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■ An illusion must be shattered now and then, and here and there a fond but misconceived conception disrupted, in the effort to show the real Hollywood. Jimmy Stewart has been called, usually, "the shyest guy in the movies." This is about as accurate as calling Marilyn Monroe demure. Marilyn certainly can act demure. But she ain't, intrinsically. And Jimmy has been successfully shy, on the screen, for more than twenty years. Yet he ain't when he's being himself.
Jimmy has made a specialty of playing the underdog in pictures, the tall, gawky boy who practically has to sort out his thoughts in public as he speaks. But is he actually? Two months ago the Air Force Association of the United States, in convention at Omaha, listened to an address by one of their members, a former colonel of the 8th Air Force in the European Theatre of Command in World War II. This speaker, addressing an assemblage which included such military air power giants as Generals James Doolittle and Curtis LeMay, was Jimmy Stewart. His words were crisp and to 'the point. His command of himself was admirable and there was no fumbling for words. What was more, remarkable, he was speaking extemporaneously. His speeches are always extemporaneous.
A guest turned to one of the older members and had to express his wonder. "I didn't know Stewart could talk so well — and with such authority!" he exclaimed. "All the pictures you see him in, well — the poor fellow is always sort of reaching for his words, never seems sure he is doing the right thing, and everybody's getting the best of him."
His listener laughed. "You're looking at the real man now," he replied. "He's not related to his screen self at all. This man you see here knows what he is doing. If he played himself in his movies he'd get the best of the villain so fast all his pictures would be over by the second reel!"
In his many portrayals of the perplexed hero, the long-suffering victim who doesn't even like to strike back at his oppressors because any sort of brutality is against his nature, Jimmy has become one of the bestliked actors in the business; {Continued on -page 64)
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JIMMY STEWART
by Louis Pollock
Supposedly the shyest man in Hollywood, Jimmy seldom goes nightclubbing with Gloria— but shyness has nothing to do with it. Nor did he remain unmarried so long because he was too inarticulate to propose to any girl — these theories are just part of the Stewart legend, created by those who can't distinguish the real-life man from the gawky, overgrown boy on the screen!
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