Movie mirror. (1936)

MOVIE MIRROR Jim Stewart's Life Is Full of Triangles engineer and Jimmy didn’t. So he switched to an architect’s triangle, because you could draw, and he did like to draw. The major triangle, however, was the Triangle Club. And perhaps this was just as well. Because nobody loved an architect when Jimmy Stewart hunted a job in mid-de¬ pression ’32. But a fellow Triangleer had a stock company up in Falmouth on Cape Cod. I don’t think Jimmy Stewart could give you any sound reason for turning actor except that there wasn’t much else to do, and the accordion had a payment coming due, and he wanted a crack at New York. “Goodbye Again,” the summer stock opus, went to New York, and Jimmy Stew¬ art went with it. Thirty bucks a week was no road to quick riches, but a fellow could make it do, even after the Actors’ Equity fee had been taken out. THE Stewarts back in Indiana, Pa., took the news with equanimity. Jimmy’s father was Princeton, ’98, a suc¬ cessful hardware merchant and a good sport. They thought that Jimmy ought to look around for an architect’s spot, though, when things got a little better. But they got worse. And so Jimmy is in Hollywood with his accordion, clicking more chips each Satur¬ day that he could ever draw from a draftsman’s board. ( Continued from page 43) It wasn’t so sudden as that, of course, or as easy as it sounds. Most of what Jimmy got from Broad¬ way was notice and experience. Most of the time he spent in rehearsing. His plays were many, but not noted for longevity. “Yellow Jack” was his first important attraction. If you’re up on your Broad¬ way, you may remember him in “Spring In Autumn,” “All Good Americans,” “Di¬ vided By Three” and “Page Miss Glory.’’ And if you chanced to see the last thing he did, during the aforementioned three days of its run, the chances are you’ll never forget it. Jimmy never has. It was called “Journey By Night.” It was not exactly a hit. In the first place, the audience managed to roar in the wrong places, which is dis¬ concerting to an artist, I’m told, and on the last night the props and cues got all mixed up and Jimmy found himself in stage center jerking at a door which wouldn’t open, while a telephone he couldn’t possibly answer jangled and things col¬ lapsed and the cash customers howled. He took a journey by night to Holly¬ wood with his own airplane, and he ar¬ rived in somewhat bad odor. I do not wish to infer here that the dis¬ astrous finale to “Journey By Night” had handicapped our hero forever with its dis¬ tinctive atmosphere. It was like this : When Jimmy and Hank Fonda and the other two hopefuls elbowed each other around in their New York nest, Hank and Jimmy had started the construction of an airplane. When you work maybe an hour a day, and that at night, you soon run out of movies to see and aquariums to visit. OINCE Jimmy was an aviation nut, on ^ the sly, and Hank a born tinkerer, they crowded things even more by turning a closet into a small factory. Then Hank's big break in “The Farmer Takes a Wife” took him off to Hollywood, and Jimmy was left to guard the airplane. Hank, in the fever of his Hollywood success, never forgot the airplane. When he heard Jimmy was coming out he wrote, “Whatever you do, don’t forget to bring out the plane. There is all kinds of room out here. We can fly it.” And Jimmy was true to his trust. He fashioned with loving care a tremendous box, resembling a somewhat unorthodox cross. He soaked it with a dark mysteri¬ ous substance guaranteed to protect any¬ thing from the ravages of dampness and climatic change. Instead of consigning it to the baggage car, he jammed it under his berth where he could watch it. And everything was fine until they hit the New Mexico desert, where people be¬ gan to regard him and his burden with suspicion. When the heat got to work, READ HOW A BAD CASE OF PIMPLES QUEERED ADA'S CHANCES 84