it off and still does. When I was a teen, I used Jimmy and his characters as a blueprint for qualities in a significant other. If I were an actor, I would wish for someone like Jimmy to work opposite, both because of his talent and reputation for professionalism. To use an old, corny cliché: they don’t make ‘em like they used to.