A Tale of Two James Stewarts: Frank Capra & Alfred Hitchcock
Some actors find themselves in a role they play again and again, while others are defined by the variety of characters they bring to life. James Stewart was one of those rare actors who could play any role and still seem like himself. Two directors in particular took James Stewart in opposite directions, showing the full range of his protean talent: Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock.
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In 1938 James Stewart began working with director Frank Capra, starring in You Can’t Take It With You opposite Jean Arthur, Capra’s “favorite actress.” James Stewart fit the bill perfectly — a combination of simple man, intellectual and idealist. He also required almost no directing. Later Capra said of him, “I think he’s probably the best actor who’s hit the screen.”
In their second collaboration, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Capra needed a “Boy Scout leader — naive, idealist” — and Stewart was again chosen, this time to play the role of Jefferson Smith, a young man elected to the U.S. Senate. Thinking he was elected to do some good, Smith quickly finds out that he was selected as a figurehead for a corrupt political influence group. One of Capra’s great feats as a director was reconstructing an entire Senate chamber for Stewart’s career-defining filibuster at the film’s climax.
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After Stewart completed his military service in 1945, he worked with Capra for a third time in It’s a Wonderful Life, considered by many to be one of the most inspiring films ever. Stewart shines as George Bailey, a funny, humble and hardworking guy who is unendingly punished for his decencies until grace and goodwill show the true mettle of a village. It was Stewart’s favorite performance, and it also introduced a darker strain of Stewart, which another director would mine to perfection.
Switching Gears While Working With Hitchcock
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Stewart was 40 when he appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope, which introduced the perennial nice guy to murder — this time as a schoolmaster and publisher who discovers, to his horror, that two of his prize pupils had taken his lecture on Nietzsche way too much to heart.
The two linked up again for Rear Window (1954) with Stewart as the voyeur (and surrogate audience member) who sees too much for his own good. It was a tough performance for Stewart — wheelchair-bound throughout, he kept all of the action limited to his facial expression.
Two years later, Stewart and Hitchcock paired again for The Man Who Knew Too Much, and the aging Stewart took on a dark shine as Dr. McKenna, a man fraying at all his accomplished edges after his son is kidnapped in retribution for gaining crucial espionage information. McKenna is able to get the bad guys in the end, but not without wounds. Hitchcock once said that Stewart’s public popularity made him perfectly cast as the everyman who falls into bizarre situations.
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Hitchcock would capitalize on the cracks he had created in Stewart’s demeanor in Vertigo, their final collaboration. Stewart played a retired cop whose vertigo prevents him from saving a woman (played by Kim Novak) from jumping to her death. Later he meets another woman who closely resembles the first, and he becomes obsessed with this likeness of love. No longer young, all the things that made him both simple and intellectual turn Stewart into a darker reflection of the man — perfect, perhaps, for the world we were changing into.
Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock were about as different as two directors can get, but both found in James Stewart an image of America, past and yet to come.
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Hollywoods Golden Year
April 2024
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