Did you ever wonder why Jimmy Stewart changed from this:
...to this?
Two things, really—World War II, and Anthony Mann.
Stewart saw his fair share of combat in WWII—more than his
fair share, really. Initially drafted by the Army and rejected for being
underweight (he was 6’ 3’’ and weighed only 143 pounds!), he hit the weights
and re-enlisted in the Air Corps, just squeaking by. He entered the service as a private,
but ended the war a full Colonel commanding the Army Air Force 2nd
Bomb Wing. Although he was eventually promoted to staff officer and didn’t
have to fly daily bombing missions, Stewart assigned himself as a combat
crewman until promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in 1944.
In fact, after WWII Stewart was still an officer in the Air Force Reserve. In 1966, Brigadier General Stewart flew on a B-52 bombing mission during the Vietnam War.
It wasn’t apparent in his youth, but clearly James Stewart had some steel in his spine.
Like many GIs, Stewart returned from the grimness of combat
a changed man. America had changed, too—it was ready for darker movie fare,
with protagonists who had trouble in their past and conflicting,
perhaps-not-completely-wholesome desires. Enter Anthony Mann, a director who
was very much at home in this territory, and had by the early 1950s made a number
of Film Noirs whose gritty protagonists dragged one foot in the criminal demimonde.
The combination of Mann and Stewart was electrifying, and
audiences knew it. These are not your John Ford, straight-up-the-middle
westerns, with John Wayne dispensing rough justice and sleeping soundly about
it that night. In a Mann/Stewart western, justice is whatever you can defend
with your gun—or your knife, or your bare hands. And you might have to break
some eggs to get the job done. Things The Law isn’t going to like.
If you’re ready for a dark trail ride into the seamy
underbelly of Manifest Destiny, give one of these a try:
Winchester ’73
(1950)
Bend of the River
(1952)
The Naked Spur
(1953)
The Far Country
(1955)
The Man from Laramie (1955)
Stewart scared me in Bend in the River.
ReplyDeleteHe's maybe not quite as scary in "The Far Country", but he gets pretty comfortable with theft and murder. But they were all trying to rustle his cattle, see.
ReplyDelete