Saturdays with the Stars: James Stewart

Each month of 2023 we are taking a look at a star who made their name in westerns, rustling cattle & riding horses during the brief time when cowboys ruled Hollywood.  Last month, we focused on Gary Cooper, the first talking cowboy of the Sound Era who would use the genre to stretch his stardom into the 1960's.  This month, we're going to focus on a contemporary of Cooper's whose stardom actually lasted even longer, though not quite as early.  A leading man in the mid-1930's, he would make countless westerns throughout his time in the spotlight, eventually spoofing his persona in his final role as a sharpshooting Great Dane (you read that right).  However, it is not the west, but Christmas that this actor remains a permanent force in in pop culture today.  This month's star is James Stewart.

James "Jimmy" Stewart was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to a prominent local family.  He grew up in a deeply religious background, and was expected to take over the family hardware store after attending Princeton.  During his time at prep school, however, Stewart developed a fondness for the arts, particularly acting, and after Princeton he joined a summer stock program to the chagrin of his father.  He spent years doing bit parts in theater, even finding his way to Broadway, but this led him to Hollywood, where he began getting work in small roles in films like The Murder Man opposite Spencer Tracy and even getting a small part in the famed Thin Man movie series.  Though under contract at the time to MGM, it was with two other studios in 1938 that Stewart finally proved to movie executives exactly why they should bet on him.  In RKO's Vivacious Lady, he exhibited his romantic comedy chops against one of the biggest stars in Hollywood at the time (Ginger Rogers, who would be one of many romantic partners Stewart had during this time frame) and in Columbia's You Can't Take It With You, which won the Best Picture Oscar that year and would cement Stewart as a leading man.  

It would also introduce Stewart to Frank Capra, who would become one of his favorite directors, and would direct him in two of the best-remembered films of his early stardom: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a Wonderful Life.  Stewart was a tough choice for me for this series, because I focus always on films that I have not seen before, and with Stewart-I've seen most of them, including all five of his Best Actor nominations & all of his outings with Alfred Hitchcock; I count him as one of my all-time favorite actors.  What I haven't seen a lot of, though, is Stewart's westerns.  With the exception of the John Ford classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Stewart's long history as a cowboy in Hollywood remains something of a mystery to me, and so this month while we'll visit one movie that wasn't a western, we'll spend most of our time trying to fill the gaps of Stewart's career on the range.