James Stewart: A Biography

By Marc Eliot

480 pages

Publisher: Harmony

Release Date: Oct 10 2006

ISBN-10: 1400052211

ISBN-13: 978-1400052219

Hardcover: $25.95US/$34.95CDN

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey

4 Stars

In June 1997, a decade ago, I sobbed like I’d lost a family member when I found out that James Stewart, Hollywood screen legend had died. For days I would burst into sobs sporadically, and could think of nothing else, equating symptoms to when I had lost my grandfather. I felt pathetic, really pathetic, after all James Stewart was an actor! Simple as that, he was a performer on film, so why was I so catatonic? James Stewart did for me what he did for millions, and generations of people, he evoked a sense of hope that reached audiences worldwide.  

For the launch of AnEVibe we couldn’t think of any other film we wanted to showcase more than It’s A Wonderful Life for our first Flashback! -  George Bailey. Think of the Capra classic and you will have that image of George in the luggage shop describing that he wants ‘A big one!’ (suitcase) arms outstretched and paused for Clarence to get a good look at George as a man. You’ll think of Zuzu’s petals, of Donna Reed stood in the middle of a wet and decrepit building with posters of exotic places tacked to the walls and a chicken roasting in the fire by way of an old turnstile record player. You’ll remember Buffalo Gals, and ‘the old Savings and Loan,’ and most of all, you will remember a man on a bridge desperate and heartbroken and you will know how George Bailey feels. That was the magic of James Stewart, which he imparted in many roles, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, The Shop Around The Corner, Harvey, even his Hitchcockean phase of Vertigo, Rear Window and Rope, you couldn’t help but admire him.   

So tackling the life of a man behind the characters was a huge undertaking for Marc Eliot. Admirers of James Stewart are all desperate to hear about the man behind those memorable roles, but he who volunteers for the task goes under the scrutiny of fierce critics. After all, if you taint the image of an American Hero, you have a nation to deal with. Firstly, the cover seems a perfect fit for the biography; Stewart at his Hitchcock age, looking wise and gentlemanly, but his face revealing a level of consternace and strength. The biography covers James Stewart from entering into the world at the turn of the last century, to exiting out in his eighties, and a life fully lived in between. Eliot talks about Stewart’s acting career, his Hollywood friends like Henry Fonda and June Allyson, his love for Shop Around The Corner co-star Margaret Sullavan, his bout in the army, his marriage to Gloria and all the personal rises and falls along the way. Eliot showcases Stewart as both stoic and permeable, a gentleman of the old school that dealt with life’s ebbs and flows the best way he knew how with the knowledge Stewart had at the time.  

This biography was like commissioning Jimmy Cagney to play George Bailey; getting Marc Eliot to write about James Stewart seems like an odd combination as Eliot tends to observe the world from a DeNiro, or Scorsese, side of filmmaking instead of the silver screen, old Hollywood style of James Stewart’s world. Quickly this ‘opposite side of the tracks’ idea about Eliot and Stewart seemed to show itself with many moments of over idealism about Stewart and other times almost jarring and out of place reflections on the seedy side of Hollywood that didn’t seem to mesh with the previous snippet tainted in rose coloured glasses we had just been privy to. I don’t know whether this was a particular miscalculation of Eliots’ or was intentional to show the literal black and white of old Hollywood. What’s obvious is Eliot’s mis-step in uncovering the man behind the well-loved persona. I may adore James Stewart, but I knew little of his private life before Eliot’s account and felt that not much new was uncovered in this biography. Eliot does indeed do a fine job of Stewart’s biography, very thorough and engaging; sentimentality can’t be an emotion removed when telling the life of James Stewart, but perhaps it could have been minimized. Eliot wrote like a fan, with a few stock options on gritty old Hollywood to balance the biography; but it didn’t. Eliot has been celebrated for his penmanship behind the Clark Gable biography, and I suspect he will be celebrated for this biography, as we are all prone to being sentimental about James Stewart. After all, I’ve never heard someone say ‘James Stewart, oh I never liked his acting or his films much.’ 

Anyone who is a fan of James Stewart (as I’ve pointed out, is anyone who has seen a film of his) should invest in reading this biography as it is informative and full of details about Stewart’s life; well worth the read.  The biography has its technical miscomings, but I do feel Eliot took on a mammoth task that no one should really be criticized for stepping up to the plate for. One of my primary concerns about Stewart’s film career is that it will be lost on the next generation as most youths I’ve come into contact with have not seen his films and did not get indoctrinated from an early age like myself. Biographies like this will keep the interest alive.  

When James Stewart passed it was his career that everyone remembered. Sony pictures put a full-page ad in The Hollywood Reporter in memoriam saying at the end ‘Farewell, Mr. Smith’ and Kelly Stewart Harcourt (Stewart’s Daughter) concluded her eulogy at his funeral saying ‘My parents’ love and friendships with the familiar faces filling the church had sustained them….in the familiar closing line of It’s A Wonderful Life, no man is a failure who has friends. So here’s to our father, the richest man in town!’