The Ideal American
James Stewart

James Stewart, one of the all-time Hollywood greats who died some days ago at the age of 89, had great talent and plenty of charm. This unbeatable combination along with his role in the war and his scandal-free personal life put him on top as the All American Hero.

At the 1954 Cannes film festival, one of the publicity-seeking local starlets, Simone Silva, attached herself to visiting Hollywood actor, Robert Mitchum, quickly removed the top of her bathing suit and got herself photographed topless with Mitchum. The photographs were splashed on the front pages of American and European newspapers. He-Man actor Mitchum, grinned, shrugged and walked away.

Simone Silva chose Mitchum as her `target' because of his `heavy', bad-guy image in Hollywood movies. She would never have chosen an actor like James Stewart for her `experiment'. Not that Stewart would have minded. He would have raised his eyebrows, waved his hands, removed his hat and come out with a line like, "Hello, young lady, don't you think the weather is just a bit too cold for this kind of costume? Why don't you put on some more clothes?"

That is aplomb for you. James Stewart, one of the all-time Hollywood greats who died two weeks ago at the age of 89 had oodles of it. And, of course, charm. Add to these his image of the Ideal American and you get a combination that is hard to beat. He could act too and demonstrated it in 1939 with a Best Actor nomination for Mr Smith Goes To Washington. The nomination turned into the Best Actor award the following year for Philadelphia Story. In 1980, the American film industry honoured him with a Life Achievement Award.

Mitchum who also died a couple of weeks ago at the age of 79 had a hell-raiser image and was quite open about his turbulent life. He was jailed thrice (vagrancy, domestic problems and smoking pot) and was a rolling stone before settling down as an actor, starting right at the bottom. James Stewart had a different upbringing. The family hardware business put him in an upper middle class bracket and he graduated in architecture from Princeton University where Joshua Logan, who was to become a famous stage and screen director, was a fellow student. They worked together in the "University Players" group at Falmouth and Stewart moved on to New York to try his luck at Broadway. For a time he roomed with another young man on the same quest, Henry Fonda.

Stewart made his Hollywood debut in Murder Man, a 1935 crime film which had Spencer Tracy in the lead. In four years he did nearly 24 movies before he was chosen by Frank Capra to play the role of an idealistic Senator in Mr Smith Goes To Washington. In this role of a lifetime, Stewart's crusade against sleaze and corruption in American public life touched everyone's heart. The acting and the direction were inspired. Stewart sprayed his throat with silver nitrate and developed hoarseness during a fillibuster scene in the film. Though acclaimed by critics as well as the public, Mr Smith lost out to Gone With The Wind in the Oscar parade, winning only a couple of technical awards.

For Stewart, Mr Smith was just the beginning. He began to display an amazing versitality and a particular flair for comedy. Matching wits with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Philadelphia Story brought him the Oscar. Shop Around The Corner, It's A Wonderful Life, Harvey and Mr Hobbes Takes A Vacation were comedies based on typical American life. The roles helped Stewart to become one of the most beloved actors in the country. Pointed out Hedda Hopper, well known gossip columnist, "Jimmy Stewart was the most complete actor personality in American cinema."

Since no American actor could make it to the top without his quota of Westerns, Stewart played the cowboy or the sheriff in films like Winchester 73, Destry Rides Again, Broken Arrow and Carbine Williams. When America entered the Second World War, Stewart was among the first to enlist as a private. He rose to the position of a Colonel in the US Air Force and won the coveted Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). He flew in 20 combat missions as command pilot and finished the war as the Chief of Staff, 2nd Combat wing, 2nd division, 8th Air Force. Later on, the US government promoted him to the post of Brigadier-General in the US Air Force (Reserves).

Stewart's role in the war and his scandal-free personal life (married to the same woman for over 40 years) put him on top as the All American hero. Naturally, he was the first choice for films like Strategic Air Command, Spirit Of St Louis (based on the life of Charles Lindberg, the famous American who was the first to fly across the Atlantic) and The FBI Story which glorified the role of G-Men in fighting crime and communist infiltration in America. But he essayed a number of other roles. A smalltown criminal lawyer who did not fail in his first important murder case in Otto Priminger's Anatomy Of Murder, the beloved American musician in The Glenn Miller Story, a wacky comedy dealing with the spiritual world and withcraft in Bell, Book And Candle and the multi-million Western saga, How The West Was Won.

In a way, the best of Stewart was yet to come. Like Frank Capra in the 1930s, Alfred Hitchcock chose him for a number of unforgettable roles in films like Rope, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window and Vertigo. Like Frank Capra, Hitchcock extracted the best out of Stewart, allowing him to follow his own interpretation of the character he was playing. Rear Window, acclaimed as the best-ever crime movie ever made, was a particular challenge. Stewart played a photographer, who, bound to a wheelchair because of a fractured leg and peering through a pair of binoculars, witnessed a murder in the flat opposite and almost became a second victim! Vertigo was equally intriguing, Stewart playing a police officer puzzled by the changing identities of a woman involved in a murder.

James Stewart was one of the most natural actors in the profession. In the family comedies, he played to perfection the good-humoured, bumbling husband. Yet he brought out the suppressed passion and anger effectively in the sensitive political films. In the Hitchcock films, his acting was so flawless it seemed he wasn't acting at all. He slipped effortlessly into the character he was playing. Unlike Brando, Newman or Clift, Stewart did not `work' on his roles. He was not fond of method acting. "Be yourself, study the script carefully and listen to the director. The rest is easy," he once observed. That was enough for Stewart because he was a natural.