More than Apple Pie

...The biographer is equally lucid about his subject's conservative views and private life...

...Reviewed by Brian Edgar Filmmaker Donald Dewey sets out to discover what made a quiet man from Indiana, Pennsylvania, so uniquely accomplished an actor that many assume some of his most skillful performances were simply "Jimmy Stewart being Jimmy Stewart": being "folksy...

...The marriage produced twin daughters, Kelly and Judy, and lasted 45 years, until Gloria's death in 1994...

...Recounting this period, Dewey shows us the vulnerability and painful isolation of the actor...

...As a tale of optimism and redemption...

...Although Stewart has often cited the Presbyterian Church and the Republican Party as formative local influences, it was his father, Alex—a mixture of strict patriarch and adventurous dreamer—who most fully molded his son's values and sensibilities...

...trustworthy...

...The seed was not sewn until he took a job with the University Players, a summer stock company that included Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan...

...Dewey traces Stewart's academic years at Mercersberg Academy (a wasp prep school heavy on religion), then Princeton, where, in addition to his passion for the accordion, football and flying, he dabbled in small stage roles with the university's Triangle Club...

...Vividly chronicled as well is Stewart's rise from the rank of private to operations officer responsible for training bomber crews at Gowen Field in Boise, Idaho, to squadron commander in England leading attacks on enemy targets...

...I don't think Dewey's search provides the complete answer, but he does take us on a fascinating and detailed journey through the life of one of Hollywood's most enduring personas...

...He then neatly ties this to the actor's careful separation of his low-profile private 1 ife and his screen presence...

...While Jimmy's mother, Bessie, is credited with maintaining family stability and instilling an appreciation for music, it was Alex, the hardware store owner, who became the firm pillar in his son's life...

...Nor did the situation improve in the '70s, since his opportunities for work were limited to a scattering of small film roles and ill-fated television projects...

...He sees "a lavish seediness" in Rear Window, and in Stewart's L. B. Jeffries (the photojournalist critics routinely describe as exceedingly voyeuristic) he notes "a much more loaded supply of straightforward misogyny—at least toward wives—than of Peeping Tom self-indulgence...

...The same traits earned him respect within the industry...

...In 1985, in what will probably stand as his last major public appearance, Stewart accepted an honorary Oscar from Cary Grant...

...Carole Lombard would say that he was "more sincere than any of them, and just as talented—his talent is perfection itself...

...Dewey does a particularly good job of balancing the many facets of Jimmy Stewart: his public image, private friendships and various loves—including Sullavan, the most significant woman in his life until his marriage in August 1949, at age 41, to Gloria Hatrick...

...Stewart's support of the House Un-American Activities Committee almost cost him his lifelong friendship with Henry Fonda...

...He had his sights set on studying architecture in graduate school, however, and displayed no serious interest in acting as a profession...

...His appearances there in a number of productions, Dewey relates, "impressed Broadway critics, producers, directors, and, of essential importance to him, other actors he himself respected...

...His squadron of B-24 Liberators knocked out key German munitions plants and inflicted enough damage on the Luftwaffe to help set the stage for the D-Day invasion of Normandy...

...He was weary but gracious, thanking his fans and colleagues for "so generously and brilliantly guiding me through the no-man's land of my own intentions...

...In the most encompassing sense, his emotions belonged to his work," Dewey says, speaking of Stewart's military service...

...But the film and Stewart's self-absorbed, virtually narcissistic Bailey are far more complex than that suggests...

...As Scot-tie Ferguson, he continues, Stewart plays "not so much a man obsessed as obsession personified...

...Both reflect the country newly emerged from World War 11 and facing the beginnings of the Cold War...

...The story of how the actor contributed to shaping the demoralized 453rd Bombardment Group into a top Eighth Air Force unit is more compelling than all except a few of Stewart's Hollywood dramas...

...And just as he charts the tangible distance between the self-contained, off-screen Stewart and the emotional range of his on-cam-era characterizations, the author dispatches the "American as apple pie" myth...

...In 1969 Stewart's stepson Ronald was killed in Vietnam...

...During the early postwar years Stewart would find his greatest work in portraying dark, troubled individuals...

...But this background material has the virtue of adding weight to accounts of the pivotal points in Stewart's career, such as his late 1930s roles in Frank Capra's You Can 't Take It With You and Mr...

...Vertigo, Dewey writes, "summed up all the previous collaborations between Stewart and Hitchcock, then went on to add some more steps into darkness...

...A set designer for the Players described him as "not a typical, good-looking juvenile...

...It's a Wonderful Life has become Christmastime fare for television...

...He plumbed his creative depths in these roles, tapping a previously unrevealed pathos...

...Attracted to the sense of adventure he got from acting, Stewart followed the lead of Fonda and Sullavan and decided to give New York a shot...

...Smith Goes to Washington, where he gave a "dominating performance as the quintessential idealist...

...The '50s also marked the beginning of Stewart's "golden years" as an actor, and of his marriage to Gloria Hatrick, a strong-willed, witty divorcee with two children and a tendency to be domineering...

...He began appearing in numerous productions with such stars as Spencer Tracy, Jeannette MacDonald and Ginger Rogers...

...Dewey is especially insightful on the growth of their relationship as Stewart's star starts to descend in the 1960s...

...The story begins in the deeply conservative western Pennsylvania town founded by English, Scotch and Irish immigrants...

...The two Hitchcock films and Stewart's interpretation of his roles in them further capture, even heighten, the collective angst...

...In James Stewart Donald Dewey has drawn a full picture of a man who has given us this, and far more...

...Because the biography details every movie Stewart ever acted in, it reads at times like a textbook filmography...

...Before long Stewart's work ethic and Middle American values defined characters that won him a reputation as a "natural" actor (a label he came to disdain...

...Stewart won the respect of his men and fellow officers...

...What unfolds from this point on is a sensitive portrait of an increasingly private person who must face the suicide of Margaret Sullavan, the death of his close friend Gary Cooper, and a decade that becomes steadily more hostile to conservatism...

...From the intense, tormented George Bailey in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946), to the more obsessive and richly layered L. B. Jeffries and Scottie Ferguson in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958), respectively, Stewart brought to life figures who seemed to mirror the changing world...

...respectful...

...he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and by the War's end held the rank of colonel...

...It wasn't until June 1935, though, that Stewart left for Hollywood and the studio system of the notorious Louis B. Mayer...

...Asked once what he hoped his artistic legacy would be, Stewart said: "If you're good and God helps you and you're lucky enough to have the kind of personality that comes across, you're giving people little, little tiny pieces of time that they never forget...

...Dewey explores the actor's stance and the speculation about his possibly having been a closed-door witness for huac...

...We see, too, the ingrained convictions of the man behind MGM's hype when we learn that, a few days after receiving the 1941 Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Philadelphia Story (an honor he felt should have gone to Henry Fonda), Stewart enlisted in the Army Air Corps despite Mayer's strenuous objections and counterarguments...

...Dewey offers fresh perceptions of each...

...In his shambling and somewhat awkward way, he was far more striking and he presented a challenge to directors and producers...

...Soon his growing visibility and critical success led to screen tests with MGM, which signed him in 1934...

...But it was Margaret Sullavan, after marrying the high-powered agent Leland Hayward and landing Stewart the role opposite herself in The Shopworn Angel, who perhaps did the most to fuel his young career...