An unassuming genius

The great director and critic François Truffaut once labelled James Stewart as one of those rare actors who could be ‘moving and amusing within the same scene’. Quite so. On the one hand, Stewart — angular, lanky, and awkward in action and speech — was made for comedy. That meandering drawl alone is enough to get punters giggling in their seats, ‘W...w...w...well, golly.’ But on the other, he was capable of such sincerity of expression that none of his physical quirks matters. Make no mistake, he’s a truly great actor. And perhaps the only one who could make us believe in giant invisible rabbits.

Why bring this up now? Well, it’s almost 100 years, to the day, since this unassuming genius was born in his parent’s home — at 975 Philadelphia Street, Indiana, Pennsylvania — on 20 May 1908. He enjoyed an uncomplicated, American upbringing; the best his father, the owner of the local hardware store, could afford. That meant good schooling, lessons in the piano and accordion, and even an extended spell in the Boy Scouts. All of which, no doubt, prepared him for enrolment at Princeton University, from where he graduated in 1932 with a degree in architecture. But, thankfully, Stewart’s ambition lay not with blueprints and buildings, but with stage and screen.

It was thus — as a wide-eyed innocent — that young Jimmy Stewart shuffled into Hollywood in the early 1930s. He made a humble start in the picture business — an uncredited appearance in Art Trouble (1934) — but his ‘Aw-shucks’ personality was quickly latched on to by casting directors. Soon enough, Stewart became the go-to guy for any role that required naivety, youthfulness and bounce. His filmography swelled, and so, too, did the public’s affection for this affable young chap.

What Stewart brought to his early films was empathy. And he brought it by the bucketful. Here was an actor, a personality, whom viewers really cared about. Put him in a cinematic scrape, and they’d bite their fingernails until a happy resolution could be found — after all, who’d want harm to befall someone so gentle-natured? It’s a set-up that was exploited majestically by Frank Capra, the director of Stewart’s first totemic film, Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Here, Stewart plays Jefferson Smith, an idealistic politician who gets battered by the entrenched interests on Capitol Hill. Towards the end of the film, Smith approaches despair, until all is resolved in one of cinema’s most moving finales. Because of Stewart’s uniquely meek presence, the film’s ups-and-downs are gut-wrenching. Capra would repeat the trick with It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), perhaps Stewart’s most enduring film.

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