”I am responsible for Jimmy Stewart coming to movieland,” said Hedda Hopper, the actress and Hollywood gossip columnist. ”It happened when the two of us were appearing in a show in New Haven called `Divided by Three.` Guthrie McClintoc was the producer; Judith Anderson had the leading part of an affection-split woman who loves her lover, her husband and her son; Jimmy was the son.”
The material called for Jimmy to bring home his fiance to meet his parents and the family`s best friend. For the first time, Stewart was to learn that the best friend was also his mother`s paramour. With his betrothed on stage, he was to turn and call his mother a whore. When the producer sprang the line, Jimmy fell apart. He begged to be let out of the play: ”I can`t possibly do that, Mr. McClintoc. Under no circumstance could I bring myself to call any woman that–and my mother. Especially with the girl I intend to marry standing beside me.”
”Guthrie reminded him that he had a contract,” Hedda said. ”The line stayed in. At the end of the rehearsal, Jimmy looked so depressed that I told him, `The screen needs a young man as clean and sincere as you. Why aren`t you in Hollywood?`
” `For what?`
” `Pictures, of course.`
”He laughed in that embarrassed way of his, saying ruefully, `Waal, what would they do with this puss of mine? It`s no Arrow collar ad.`
” `You`re an actor,` I said. `They could fix that. Pictures desperately need someone like you. You project sincerity.` Again, Jimmy laughed it off, but he looked less tense. I could tell that I had planted a seed.”
A few months later, he met Bill Grady, a talent scout for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He had seen Stewart in several shows and was impressed. ”I like this kid,” he told his bosses. ”Unaffected, decent.” Jimmy was summoned to Hollywood.
MGM wasn`t impressed. Unenthusiastically, they signed Jimmy to a contract at minimum wage. Henry Rapf, a studio producer, was told to make some use of the new property. His first words to Stewart were, ”My God, you`re skinny!” He ordered him to visit the studio`s in-house body builder, Don Loomis.
”Do they think I`m a magician?” said Loomis as he stared at Jimmy. He finally asked him, ”What`s your height?”
”Six-three-and-a-half.”
”Weight?”
”One hundred and thirty.”
”You`re beyond helping.”
”Please try. I`ll cooperate. I promise.”
”Okay! Okay! But I don`t promise anything. Let`s start by you picking up that barbell.”
Jimmy groaned a few times and managed to heave it to his waist. Loomis looked disgusted. ”I just had a little kid hoist it over his head a dozen times,” he snapped. ”Can`t you do anything?”
The body builder worked with Stewart four days a week. In addition, he recommended that Jimmy drink milkshakes and eat banana splits topped with whipped cream. ”I doubt it, but maybe, maybe, they`ll put some fat on your ribs,” he said grimly.
”I had dozens of them,” Stewart recalled. ”I was lucky that at the time they cost less than a dime apiece. But even then it took a big chunk out of my budget.
”(Henry) Hank Fonda also helped me gain some weight. He, too, was very skinny, and someone had told him that milk mixed with brandy was a very good way to add pounds. We started with a lot of milk and a little bit of brandy. But Hank felt that we should add more brandy. Then some more. Soon the color got darker and darker. We used to drink that concoction for breakfast and by 8 a.m. we were half stoned. Anyway, I gained some weight.”
Several weeks later, Stewart tested for a part in Pearl S. Buck`s ”The Good Earth.” ”I was to play the part of a Chinese man,” Jimmy said. ”They got the makeup department to design a special Oriental mask for me. It took three hours to put on, but I felt it was worth it. I thought I really looked the part. Even my own mother wouldn`t recognize me.
”Proudly, I paraded around the studio lot showing off. But everyone I met said, `Hello, Jimmy.` After all that, the director decided that I was much too tall. So what did he do? He had a trench built for me to walk in. Paul Muni, the star, walked beside me. I didn`t get the part. It went to a real Chinese man who was 5 foot 2.”
Shortly after that disappointment, Universal borrowed Jimmy from MGM. Stewart played a foreign correspondent whose wife (Margaret Sullavan) refuses to accompany him to assignments in Rome and Moscow. She is a struggling actress who is determined to become a star. After an hour and a half of tears and pathos, the couple–and their baby–are reconciled. A reviewer for Time magazine wrote: ”Stewart disregards a long-established cinema convention for such roles, ably introduces to Hollywood the character of a newspaperman who is neither a drunkard, lecher nor buffoon.”
Jimmy`s fourth film was a major MGM production: ”Wife vs. Secretary,”
in which Myrna Loy (wife) and Jean Harlow (secretary) fight over magazine publisher Clark Gable. Jimmy, the secretary`s boyfriend, innocently comes between them. The script called for a kissing scene with Harlow, then known as ”the platinum-haired sex queen” and the ”blond bombshell.”
”I soon found out why she was called those names,” Jimmy said.
”Clarence Brown, the director, wasn`t too pleased by the way I did the smooching. He made us repeat the scene about half a dozen times. I now have to confess that I botched it up on purpose. That Jean Harlow sure was a good kisser. I realized that until then I had never really been kissed.”
In 1936, Jimmy made ”Small Town Girl” with Janet Gaynor and Robert Taylor. Although Taylor was the featured lead, many reviewers singled out
”Jimmy Stewart, the screen`s brightest discovery.”
Jimmy was rapidly progressing in his cinema career. A reviewer for the New York Daily Mirror wrote, ”A couple of good things have come out of the Depression–Jimmy Stewart for one thing. With each new movie he keeps getting better and better. He`s the original perseverance kid.”
That industriousness paid off.
Lewis Foster, author of ”Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” did not write the now historic story with Jimmy Stewart in mind. It happened in Columbia Pictures` casting office quite casually late on a Friday afternoon. ”How about this?” asked a junior staff member. ”Why don`t we get Jimmy Stewart for the title role?” After many story conferences, he was selected to play the naive, honest Sen. Jefferson Smith. The rest is film history.
Critics, usually a hard-shell bunch, were carried away by his performance: Newsweek: ”Stewart gives the most persuasive characterization of his career as a one-man crusade against political corruption.” Baltimore Sun: ”The finest performance of the year.” Chicago Tribune: ”It should be must viewing for all legislators.”
It was thought that Stewart would easily win an Oscar for the job. Betting handicappers rated him an 8-to-5 favorite. When it was announced that Robert Donat, star of ”Goodbye, Mr. Chips,” had won, a disappointed Jimmy said philosophically, ”I guess there`s always another year. This one sure produced some mighty stiff competition.” (This included Donat, Clark Gable in ”Gone With the Wind,” Laurence Olivier in ”Wuthering Heights” and Mickey Rooney in ”Babes in Arms.”)
In the early 1940s, Jimmy starred in seven movies: ”The Shop Around the Corner,” ”The Mortal Storm,” ”No Time for Comedy,” ”The Philadelphia Story,” ”Come Live With Me,” ”Pot o` Gold” and ”Ziegfeld Girl.” He was cast as a lonely Hungarian department store clerk, a Nazi-hating farmer, a successful playwright, a sardonic newspaperman, a destitute young author, a zany harmonica virtuoso and a jilted suitor who turns the other cheek. He played opposite Margaret Sullavan, Rosalind Russell, Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Paulette Goddard, Lana Turner and Judy Garland.
His performance in ”The Philadelphia Story” won him an Academy Award for best actor in 1940. Many fans thought the Oscar was by way of an apology for Stewart`s failure to win the previous year.
”I guess it could be true that I won it as a deferred payment,” Jimmy said. ”Come to think of it, I`ve always felt Bette Davis won an Oscar for
`Jezebel` because she should have had it for `Of Human Bondage.` Other oversights, I suspect, have been made up this way. I suppose that`s okay, since right usually triumphs eventually.”
Although he has always been in great demand, Stewart is a natural worrier.
”I`ve always been that way,” he said. ”When I was between pictures, I`d think that I had just made my last film. That no one in his right mind could possibly want me. I was sure that I`d never appear in another movie. I`d also worry about my acting. Let`s face it. Nobody ever gets to the point where he can truly say, `I now know it all.` ”
Tuesday: The great American ex-bachelor.
