Find Your Style with James Stewart
In April 1945, as the war in Europe juddered to an end, the actor James Stewart was at something of a crossroads in his life. He was a full colonel in the United States Army Air Force and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the French Croix de Guerre and numerous other medals for his 20 combat missions over Germany. Oh, and he also won an Oscar, for The Philadelphia Story (1940), co-starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. However, after the loss of so many friends and comrades during those bombing runs, he thought returning to what he considered the shallowness of Hollywood an unattractive option. He had a choice: he could remain in the military (which he did, after a fashion, serving in the USAF Reserve and rising to brigadier general) or return home to the family store in Pennsylvania. And the film business, he reckoned, would do just fine without him. Then, Frank rang.
‘He called me one day and said, “I have an idea for a movie. Why don’t you come over and I’ll tell you?” So, I went over, and we sat down and he said, “This picture starts in heaven.” Well, that shook me.’
Frank was Frank Capra, who had directed Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939), which established his enduring on-screen persona: a humble and virtuous man, a regular Joe, the very embodiment of the much-lauded American values of hard work, parsimony and honesty. The new movie Capra had in mind was what would become It’s A Wonderful Life, the story of a simple yet frustrated soul, who thinks the world would be better off if he had never been born. A rookie guardian angel, Clarence Odbody, puts him right, demonstrating how much poorer his hometown, his family and friends would have been had George Bailey not lived. Similarly, it is possible that Capra did an Odbody and convinced Stewart that his time in Tinsel Town had not been – and would not be – without value.
Although the sentiments (and sentimentality) of the story chimed with him, Stewart was reluctant at first. He felt his acting ‘chops’ were rusty and he wouldn’t be able to convince an audience that Jimmy Stewart would ever be angry and despairing enough to consider taking his own life. He need not have worried. The actor manages to convey the turmoil that Bailey feels early on, while the character’s basic decency shines though. It is possible that the actor’s lack of confidence – and the famous hesitant vocal tick (uh-uh-uh) that kept impersonators in work for decades – helped Stewart sell George as a good if confused man who has lost his way.
Stewart’s relatively conservative wardrobe in the film helps underpin George’s ‘Everyman’ status. There is nothing flashy, no artifice to the clothes to suggest a Hollywood costume designer has been at work (even though there was one – Edward Stevenson). In fact, so apparently comfortable was Stewart in the tweed suits, hats and heavy twill overcoats (it is mostly set over a snowy Christmas, even if some of the white stuff on show was actually asbestos) that viewers might have been forgiven for thinking that the credit should have read: ‘Mr. Stewart’s Wardrobe: Actor’s Own’.
Well, much of it was. His distinctive single-breasted, four-pocket, half-belted at the back, ventless suit – which took some cues from the Norfolk shooting jacket – had appeared before, in a famous Life photoshoot by snapper Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1938 and on screen in Vivacious Lady with Ginger Rogers that same year. In those photos he also wears a collar bar under the knot of his tie.
His choice of shirts reflected Stewart’s preference for unpretentious plainness, being white or blue with a faint stripe, sometimes with a semi-spread collar, and usually two-button, rounded cuffs, the latter helping to offset the long arms on either side of his six-foot-two frame. Ties tended to be quite boldly striped or ‘foulard’ – a small, close-repeating pattern. Sometimes, off-screen, Stewart would opt for something more daring under a jacket – such as sporting a gaucho shirt, with wide spread spearpoint collar, loop-fastened buttons, and gathered wrist and waistband. In the movies, though, the variations tend to be less jarring – as in the striking collar pin (probably a personal preference, given the bar in the Eisenstaedt photos) he wears in the driving scene from Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Of course, in his other great role for the director, Rear Window, Stewart mainly demonstrates how to look good in pyjamas 24/7.
He is outstanding in the Hitchcocks and films such as John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) but, despite his initial misgivings, It’s A Wonderful Life remained one of Stewart’s favourite performances, even though the film barely broke even at the time. It only became a much-loved Christmas perennial when it accidentally dropped out of copyright and TV channels in the US could show it for free. But it chimed perfectly with his performing maxim: ‘A James Stewart picture,’ he insisted, ‘must have two vital ingredients. It will be clean and it will involve the triumph of the underdog over the bully.’ That’s pretty much It’s A Wonderful Life in a nutshell.
Stewart appeared in more than 60 movies in all and when asked about the secret of his longevity in the business, he once said: ‘You have to develop a style that suits you and pursue it, not just develop a bag of tricks.’ He was referring to acting, of course, but it could equally apply to the Jimmy Stewart sartorial code.
