Top Ten Western Actors No 3 - James Stewart

With the exception of 1939's Destry Rides Again, James Stewart's massive standing as a western actor is due to films made late in his career. He made a string of classics with director Anthony Mann starting with 1953's Winchester 73 and culminating The Man from Laramie in 1955 are classics of the genre and cast Stewart against type as a troubled, at times psychotic man. But as well as the Mann pictures the actor was involved in several other all time genre classics - he made Broken Arrow in 1950 which was one of the first American westerns to treat Indians sympathetically,even if many of them were played by white actors.

Stewart never ever took acting lessons, telling one interviewer - "I don't act, I just read the lines."

However Stewart did act and it was instinctive rather than developed through training an all the better for it. He brought differing shades to all of his roles and was as happy with comedy as he was straight forward drama. It was a fitting end to Stewart's western career when he starred alongside John Waybe in The Shootist which was also Wayne's last film.

"Maybe most people identify with me but dream of being John Wayne." James Stewart.

Stewart by his own admission was an unlikely western hero, he stated that he looked like a lanky string of bones, but when he put on those six shooters he just looked the part. After he parted company with Anthony Mann he finally worked for John Ford and was cast alongside John Wayne in the awesome The Man who Shot Liberty Vallance and afterwards he had a small role as the most unlikely Wyatt Earp of them all in Cheyenne Autumn. He was excellent in both Two Rode Together and The Rare Breed and Stewart's part in the sprawling How the West was Won is perhaps the high point in a movie full of high points.

From the pacifist sheriff of Destry to the caring doctor of The Shootist, Stewart never made a truly bad western. That was the thing about Stewart - he was no larger than life character with a barrel chest and a corset keeping his stomach in check. He looked and acted like a real man and each and every character he created became real.

Below I have embedded a fascinating video clip from You Tube which features Anthony Mann talking about directing James Stewart - a man with a purpose indeed!

HOW JAMES STEWART WON THE WEST

"I was a bouncing baby. I know it's kinda hard to believe but I was a good round shape when I was born. I weighed eight pounds but somewhere along the way I kinda got thin." James Stewart


Stewart never took an acting lesson in his life and often said that, he didn't act but reacted. He became a star in his gangly youth - 1939 saw him make both Destry Rides Again and Mr Smith Goes to Washington. He was a favourite leading man for Hitchcock and starred in many seminal classics with the master of suspense - Vertigo, Rope, The Rear Window. It seemed there wasn't a genre that didn't suit Stewart's all American boy image - romance, comedy, high drama and action adventure.

Stewart also appeared in a series of superior westerns - in fact his status as a western icon is secured and not only for the series of dark, brooding classic oaters he made with director, Anthony Mann but for scores of other magnificent movies that he either starred or co-starred in.

Here we look at a select list of Stewart's westerns.


Destry Rides Again (1939) saw Stewart give a flawless performance as the pacifist sheriff - the part would later be played by Audry Murphy in 1954 but Murphy was no Stewart. Interestingly Stewart's version is actually a remake of the 1932 version which starred Tom Mix. In 1996 Stewart's Destry Rides Again was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress.

1950's Winchester 73 saw Stewart seek to reinvent himself in this, the first of a series of tough gritty westerns he made with Anthony Mann. In each of these films Stewart played a troubled man with an almost pathological intensity. The films he made with Mann were - Winchester 73, Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, The Far Country and The Man from Laramie. All of these films are classic of the genre - intelligent, adult storytelling with Stewart looking as if he was born on horseback. Any western fan needs to be familiar with these films. Stewart also played a similarly haunted character in Delmer Davies's Broken Arrow - a movie that was ground breaking at the time for the way it portrayed the Native Americans as much more than wild savages.

Together with Destry Ride Again, those Mann westerns are enough to give Stewart the status of western icon but as previously mentioned he made many other classic oaters - he appeared as a mountain man in 1962's epic, How the West was Won and played an aging family man determined to keep his kin out of the Civil War in 1965's Shenandoah. In 1961 Stewart was blisteringly affective when teamed with Richard Widmark in John Ford's Two Rode Together.

In 1962 Stewart appeared alongside John Wayne in John Ford's The Man who shot Liberty Vallance - again this is a classic of not only the western but cinema in general. Stewart would team again with John Wayne for The Shootist in 1976 - the film would prove to be John Wayne's last but although Stewart would make several other movies, this was his final western. The film is a fitting end of the trail for two of Hollywood's greatest ever cowboys.

Even Stewart's lesser westerns are watchable - 1966's The Rare Breed saw him teamed with Maureen O'Hara and the chemistry between the two is electric. He played Wyatt Earp for a brief section in John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn and he played a reluctant sheriff in the powerful, Firecreek in 1968 which saw him teamed with another western icon, Henry Fonda.

Suggested Reading:
Jimmy Stewart: The truth Behind the Legend by Michael Munn (Robson Books 2005)

James Stewart: A biography by Donald Dewey (Regency 1997)

The Rough Guide to Westerns by Paul Simpson (features a great entry on Stewart and in-depth analysis of many of his westerns)

Online home of the Jimmy Stewart Museum

NIGHT PASSAGE

If this feels like one of the Stewart/Anthony Mann westerns that's because it almost was - director, Mann pulled out at the eleventh hour after arguments with Stewart about the casting of Audie Murphy and what, he considered, a weak script. In fact Mann actually started the picture and walked off set very early in the production.

This would have been the sixth western collaboration between Stewart and the director but it was not to be and James Neilsen, then known for his TV work, stepped into the director's chair. And whilst the movie is not up there with the five classics Stewart made with Mann it is still a damn good western movie. And there ain 't nothing wrong with Audie Murphy's Utica Kid either. Murphy may never have been the most accomplished actor but he does fine in this role.

Filmed in and around Colarado there is some breathtaking scenery, all expertly photographed. One particular scene where a train snaked around a mountain track reveals a landscape which must be among the finest in the world. These scenes were filmes at the Durango and silverton narrow gauge railway using a K28 class steam locomotive, number 476 which is actually still in use today.


James Stewart plays an accordian slinging troubleshooter for the railroads and the actor performs several songs himself and does a damn good job at it too. It's a mighty fine western and the DVD print available is top notch with crisp clear colours and a suitably booming soundtrack.

At a railroad construction crew outside Junction City, Colorado, Grant McLaine, a former trouble-shooter who was dismissed five years earlier for allowing notorious robber The Utica Kid to escape, earns money by playing his accordion. After his former friend, railroad executive Ben Kimball, asks Grant to come to Junction City to discuss Whitey Harbin, the leader of a gang of outlaws that has been stealing the company payroll, Grant sets out on the trail.

Certain fans claim that this film would have been better had Mann directed but that will always be conjecture and frankly there's nothing wrong with it as it is.