James Stewart’s Fear of Flying

JAMES Stewart was a nervous flier. Commercial airlines made him jittery, he wouldn’t touch chartered flights, and, inveigled into a Cessna during bad weather on a publicity tour for It’s a Wonderful Life, he made the pilot turn around and take him back to the airport at Beaumont, Texas. Just a few months earlier, he had been in the Air Force; he had flown twenty bombing missions and won a Distinguished Flying Cross; he was a genuine war hero. Yet he remained a nervous flier.

For Wonderful Life, Stewart had a clause written into his contract forbidding any publicity exploitation of his service record. Half a century on, I think we can be permitted to make a discreet connection between his acting and his flying-in and out of uniform. He played heroes, but they tended to be nervous heroes, men of exceptional courage who nevertheless, in defiance of the cliché, did know the meaning of the word “fear.” You can see it in a zillion different shots-in Rear Window (1954), say, when he picks up the telephone, realizes it’s the murderer on the other end, and pushes the receiver away. Stewart was the only golden-age leading man secure enough to show real fear, the only one strong enough to appear weak. He expanded the boundaries of male movie stardom in much the same way as Sinatra, around the same time, was expanding male pop singing-co-opting large chunks of the female torch-singer repertoire, tracking down Ira Gershwin and cajoling him into writing a masculated version of “The Man That Got Away,” introducing to the male vocalist’s art such hitherto unknown nuances as vulnerability and self-disgust. For Stewart’s take on the latter, see him in The Philadelphia Story (1940). Then, as now, Hollywood leading men were happy to appear fatalistic, cynical, even psychopathic, but few were willing to expose such a turbulent mix of emotions as Stewart-passion, recklessness, courage, anger, despair, gnawing dissatisfaction, and even measured thoughtfulness.

About the Author

Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human-rights activist.

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JAMES Stewart was a nervous flier. Commercial airlines made him jittery, he wouldn’t touch chartered flights, and, inveigled into a Cessna during bad weather on a publicity tour for It’s a Wonderful Life, he made the pilot turn around and take him back to the airport at Beaumont, Texas. Just a few months earlier, he had been in the Air Force; he had flown twenty bombing missions and won a Distinguished Flying Cross; he was a genuine war hero. Yet he remained a nervous flier.

For Wonderful Life, Stewart had a clause written into his contract forbidding any publicity exploitation of his service record. Half a century on, I think we can be permitted to make a discreet connection between his acting and his flying-in and out of uniform. He played heroes, but they tended to be nervous heroes, men of exceptional courage who nevertheless, in defiance of the cliché, did know the meaning of the word “fear.” You can see it in a zillion different shots-in Rear Window (1954), say, when he picks up the telephone, realizes it’s the murderer on the other end, and pushes the receiver away. Stewart was the only golden-age leading man secure enough to show real fear, the only one strong enough to appear weak. He expanded the boundaries of male movie stardom in much the same way as Sinatra, around the same time, was expanding male pop singing-co-opting large chunks of the female torch-singer repertoire, tracking down Ira Gershwin and cajoling him into writing a masculated version of “The Man That Got Away,” introducing to the male vocalist’s art such hitherto unknown nuances as vulnerability and self-disgust. For Stewart’s take on the latter, see him in The Philadelphia Story (1940). Then, as now, Hollywood leading men were happy to appear fatalistic, cynical, even psychopathic, but few were willing to expose such a turbulent mix of emotions as Stewart-passion, recklessness, courage, anger, despair, gnawing dissatisfaction, and even measured thoughtfulness.