Jimmy Fucking Stewart

My dad adores BB&C and Novak in it.

"As a bachelor, Stewart dated some of the most beautiful and charming women in Hollywood, including Ginger Rogers and Olivia de Havilland. He also had a brief, red-hot love affair with Marlene Dietrich during the filming of Destry Rides Again (1939), and it shows; they seem like an odd couple only if you haven’t seen them in the movie. Fonda would claim that Stewart got all the pretty girls, but his friend always countered that Fonda 'had his share, and then some': Janet Gaynor, Loretta Young, Lucille Ball."

https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/10/27/hollywoods-original-bffs-jimmy-stewart-and-henry-fonda-share-the-screen-at-last-in-film-forums-essential-retro/

Missing from this poll: Pot o' Gold Stewart called it his worst movie, but as far as B-grade wartime musicals go it's among my favorites.

I have an exceedingly irrational bias against Stewart. However, he will be the TCM November 2017 Star of the Month, so it is probably my best chance to catch up on certain titles I haven't seen.

Have seen and expect to revisit: The Shop Around the Corner, Rope
Have seen and see no need to revisit: The Philadelphia Story, Vertigo, After the Thin Man
Already planning to see: Anatomy of a Murder

Of the title I haven't seen, which ones would ILX recommend?

anything by Anthony Mann

Harvey is quite a thing.

i've avoided Harvey thus far out of "cutesy alcoholic" fears

his supposed aw-shucks persona kind of belied the fact that he was at his best playing unhinged and faintly dangerous men.

he's definitely more tolerable as the latter

i like Harvey but I can't see it working for anyone who hates Stewart

Rear Window might work, he's against type in that to some extent

if you go into It's a Wonderful Life knowing nothing about it, you'd be forgiven if you think that the last act will have him committing a couple murders.

Anatomy of a Murder is first-rate.

I just spent 20 minutes hunting for this video thanks to this thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYvsjGroa78

by Rear Window he had already played dark and disturbed characters in several Mann westerns. As he's quoted in the VV story above, "I matured."

his supposed aw-shucks persona kind of belied the fact that he was at his best playing unhinged and faintly dangerous men.

Which is why Anatomy of a Murder tops my must-see list.

well, he's not unhinged there. In Ford's Two Rode Together he's kinda nasty.

Curious that the "Hank & Jim" retro in nYC contains neither of his joint appearances w/ Fonda, even though the films are (apparently) not good.

even if, I mean

In Anatomy his character consciously plays up the aw-shucks persona for devious ends; it's a canny performance.

Anatomy is worth it for Stewart saying "panties" alone.

Rear Window is one of his best roles - the limited set requires a very small, controlled performance, and it's a pleasure to see him reduce down but still give the level of stagey thought that many of his larger characters exhibit - and absolutely one of the best films he or Hitchcock did.

well said!

(I love the Capras and Harvey, but if you consider yourself Stewart-allergic already, they're not likely to change you.)

I'm actually looking to push myself because 1) I know my Stewart aversion is irrational, and 2) I need a detox from my Pre-Code fixation. Right now I'm figuring on watching Anatomy and the Mann westerns (possibly the other westerns as well). The Hitchcocks I'll save for when I next need a detox.

(I venerate Capra's early work with Stanwyck. I've heard of certain rather dark readings of Wonderful Life, but that's probably not what I should be cultivating right now. As for Harvey, sentimentality about alcoholism is the last thing I want.)

Watched a double bill of the Mann westerns the other night, Winchester '73 for the first time. JS is driven for dark, bloody family reasons; the b&w helps the noir sensibility; good, diverse support includes Shelley Winters, John McIntire, Dan Duryea at his slimiest, Will Geer as Wyatt Earp, v young Tony Curtis with about 6 lines as a cavalryman.

Might've seen Bend of the River before, not sure. JS has a dark past again, but is trying to run from it, and is paired with Arthur Kennedy as a sidekick/potential nemesis. (Guess.) Most striking for its portrayal of Western settlers as ready to turn on each other at the drop of a coin.

Rock Hudson appears in both -- a Sioux warrior in the first and a "San Francisco gambler" in the second.

So, The Mortal Storm (Borzage, 1940). I had to fight not to see it through my preconceptions of Stewart as the national Gary Stu, and I don't think I succeeded.

Fortunately, tomorrow TCM screens Rope and Anatomy of a Murder; I hope that these will be more to my taste. Also, I found 1940s filmmaking extraordinarily alien--I found the opening and closing voiceovers and the musical cues obvious AF. I normally associate such devices with someone trying to salvage a bad movie (which I don't think applies here).

Wow at Morbius just having seen Winchester ‘73

Harvey is borderline unbearable. Who's with me?

i rewatched it on the plane last year and it's bad imo

Will take your word for it; cannot imagine the circumstances under which I would watch it.

It and Arsenic and Old Ladies (typo intentional) were staples of Poppy Bush-era PBS. Not, uh, ideal intros to the two stars.

Stewart kept doing it on TV and stage into his 60s, called it his favorite role.

haven't seen it in twenty years, enjoyed it a lot as a young person who hadn't seen much else of him

"unbearable" is kind of harsh for a fairly inoffensive old movie, really

Who's with me?

(raises hand) First saw this as a child. Back then I liked the idea of a pooka, but found the utter lack of a pooka onscreen to be puzzling and very disappointing. I rewatched it about a dozen years ago. It is a bad movie.

In the meantime, I've watched The Far Country (Mann, 1955) and The Naked Spur (Mann, 1953). Unquestionably different from my initial associations with Stewart. Based on this sample of two films, I have begun to wonder if this period's Westerns aren't a masculine counterpart to the "Hag Horror" phenomenon (vehicles for studio performers who are too old to be plausible romantic leads yet do too much box office to be relegated to supporting roles). Just a thought.

We watched Shop Around the Corner again this Christmas. It's still splendid, but Stewart's much more of a dick to Margaret Sullavan than I remember.

but so is she

I get what Chuck is saying. For me, its Frank Morgan's movie anyway.

this is covered v briefly upthread 12 years ago

nonetheless what the fuck

The Pangboche Hand is an artifact from a Buddhist monastery in Pangboche, Nepal. Supporters contend that the hand is from a Yeti, a scientifically unrecognized animal purported to live in the Himalayan mountains. A finger bone from the hand was tested and the DNA shown to be human, according to some people. But there is also contradictory evidence. Also the supposed Yeti bone that was analyzed might have been the human bone that was replaced with a human bone in the 1950's (the monks were given money for this).[1]

Some people believe it was a real Yeti hand and there have been many sightings of yetis and yeti footprints, including: In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reported seeing large footprints while scaling Mount Everest. [2]

Others believe it was a real yeti bone and DNA analysis has shown that to be a possibility. Forensic analyst concluded that the hair from the finger contained an unknown DNA sequence. In early December 2007, American television presenter Joshua Gates and his team (Destination Truth) reported finding a series of footprints in the Everest region of Nepal resembling descriptions of Yeti.[3] Each of the footprints measured 33 cm (13 in) in length with five toes that measured a total of 25 cm (9.8 in) across. Casts were made of the prints for further research. The footprints were examined by Jeffrey Meldrum of Idaho State University, who believed them to be too morphologicaly accurate to be fake or man-made. Later in 2009, Gates made another investigation during which he discovered hair samples. A forensic analyst concluded that the hair contained an unknown DNA sequence. Thus, DNA evidence shows it could be a yeti hand and definitely isn't human. [4]

Oil businessman and adventurer Tom Slick first heard accounts of the possible existence of a "Yeti hand" held as a ritual artifact in the monastery at Pangboche during one of his first "Abominable Snowman" treks in 1957. The Slick expeditions were the first to bring photographs of the hand back to the West.

During later Tom Slick-sponsored expeditions in and around the Himalayas, his associates gathered more information on the "Pangboche hand," and an effort to further examine it was planned. In 1959 Peter Byrne, a member of Slick's expedition that year, reportedly stole pieces of the artifact after the monks who owned it refused to allow its removal for study.[1] Byrne claimed to have replaced the stolen bone fragments with human bones, rewrapping the hand to disguise his theft.[1]

Byrne smuggled the bones from Nepal into India, after which actor James Stewart allegedly smuggled the hand out of the country in his luggage.[1] Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman rediscovered this story while writing Tom Slick's biography in the 1980s. Coleman confirmed details of the incidents with written materials in the Slick archives, interviews with Byrne, and correspondence with Stewart. Byrne later confirmed the Pangboche hand story via a letter from Stewart that Byrne published in a general book on Nepalese wildlife.

!!!

Jimmy Stewart... a motherfucker with some dark secrets... about the YETI??

what in the world

jimmy stewart: actor, war hero, yeti-smuggler

the other dude mustve seen Harvey and been like “now THERES a dude I can entrust with the protection of this mythical beast”

Harvey is the kind of dazed whimsy that I more often than not cannot stand; I spent most of the time feeling uncomfortably reminded of 90s schmaltz like Forrest Gump, Powder, or any of those movies where John Travolta played someone magical. That Stewart manages an effective scene or two anyway is a testament to something, I guess.

Saw the restored version of this and it was staggeringly gorgeous. Looked like it was made yesterday, i was astonished.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jB4Vsi1UUM

First vintage B&W film to be released on 4K Disc domestically.

I have never understood what the scene with them falling through the dancefloor into the swimming pool is doing there, it seems to have been imported from another, very different film. why would Bedford Falls even have such a thing?

it is odd, I have literally never seen a swimming pool underneath a gym or dancefloor or any kind of floor really. It seems like the hydraulics required to move the floor back and forth would be unnecessarily expensive/complicated to maintain

huh

The place actually exists. It's called, fittingly, the Swim Gym, and belongs to Beverly Hills High School in Los Angeles. Here's how it works: The court is divided along the centerline, and each half is anchored to rows of two-by-fours atop steel I-beams. The court "opens" at the turn of a key—motors roll the platforms underneath the arena bleachers, where huge exhaust fans mitigate moisture. Then, 5 feet below, a 25-yard swimming pool appears. The floor in the movie has been lost to time, but recently Pacific Floor installed a new maple court in the space. Because the gym hovers around 60 percent humidity, Pacific Floor acclimated the flooring material longer than usual and installed it with a moisture content around 9%, says Sales Manager Mark Herthel. With the court "closed," the crews installed a 15-mm-thick vapor barrier, 9⁄16-inch-thick resilient padding and ¾-inch-thick plywood anchored into the retractable platform using steel channels. Then 1½-inch-wide maple flooring chosen for its stable vertical grain was installed. Pacific Floor closed off the sides of the subfloor using stop blocks and closed cell foam underlayment to prevent moisture from creeping up the side of the court. Before the flooring was sanded and finished, the crew sawed the court in half along the centerline and installed a 4-inch stair riser as nosing on both halves. For durability, they also placed an aluminum plate on the face of each platform where they meet.

i imagine it doesn't exist anywhere else other than at beverly hills high school where that scene was filmed