Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1939)

PHOTOPLAY'S AUTHOR INVADES JAMES STEWART'S HOME TOWN AND RETURNS WITH THE MOST REVEALING LIFE HISTORY AND EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS WE HAVE PUBLISHED IN YEARS was the daughter of General S. M. Jackson who had distinguished himself as a Union leader at Gettysburg and was now State Treasurer in Harrisburg. Bessie Jackson Stewart must have been a remarkably pretty young girl in those days soon after the turn of the century, when she came to Indiana as a bride. She is still strikingly handsome today, her soft white hair worn in a trim bob, her deep blue eyes as young as her smile. It was from Bessie Stewart, seated in the homey front parlor of her house, with a fat album of precious pictures in her lap, that I learned the intimate story of Jim's boyhood. Throughout the long afternoon of my visit, Alec was in and out of the room, stopping a moment to add an anecdote, supply a date, laugh over a family joke. UNE of the first pictures in the book was of an old-fashioned frame house, set back from the street by a terraced yard. This, Mrs. Stewart told me, was their first home after they were married. "The Garden of Eden," Alec had named it, and here all three of their children were born, Jim on May 20, 1908, Mary in 1912 and Virginia in 1914. Here Jim, when he had passed the crawling stage and had learned to walk, tortured the excitable Polish maid of all work by dragging in worms from the garden to her spotless kitchen, raiding the pantry for peanut butter. Mrs. Stewart flicked the pages of the album. Here was Jim at four years old, with bangs and a white sailor suit. It was that year, Mrs. Stewart remembered, that Jim fashioned his first airplane, adding wings from a kite to a pushmobile cart and installing the works of a discarded alarm clock as engine. For two days this contraption served as an exciting new plaything in the back yard and by the third afternoon, Jim was convinced it would fly. Borrowing an idea from the Wright Brothers, Jim decided to test his plane in the air by gliding from the sloping roof of the washhouse. "He had managed to drag the cart up on the roof," Mrs. Stewart recounted, "and was all ready to take off when Alec happened to come into the yard. His shouts to Jim to stop were too late and he dashed back to the washhouse just in time to catch Jim and the plane as they hurtled toward the ground. They landed in a confused heap under the roof but fortunately no one was hurt. "I'm sure Jim might have been seriously injured if his father hadn't happened by just when he did, but Jim was merely grieved because his first flight had been interrupted. " 'It's a very good plane. I know it can fly,' he argued. "To distract him from any further neckbreaking experiments, Alec suggested that Jim turn his attention to building model planes and, helped by Clyde Woodward, one of the clerks at the hardware store, Jim began on a hobby that has held his interest to this day. "When he was home last Christmas, he was more enthusiastic in his description of a new model he had just finished building than about anything pertaining to Hollywood." MRS. STEWART turned the pages of the album again. Next was an entrancing snapshot of Jim gazing up at his father in unmistakable hero worship. "Jim always has been intensely proud of his father," Mrs. Stewart smiled. "From the time he was a little boy, he's worshiped Alec and the greatest compliment you could give him was to say that he was like his father. "I remember one of the first times I ever took Jim over to my family's home in Apollo. The Jacksons were a large family and the house was filled with relatives, home for a reunion. Jim was out in the kitchen with Delia McGraw, the big, good-natured Irish housekeeper. The family crowded around him cooing compliments, making a great fuss over him. " 'Oh, he has eyes just like his Aunt Emily,' said one. " 'Look, he has his Uncle John's nose.' " 'And his hair, isn't it just like Frank's?' "Jim stood it as long as he could as one after another of his features was compared to that of some member of the family. Everyone except his father had been mentioned. "Finally, jealous of the slight, Jim shouted, 'Well, anyway, my teeth are just like Daddy's!' " "Just like Daddy's." It was the keynote of Jim's childhood, that desire to be like the tall, tender man who never forgot a promise, never failed the nightly ritual of a romp. Jim imitated his father's rangy walk, his wide, jerky gestures, caught the trick of slow, deliberate speech. When you meet Alec Stewart you know instantly where Jim acquired his mannerisms, his voice, his eager interest in all about him. One of Alec Stewart's happiest hobbies was his membership in the Volunteer Fire Association. Indiana was proud of the tradition of its volunteer fire brigade. To belong to it was a little something like having your name on the rolls of the Union League in larger cities. Whenever he could, Jim followed his father to the fire association's meetings, watching drill; with excited interest, helping polish the nozzle of a hose, sharing the company's pride in the acquisition of each new piece of equipment. Soon Jim's persistence in attending each meeting, his wide-eyed worship of the heroes of the brigade, led to his being accepted as official mascot of the company and when he was six years old, Jim was thrilled at Christmas time by receiving as his main present, a fireman's uniform, complete to visored cap and brassbuttoned tunic, an exact copy of the outfit worn by his father. The present had no sooner been unwrapped than Jim, disregarding all other gifts, rushed to his room to don the magnificent new raiment. He was still in his prized costume at the Christmas dinner table, having removed the shiny, visored cap only after vigorous protest, when the sonorous bell over the firehouse clanged a summons on the quiet winter afternoon air. Alec pushed his chair away from a half-finished plate of turkey and started out of the house. Before his mother could stop him, Jim, grabbing up his fireman's cap and his hatchet from under the Christmas tree, followed. "The fire wasn't a very big one," Alec remembers, "just an old barn and we put out the blaze in short order. When I looked around for Jim he wasn't anywhere in sight. I walked around in back of the shed and there he was with his hatchet that wouldn't have made much of a dent on a snowball, hacking away feverishly at a rear door." It was a memorable experience, that first fire he attended as mascot and, a little later, recounting the story to his grandparents, Jim's enthusiasm began to stretch the facts. The small barn with one or two horses became a great stable with scores of frightened animals trapped in a giant conflagration. Grandma Stewart listened attentively to the glowing account. Exaggeration followed exaggeration until finally the little old lady asked, "And were all the horses lost, Jim?" The apprentice axman shot a look at his father, who had been watching the boy curiously. "Well," hesitated Jim, "I think one of the horses got his tail burned." It became a catchword in the Stewart family when someone seemed overboard on a story. "One of the horses got his tail burned!" JIM was eight years old when the Stewarts moved from "The Garden of Eden" to their present home, a big brick house on Vinegar Hill, the residential knoll which rises in the center of town. Meanwhile Jim had started going to the Model School, an adjunct of the State Teachers College in Indiana, and here began his friendship with Joe Davis, Bill Neff and Hall Blair, who were to become the closest chums of his boyhood. Miss Amy Gray, one of Jim's teachers at the Model School, remembers him as a seriousfaced little boy who wore glasses and showed an unusual talent for drawing. In fact, the cover of the book in which she has kept unusual work of her pupils through the years is decorated with a skillful crayon sketch of Jim's, depicting a knight in armor astride a fiery black charger. It was at the Model School that Jim succumbed to the one romance of his younger years. Her hair was red. Her ribbons were the biggest of any girl in the class and though a front tooth was missing at the moment, she was unquestionably the prettiest miss in the room. For months Jim had looked upon her as merely another classmate, but on the afternoon of the spring pageant when she offered him half her cake, after the refreshment stand had refused him more than three helpings, Jim knew that .;»" here was a girl to be cherished. With sisters Mary and GInny, Jim was star and producer of a flaming war-time play, fittingly called "The Slacker"