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Jimmy Stewart: Hollywood's Everyman
From: Columbia University
| By:
Columbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The Hollywood star Jimmy Stewart, in this interview conducted by Charles Higham for Columbia University's Oral History Research Office in 1971, talks about his films, his road to fame and what it was like to work with some of the silver screen's greatest talent. |
Jimmy Stewart's road to fame<BR>
Question: Perhaps you'd talk about how you got into Hollywood, how it began, and just reminisce there for a while. How your first job came about and so on. |
Jimmy Stewart: It was through the theater, but, of course, the theater happened pretty much by accident. I was going to be an architect. I had a bachelor of science degree when I graduated from Princeton in architecture, and a scholarship to go back and get my master's. It was in 1932. Nobody was building many buildings then, which I really wasn't worried about, but it certainly was true. |
I'd done some dramatics in college, if you call the Triangle Show dramatics. It's sort of a variety show. I got mixed up with Josh Logan and Bretaigne Windust and Myron McCormick, who were all in Princeton at that time. They were a part of an outfit called the University Players that had a stock company up in Falmouth, Massachusetts, that had been in existence for about three years. They invited me up the summer after I graduated, just for the summer. Actually, they invited me to play my accordion at a tearoom next to the theater. And I lasted one night as an accordion player in the tearoom. People said it had made them lose their appetites. |
So they didn't know what to do with me. They made me a prop man and assistant director and slowly I got small parts. I got a part in a play that was destined to go to Broadway, and I think the bug bit me, and I went home and told my family that I--instead of going back to Princeton and get my master's degree in architecture--I was going to Broadway in a small part in a play called "Carrie Nation." And they all grabbed for chairs and sat down. But I must say that they went along with it and wished me well. |
So it was really by accident. As far as getting out to Hollywood was concerned, years ago Hollywood used to have a very complete scouting service all over the country. All over the world, I guess. This was true in New York. I was seen in several plays. I was asked to do a test, and I was given a three-month contract at MGM, with options. I didn't read between the lines, but it was the regular seven-year contract. And I went through the contract, all but one and a half years. My contract was voided when I went into the service in the war. |
But that's pretty much the way I got out here. |
Q: Did Louis B. Mayer audition you at all? Were you auditioned at any stage? Or given a screen test? |
Stewart: I had a screen test of sorts, but the first test was sort of like a mug shot when you're being sent to prison. I just looked straight into the camera and then the man told me to turn my head to the left, and then he said, "Imagine that there's a white horse going up the wall across the ceiling." I never knew why he picked a white horse. I thought maybe it would be a fly or something. |
And that was the first test. A man by the name of Al Altman with MGM in New York. |
Then I did a test with a girl by the name of Nancy Castle, a scene from a play that I had done in New York, written by George Kaufman's wife, Beatrice Kaufman, called "Divided by Three." It was a play with Judith Anderson. It wasn't successful, but I got pretty fair notices, and they did a test, and it was on the basis of that test that I got a three-month contract. |
The making of <i>Of Human Hearts</i> (1938)<br>
Q: I think a remarkable picture of that period is Of Human Hearts, directed by Clarence Brown. Perhaps you would reminisce about that, making that film. |
Stewart: Yes. That was Walter Huston, Beulah Bondi. |
Q: Where was that film shot? What locations did you have for that? |
Stewart:
Most of it was done at Lake Arrowhead, off on the north shore of Lake Arrowhead. Strange enough, Beulah Bondi played my mother in that picture, and three weeks ago she played my mother again in this television series which I--You know, everybody was saying, "Who are we going to get to be your mother? Who can we get?" And I said, "Well, how about Beulah Bondi?" And people said, "Beulah Bondi? Well, where is she?" Well, they tracked her down and she was at a dude ranch in Colorado, horseback riding and fishing, and she said, "Sure." So down she came and here she was. And this was the fifth time that she'd played my mother. |
Q: Amazing. Do you have any special memories of making that picture? Working with Walter Huston and so on? |
Stewart: Yes. He was an excellent actor, excellent. Easy, knowledgeable man. I remember one night we had a fight. I'd done something terrible and he took me out behind the barn or something, and he said before the fight, he said, "Now I'm going to hit you, Jim, because we want to make this a good fight, and I'm going to hit you hard." I said, "That's all right." Well, he did. He did. And he was supposed to win, and he did that, too. |
Q: Did he knock you out cold? |
Stewart: Well, I was a pretty dazed fellow for a while. |
Q: What about the taming of the white stallion? |
Stewart: I had an experience with a horse in that. I remember I was in the war and I didn't write my mother, and President Lincoln called me in to tell me that my mother had wondered where I was and for me to write. And he sent me home to my mother, and I was riding home, and we did it in process, and I was on the horse, riding through covered bridges. The horse was trained for treadmill work, which had to be in process. But the horse would stop. He would go so far and then he would stop. And Clarence Brown said, well, we'll fix that, we'll bring in a powered treadmill, because the regular treadmill, the horse makes it go by itself, by the running. |
But he brought in a powered treadmill. In other words, the treadmill went by power, and the horse had to go. Well, this worked, except that the horse stopped at the same place, and, of course, fell down, and I fell down with him. |
So we were in a sort of a small enclosure and the horse didn't like to fall down and the hoofs were kicking around. So they said, we'd better put you on a wire so that you won't fall if the horse happens to fall again. And so they did put me on a wire, a wire up to the ceiling, a piano wire, and they started and I was riding home to mother, and the horse stopped and fell, and I was left. |
But it was a remarkable thing in rushes, to see me riding on the white horse, and then suddenly the horse disappearing and I'm still hanging in midair. |
Stewart's reminiscences about directors Frank Capra and William Wyler<BR>
Q: I'm very impressed indeed with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, showing this very night at the Academy Museum. What are your memories of making that, with Frank Capra? Must have been very happy ones. |
Q: How did you come to be chosen for this? Had he seen you in a picture and liked you? How did the choice come about, that you would play this role? |
Stewart: Well, I'd worked for him before, in You Can't Take It With You. I suppose that was one of the reasons that I was chosen. And then I worked with him on Mr. Smith and It's a Wonderful Life, the picture right after the war. |
Q: How did you enjoy working with Capra? |
Stewart: Well, I think he would top my list of directors. I think it's much more than enjoying working. I think Frank Capra, to quite an extent, is responsible for me as an actor. I think my work with him and just my association with him, I think a lot of it--he's responsible for the style, if it should be called such, that I've sort of developed. I think it's pretty much through working with him that I developed that style. |
Q: Now, in that tremendous speech at the end, how much of that did you have to learn in one fell swoop? The whole speech? |
Stewart: The whole speech, yes. |
Q: It must have been perhaps, if not the longest, one of the longest speeches ever delivered on the screen, I would think. |
Stewart: I think we were in that particular thing, in the filibuster thing, over three weeks. And, of course, Frank covered a scene from many angles. |
And I remember, after three weeks of me talking and keeping at this all the time, he finally got up to a close-up of me and he said, now, make this a good one, because this is probably the one we're going to use. Which is actually a theory that I've always subscribed to in pictures. It's our way of getting rehearsal. I mean, lots of people saying that people are covering themselves. In a way, that's right, it's giving themselves latitude to cut the picture, but it's also giving performers a chance to become fluent in the scene. The sort of magic of film, I think, comes from a chemistry, something that happens between two people or three people in a scene. |
And a lot of this happens by accident, and giving it a chance to happen a lot is a great advantage. Capra always felt that film, just film, was the cheapest thing around. Actually, the setups, that was expensive, but he wasn't an extravagant man as far as time was concerned on a picture. He shot fast, but he was interested in giving a scene a chance to happen. |
This is what Ford does, too. What Hitchcock does. Willie Wyler, to an extent. They give a scene a chance to happen. I remember, somebody asked Willie Wyler one time, they said, you have this reputation of taking dozens and dozens of takes. I know a lot of people that have gone to Willie and said, "I don't know what to do, Willie. I don't know what you want." And Willie said, well, I really am not sure myself. I'm just sitting here waiting for something to happen, and sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. That's part again of the magic of the movies, I think. |
Q: It had tremendous spontaneity, that whole speech, as though you'd made it up. In fact, you were seemingly making it up as you went along. And to sustain that over three weeks seems to me extraordinary. |
Stewart: Well, of course, I think this is all a part of the ball game and part of the picture craft--if you can work it some way so that the acting doesn't show. If you can be sneaky about it and get to the audience and surprise them or fool them into thinking that what you're doing up there is actually happening. And that I think is part of the illusion, which again is a part of the magic of the movies. |
Q: Was Jean Arthur very nervous? |
Stewart: I've read a lot about that, and I don't know where that--Frank never mentioned it very much in his book. I never got the impression that she was nervous. She was wonderful to play a scene with. Had tremendous comic sense. I never thought she was a nervous person. |
Q: The thing that interests me very much about Capra's pictures is how much the cast seems to be part of almost a private club or a team. There's a tremendous feeling of interplay between the figures. It's not like so many pictures, where you feel they've all been assembled for a dramatic turn. In the Capra pictures, they all seem to be part of a family. It's quite extraordinary. |
For instance, in You Can't Take It With You, you really believe that they were a family. Is this achieved through very close rehearsal or is it achieved through an instant spontaneity on the set? In other words, as soon as you get on a set with Capra, he inspires everyone? |
Stewart: I think it was achieved by Capra's insistence on giving that sort of accidental, a little out-of-control feeling, spontaneity feeling. Giving it a chance by lots of coverage, lots of angles, by letting people rehearse on film. I've never gone for long rehearsals in movies. For some reason, unless the camera is going, you really don't do it the way--you don't come up to speed. |
I had a horse for a long time. Hank Fonda painted his picture and gave it to me. He died a year or so ago. I used him for 20 years, and he was almost a human being. Damnedest thing I ever saw. But he would do this. He, in a rehearsal, in running into a place and doing a thing, if the camera wasn't going he would lope around and do it and sort of act up. But the minute the clapper went--I'm sure he saw the red light on the camera--his ears went up and he acted, and he went at it. |
And I think this happens with people. I've always been suspicious of these people that say, we shot this picture in such a short time because we planned it completely and we rehearsed it for five weeks and we knew exactly what we were doing, and we came in and everyone knew what they were doing, so we breezed through this picture and it was no problem, and it's so simple. |
It's not that simple. John Ford always said that the best things that have ever happened in film, in American film, have happened by accident. He's rather an outspoken fellow. I'm sort of inclined to agree with him. |
On working with Alfred Hitchcock<BR>
Q: But, of course, Hitch pre-plans very closely, doesn't he? |
Stewart: He plans closely for spontaneity. In other words, it's all planned improvisation. Hitch couldn't care less what you're saying. He hates the idea that people have to talk. It bores him. The poor script ladies in a Hitchcock picture--they must not last very long. They must just sort of take them away as sad cases, because Hitch absolutely won't pay any attention to any matching as far as dialogue is concerned, or any of the things that a script woman is supposed to do. If it looks all right to him, that's OK. And he doesn't like talk, like John Ford doesn't like talk. |
Capra likes talk, but Capra treats talk in a masterful way. I remember I did a picture for Hitchcock, and we were in the--it was a mystery, and we were in Albert Hall in London, when a man was going to be assassinated, at a certain point when the cymbals of the London Symphony--the cymbal man did that and the gun was going to shoot him. In the meantime, while the symphony was playing, I was chasing Doris Day all around back in the balconies and everything, and explaining to her the whole point of the picture. I mean, it was a mystery picture and I was explaining the picture. I was explaining who did it to who and how it's going to come out and everything. Long speeches. God. Long, long. |
And after doing it several times, Hitch came to me and said, you're talking so much that you're disturbing my enjoyment of the London Symphony Orchestra. So just don't talk at all. Wave your hands and sort of--but don't say anything. And chase Doris Day. |
I said, well, do you think they're going to understand? He said, I think so. So I didn't say anything. The whole explanation of the picture--I didn't say anything, and it wasn't needed. And the London Symphony kept full up, the full orchestra the whole time. |
Q: In making Rope, did the 10-minute take present any special challenges to you as an actor? |
Stewart: Oh, yes. I've always said to Hitch that I think they really missed the boat. I think they should have built bleachers around that set and sold tickets all day long, so people could watch, because it was the most fascinating thing. If the picture had been that fascinating, we would have all been in business. |
But it was the most fascinating thing to watch that I've ever seen. Of course, only Hitch would try something like this, and it didn't work and was a wild, preposterous idea. But he almost made it work and he learned a lot and he taught a lot of people. For instance, this was the first time the crab dolly had ever been used. This was the first time that they'd ever re-recorded a whole scene and fitted it on a scene that had already been photographed. But we had to do that, because it was impossible--you know, they had no such thing as these battery mikes that they have now and everything. But it was impossible to record the stuff because of all the camera moves. So we would do the whole thing first, with all the camera moves, for a magazine, a film, which is about 920 or 930--with ends and front ends and back ends--about 930 feet, I think, of film. We would do all that and there would be maybe 30 camera moves, where walls would move, where they'd move furniture and put it--and we'd move all around. |
Then they would put all the furniture back to where it is, and they would install about 10 or 15 mikes, and we would do it just for sound. But we had gotten so set in the way we did the scene that they could use that track for the track that we photographed. |
Q: The timing was perfect, then? |
Stewart: Amazing. I don't think it's ever been done before. But they had--for instance, Hitch figured out a console of lighting that could be done by one man, because we did a whole thing where a sunset took place and the lights of the city came on. And it had to happen while you're talking, and it was all done--this man, almost like playing an organ, had this sunset take place. And it was a fascinating thing. |
Q: And, of course, you had to have lines delivered in long stretches. I mean, you were not just talking for two or three minutes at a time. You were talking for longer periods, weren't you? Some of your own speeches, particularly the last one, was a very long speech. To the murderers. |
Stewart: Yes. I remember in seeing the pictures and seeing the rushes, you could tell--I don't think probably the layman would notice it, but I sure did--that as we got to the end of the reel, we all became rather glassy-eyed, because this became the critical time. We said, my God, don't let me forget now, because if you forget, we have to go back and do the whole reel over again, you know. So everybody just became sort of--all the acting went out of the window. They just--if I can just remember that next line and the next one and the next one and then it's finished. |
Q: Worse than a stage play. |
Stewart: It's a fascinating experience. |
Q: Extraordinary. And that process screen was purely amazing, the changing light from midday to dusk, beyond. |
<I>The Philadelphia Story</I> (1940) and George Cukor<BR>
Q: Cukor. Did he have many of the qualities of Capra or was he a very different type of director, from your point of view? |
Stewart: Well, yes, I thought George was a different type of director. Philadelphia Story is the only picture I worked for him, but I've seen all his work and admired his work. He seemed to have great ability to get grandeur on the screen. Get the sort of stylized theaterlike things on the screen and make it believable, make it acceptable on the screen, where others fail. |
Q: Whereas Capra was more for the down-to-earth, hard-hitting approach, wasn't he? With lots of action and lots of hard-hitting dialogue? It was more a slam-bang type of approach, wasn't it, than Cukor's? Cukor was more elegant and high-styled. |
Stewart: Yes, I suppose Cukor's would be a more stylized type of direction than Capra's. |
Q: I mean, Capra would have directed The Philadelphia Story, one imagines, quite differently. And perhaps it wouldn't really have been his subject, anyway. |
Stewart: I don't think Capra would have ever tackled The Philadelphia Story. |
Stewart and the Wild West<BR>
Q: Do you like making Westerns? |
Stewart: Westerns? Yes. There again it was almost an accident with me. When I came back from the war, I made a couple of pictures, including It's a Wonderful Life. I made pictures called You Gotta Stay Happy and Magic Town, and they didn't do any business. People just didn't--they didn't want that sort of thing. And, you know, I didn't know exactly what to do, because I was relying on sort of a style that I'd developed. |
And when I got to do Harvey--one of the reasons being that I did it on the stage, but when they bought it, Universal, I got to do it--they threw in as a part of the deal a Western that had been kicking around town for a long time, that MCA had, Winchester 73. So I would do Harvey and do Winchester 73. |
This is when I found the horse. Audie Murphy had ridden the horse once, and he liked him and recommended the horse to me. |
And I did the picture. Harvey wasn't a successful picture, and Winchester is still, but this was that sort of accident type. |
Q: How about Destry Rides Again and Marlene? Did you enjoy working with her? |
Stewart: Oh, wonderful. Marlene's one of my favorites. Wonderful. Wonderful, warm, electric type. It was a different type of picture. I remember talking to George Marshall about it. The Western buffs didn't like it very much, because they felt that a sheriff that didn't carry a gun, they didn't like that idea very much. But I think they came around to it, because it wasn't exactly a tongue-in-cheek Western, which I disapprove of. But Dietrich was great in that. |
Q: Did that barroom brawl take a great deal of rehearsal? |
Stewart: No. And they went at each other--Una Merkel--they went at each other like a couple of tigers. Yes, I remember that. And I went in and poured the water on them. Yes. This was a real knock-down-drag-out thing, I remember. |
Q: From what I've heard from Una Merkel, she was rather worse off after the fight than Marlene. At least that's what Una says. |
Stewart: Oh, they were both--there were bruises all over. Their hair--both had handfuls of each other's hair. |
Q: No faking there at all? |
Q: It's funny, I've spoken to both ladies about it and Marlene said she enjoyed it, Una said she hated it. Which says a great deal about both of them. |
Stewart speaks candidly about <I>Harvey</I> (1950)<BR>
Q: Of course, one of your most famous parts of all is Harvey. |
Stewart: I didn't like the picture, Harvey. I've been in love with the play ever since I saw it with Frank Fay. And I went back to New York and did it for two summers, when Frank Fay was doing it, back in the '40s. I did it for 13 weeks altogether, I think, and got terrible notices and everything, but good business. But I was wrong--I was too young for the part. I was too young for the part in the movie. And I don't think it made a movie. A lot of people liked it, especially on television. It played the other night, and I've had an awful lot of people say that they liked it. I didn't think it was movie material. For some reason, fantasy of that kind isn't movie material. |
Q: No, it doesn't work at all. |
Stewart: And it just isn't effective to have the door open and then the other door open in a movie. On the stage, when the door opens, you can see the rabbit walk across the stage, for some reason. And, of course, I went back and played it with Helen Hayes. I'm the right age for it now, and I loved every minute of it. As I say, I'm the right age for it now, and we did very well. |
<I>It's a Wonderful Life</I> (1946)--a Christmas classic<BR>
Q: It's a Wonderful Life is probably my favorite of all the Capra pictures. |
Stewart: It's my favorite of all the pictures I made. |
Q: It's magnificently done. Just sensational technically, and every other way. |
Stewart: Yes. That picture has an impact. I'll always remember that. It's strange, there must have been something special about it, because the Lux Radio Theater, usually after a picture was released, you know, their sort of routine would be to get the picture, to adapt it to radio, and then you would do it while the picture was in release, which was good for the picture. But because it ended on a sort of a Christmas theme, everybody in the cast, every Christmas for the next five Christmases after It's a Wonderful Life was released, wrote and asked to be in the Christmas Eve production of the Lux Radio Theater, which they did. And I think the reason it stopped was that one of the principals died. I forget who it was. |
Stewart: Henry Travis and Frank Phelan and Ward Bond, we all did it. Did it for the Christmas show. I think the Lux Radio Theater came on Monday night. Sunday, Monday night? Anyway, it was the Christmas show. |
But I liked the way the picture developed, and I liked the way it developed on the screen. I'll never forget Capra calling me up. I'd been out of the service maybe six months. No job and no offers of any kind. And he had been out about the same time. But he called me up and he said, "I have an idea for a picture, and why don't you come over to the house and I'll tell it to you." |
So I came over, and I'll never forget, I sat down and he said, "Now, this picture starts in heaven"--which took me back a little. He said, "It starts in heaven and you're down here on earth and you're going to commit suicide, because you think you're a failure. And you get out on a bridge and you're going to jump off the bridge, and then your guardian angel, he comes down." He said, "Jesus, this just sounds awful, doesn't it?" And I said, "Frank, if you want to make a picture that starts in heaven with a guardian angel, I'm all for it." And it went from there. |
The idea started on a Christmas card that he got from somebody, and it was a verse, and the gist of the verse was the idea of the picture. In other words, everyone gives a little something to this world and it's better that they were born. It's better. And this is the whole thing. |
And from then, it seemed to be pure movie, you know. No books, no real life thing, no--it just was pure idea, pure idea. And a pretty good one. |
I remember reading not very long ago, when some fellow from the Daily Mail--it was an editorial, sort of a pro-American editorial--said, I saw a picture about 10 years ago, and I don't remember what the name of it was, but James Stewart was in it, and he at one point in the picture said, I wish I'd never been born, and his guardian angel came down and showed him what his town would be like if he hadn't been born. And he said, I feel this way about America at this point, that with all the things that are going wrong, America must every once in a while say, I wish I'd never been born. But he said, it's too bad that we can't get a guardian angel of some kind to come down and show America what this planet would be like if she had never been born. Which impressed me, that--and it was rather an effective article--that he would take as the idea a motion picture. |
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