The co-star James Stewart called “my absolute favourite” actor
It’s indicative of his standing in history that almost 90 years on from his screen debut, any rising star who carries an engaging, affable, everyman quality is still compared to James Stewart. They’re all pretenders to the throne, though, because he was truly one of a kind.
Tom Hanks didn’t take long to grow tired of it when he was announced as the second coming of on-screen American’s embodiment, not that it dissuaded everyone from Steven Spielberg to Barack Obama saying it anyway, with the latter referring to the two-time Academy Award winner as “this generation’s Jimmy Stewart” when he was being honoured by no less an authority than a sitting president.
An all-round nice guy who developed an easy-going, naturalistic, and conversational acting style long before it became the norm, Stewart was equally adept at hard-hitting dramas and nail-biting thrillers as he was in screwball comedies and Westerns, which made him a man very much in demand.
He had a few favoured collaborators, making eight movies with Anthony Mann, four with Alfred Hitchcock, and three apiece with John Ford and Frank Capra, all of whom are directorial heavyweights in their own right. Stewart was one of the biggest and most popular stars of the ‘Golden Age’, and the laundry list of co-stars he amassed reads like a collection of Tinseltown’s marquee legends.
He shared the screen with Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Mickey Rooney, Lee Marvin, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Doris Day, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Fontaine, Katharine Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Ginger Rogers, and dozens more beyond that, which is quite the array of timeless icons to have sparred with at one stage or another.
However, the actor he called his favourite wasn’t part of his many classic movies, or even one of his many good ones. In fact, their one and only professional dalliance came on a family-friendly musical that tanked at the box office and was savaged to such a vicious extent by critics that Stewart never again appeared in the flesh as part of an American film.
In what turned out to be the third-last credit of his career – with only Japanese drama The Green Horizon and animated flick An American Tail: Fievel Goes West to come – Stewart took top billing in 1978’s The Magic of Lassie. When pressed to name his number one scene partner, he opted for an unexpected choice.
“Well, I think there are an awful lot of them who are very good,” he admitted to Maury Z. Levy. “I have a sort of favourite. Stephanie Zimbalist. She’s my absolute favourite, really. I think she does a beautiful job.” Never mind all the household names he worked with, Stewart settled on a relative unknown who was only 21 years old when The Magic of Lassie was released as his favourite actor.
It was her feature debut, too, so Zimbalist must have made quite the impression on the veteran to blow such esteemed competition so far out of the water.
