Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

1ND THIN "Nuts to weight-gaining diets/ says Stewart, as he resigns him self to his fate — or does he? BY KAY PROCTOR F you want to get bopped on the nose by ■ Jimmy Stewart — and he packs a healthy bop in that right of his— just start telling him bout some marvelous new system for gaining /eight. I guarantee you action. Why you should want to get bopped on the ose by him is neither here nor there; it takes 11 kinds to make a world. Look at the scads f screwballs who think it a divine achievement o possess a piece of Bob Taylor's shirttail or get | dirty look from Clark Gable. The phenomena iduced from star worshipping sometimes are l/ondrous indeed to behold. It is a touchy subject with Jimmy, the matter f ways and means of adding a few pounds to hat long, lank frame of his. And for a magnifi:ent reason. For the past fourteen years every)ody and his dog have thought it their bounden luty to give Jimmy a little firsthand advice tbout it, and he has been taking it. There's the •ub. He's been taking it! And how! The wonler is he is alive to tell the tale. As far as he is concerned, it is a closed subect now and forever hence. He is calmly and luietly resigned to his fate of being six feet hree and nudging the scales at a measly 150 )ounds. Which was his weight when he first irrived in Hollywood back in 1935 and Papa -louis B. Mayer out at Metro did a double take ind hinted it might be a good idea if he put a ittle meat on the Stewart bones. (Papa Mayer s reconciled to it now, too, what with the perormances Jimmy has been turning in and the vay he has been knocking the fan-mail departnent galley -west!) "I'll tell all just this once," Jimmy told me >ver the luncheon table. "Then maybe people vill realize my pitiful plight and stop giving me heir sure-cures." He shook his head mournully. "And to think there was a time when I ;ought their advice, actually asked for it! Little did I know the ingenious tortures man could inflict on a fellow man!" We had less than an hour for lunch. Nonetheless, in that short time Jimmy tucked away a man-sized lunch of soup, lamb chops, potatoes, asparagus, two rolls, pie, coffee, and a glass of beer. "And don't tell me I'll never gain weight if I bolt my food," he chipped. "I've tried that one, too. Thorough mastication, I believe they call it. No good." Thirteen years of his life were blissfully free of the curse, it seems. They were the first thirteen. He was an average eight-pound baby and Alexander and Elizabeth Stewart were pretty excited when he arrived one May 20th at the family home on Seventh Street on Vinegar Hill in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He was, in fact, on the chubby side. "Fat little rascal," Mr. Stewart told friends who dropped in at his small-town hardware store to offer congratulations on his first-born. "Quite a boy! Stop by the house and see him." The years rolled along and Jimmy's weight kept apace, although his mother often did say she declared to goodness she didn't know how he kept an ounce on him the way he took those steps. The "steps" were the fifty-four leading from the street to the front door of the Stewart house and Jim "took" them three at a time going up and five at a time going down. Once he took them all at one time going down but nothing much happened except a couple of barked shins and a sore sitter-downer. Which proves nature's padding was sufficient at that time, anyway. Then it happened. He had just turned thirteen. All of a sudden he started to shoot up. In one year alone he outgrew three new suits. Mr. Stewart's patience had worn a lot thinner than the third suit when Mrs. Stewart broached the matter as tactfully as she could that Jim once more had outgrown his clothes. "I did not get the fourth suit," Jimmy said. "Indiana simply was treated to a view of a few more inches of my wrists and ankles." I HE trouble, however, was that he did not fill out as he shot up. It was purely one-dimensional growth. Whereupon, Mrs. Stewart swung into action and Jimmy got his first dose of weightgaining remedies. Mrs. Stewart's prescription was oatmeal— a big hot bowl of it — every morning for breakfast. Now, as Jimmy said, there is nothing wrong with oatmeal. It is a fine, healthy food. Some people like it very much indeed. Unfortunately, he is not one of those people. His daily protests at breakfast were of no avail. "My goodness, Jim, you don't want to look like a rail, do you?" his mother would answer. She was right. He didn't. In fact he was pretty sensitive then about his appearance. (He is no longer sensitive, he says; only conscious.) It is an interesting commentary, at this point, that the kids in the neighborhood discreetly refrained from tagging him with the usual descriptive nicknames of "Slats," "Skinny," "Bean Pole" or even the mild "Slim"; he was handy with that bopping right of his even then. Well, the oatmeal cure didn't work, for all the bowls of the abhorred stuff he consumed. All that developed was his loathing for it which exists to this day. The track coach at Princeton came forth with the next advice. Milk. With meals, after meals, before meals and in between meals. That didn't work either, perhaps because as fast as he (Continued on page 87) 19