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MALE GLAMOUR
"Yes," he says, "I'm on the quiet side. I back away from personal appearances. I don't have anything to say. It's different for a Danny Kaye — he can do something. I don't think you could describe me as the life and soul of a party."
His eyes are blue and, even after fifty Hollywood films, guileless and naive. His movements are slow, indecisive. His conversation consists of long pauses interspersed with sporadic utterances.
"I'm a dreamer," he tells you; "yes, I'm very guilty of day-dreaming. Just can't seem to keep my mind on one idea. . . . That's why I don't read much. Just film scripts. My wife won't let me take the children in the car when I'm driving. I'm a terrible driver. . . . I'm such a long skinny drink of water that no matter how I walk I have a certain awkwardness."
In fact, the real James Stewart is very like the ineffectual Mr. Smith who went to Washington. But like the Mr. Smith of that famous film, Mr. Stewart, for all his slowness of movement and thought, repeatedly triumphs over the smart-alecs. There is method in his mumbling. There is genius in his ingenuousness.
It becomes obvious at this stage that although his film stock-in-trade is the faux pas, he does not commit many gaffes where his career is concerned.
"What do critics mean," he asks, "when they say James Stewart is always the same, always James Stewart? Who else should I be?"
What critics mean is that they are surprised to see this awkward, apparently ineffectual, figure who seems incapable of fixing a fuse, remaining so firmly established as one of the top stars of Hollywood. But to James Stewart there is nothing paradoxical in this.
After all, he was a colonel in the air force during the war, and sufficiently positive to win a D.F.C. and a Croix de Guerre.
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