Michael Munn - Jimmy Stewart : the truth behind the legend

Other titles by Michael Munn

Frank Sinatra: The Untold Story

John Wayne: The Man Behind The Myth

The Hollywood Connection: The True Story of Organized Crime
in Hollywood

M ICHAEL M UNN

Skyhorse Publishing

A Herman Graf Book

Copyright 2006, 2013 by Michael Munn

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. ISBN: 978-1-62636-094-5

Printed in the United States of America

I am dedicating this book to
my sister Judy
who bought me the soundtrack to Exodus
and opened up a whole new world of wonderful music,
and to my brother Peter
who took me to a flea-pit called the Tolmer to see The Vikings
and opened up another new world of Saturday afternoon cinema.
They both have a lot to answer for.

James Stewart didnt hear a word I said, and told me, Youll hafta speak up.

Id not been told how deaf he was. He was, after all, sixty-sevenalthough as I later found out, hed been losing his hearing for many years.

So there I was, in his dressing room at Londons Prince of Wales Theatre, where he was performing Harvey in 1975, shouting questions at him. I was still a green young film journalist, twenty-two years old, nervous at meeting a screen legend and desperate not to sound like an idiot. Sensing my anxiety, Stewart smiled and said, very slowly, Its okay, son... this is only an interview, not a cross-examination. You ask the questions and... Ill do my damnedest to give you an intelligent answer.

He also said, You dont hafta shout. Just... just speak up.

I discovered in later years that he was quite good at lip-reading, although he wouldnt have admitted to it. He may even have been wearing a hearing aid, but I didnt notice. I never have been observant about surroundings, or clothing, or colour schemes. I am always aware, though, of people, and what they say. And I was aware that James Stewart was remarkably composed considering he would soon be going on stage to play Elwood P Dowd, the amiable drunk who believes hes got a six-foot white rabbit called Harvey as a friend. An hour later, I had the remarkable experience of seeing the play and watching Jimmy Stewart perform live on stage. The play was, as Stewart told me, much better than the famous 1950 film version.

My second interview with Stewart took place a few years after the first. For a long time I was convinced it had been in 1980, until, while researching this book, I came across the published interview in Photoplay and discovered it was actually 1979.

This time I met Stewart in a London hotel. I think it was the Dorchester, but again I have poor recollection of such details; I interviewed countless movie stars in countless hotels, countless restaurants, countless studios, countless bars, on countless outside locations, and after so many years the specifics of those places have often faded in my memory. But the memories of the starsand some of those who never quite achieved stardomare indelibly imprinted in my memory banks. And when it came to James Stewarthis mannerisms, his stories and his folksy personaall of it is unforgettable.

It was on the day of that second meeting that I began to get to know Jimmy Stewart and his wife, Gloria. Id begun the interview by being chatty, saying, I understand youre on your way from the Paris air show. Id forgotten how deaf he was; he tapped his ear and said, Youll hafta speak up... Im a little...and his words trailed off; I think he hated to use the word deaf.

So I repeated my question, and he replied, Waall... Ive been trying to get there for the past twenty years.

Why did it take so long? I asked.

I dont know really... I guess mostly my work. Over the years you get... you know... awful busy, and Ive just never been able to... er... make it. Id also forgotten just how slowly Stewart talked, and how much he punctuated his sentences with pauses. He truly was the Jimmy Stewart the world had come to love and know.

But there was so much more to Jimmy Stewart than what he publicly revealed. He even had secrets; something I was to find out all about because of a brief interruption to the interview. About halfway through, the front door to his hotel suite flew open and in breezed a woman bursting with vitality and enthusiasm that almost overwhelmed the legendary laconic presence of James Stewart. This, young man, he said to me as he rose out of his chair, is my wife Gloria.

I just did the museumthe Natural History, she said. Theyve got two new exhibits there. Fascinating. One is on ecology, the other on dinosaurs. Certainly an improvement on those old cages with all those stuffed animals. They all look so dead.

Stewart kissed her and said, But they are dead.

She said, I know. But God, they neednt look that dead. Now Im going for a bite to eat.

Stewart told her, See you later, dear, and she breezed out.

When the interview was over, I went down to the lobby and spotted Mrs Stewart, his wife of thirty years, having tea. She caught sight of me, and beckoned me over. Have some tea with me, she said. Keep me company.

So I did. We talked, and somehow it ended up with me volunteering to take her the next day to the British Museum, where Id spent hundreds of hours as a child. We also took in other London sights, with me as her tour guide. To achieve this, I took a day off sick, and spent it touring London with Gloria Stewart in a taxi, walking around museums and exploring St Pauls Cathedral where I refused to go up into the dome.

Why ever not? she asked.

Because I have an extreme fear of heights.

Oh, she laughed, you must have loved Jims film Vertigo.

So I patiently waited until she came down again.

At the end of the day she invited me back to the hotel to have dinner with her and Jimmyor Jim, as I was told to call him. Over dinner, I got to know a whole lot more about the real Jimmy Stewart.

I often found myself in a position to discover more about the real lives of stars when my trusty tape recorder was off, because I was not a hard-nosed journalist only on the hunt for a good story, and it obviously showed. I had been working in the film business since 1969, starting as a messenger boy and graduating to a publicist until I accidentally became a journalist in 1974. I was in search of a career as a film director and screenwriter, and was also making tentative steps towards being an actor. This meant that I always had a lot more to talk about with movie stars and directors and writers than just seeking answers that were the staple diet of fan magazines. It explains why and how I came to know so much about the big stars of Hollywood, and especially James Stewart.