James Stewart’s career was almost ruined by not doing cocaine: “I thought that would be the end”
Hollywood has been awash with drugs and debauchery since its inception, but nobody would ever associate the wholesome beacon of Americana, James Stewart, with a fondness for the old marching powder. He didn’t, and he refused to do it, but it still conspired to nearly ruin his career.
There’s another thing most ‘Golden Age’ aficionados wouldn’t associate with him, either: mad shagger. After all, he was happily married to his wife, Gloria, from 1949 until her death in 1994, and he was regarded as one of the few high-profile actors who remained faithful to their spouse in an era of wandering eyes and illicit behind-the-scenes canoodling.
However, before he was married and before he was a star, the combination of sex and drugs almost had a cataclysmic effect on his future. In the late 1930s, Stewart was still a contract player after signing a seven-year deal with MGM in 1935, and he wouldn’t secure his breakthrough until Frank Capra’s You Can’t Take It with You three years later.
Between those two points, he became caught up in a steamy liaison with an unnamed female actor, who had a habit of rolling up banknotes and hoovering up the white stuff. “I was seeing an actress who was very amorous,” he told Michael Munn. “And it turned out this gal who became a big star had a little habit. Well, it was a big habit. She liked to sniff a little something and then have a roll in the hay.”
Whereas his mystery woman loved getting coked up and then copulating, Stewart stayed away. “She asked me to try some of this stuff, and I didn’t want anything to do with that kind of thing,” he explained. “So I declined, and she got kinda mad and threatened to have me fired from the studio, and I thought that would be the end of my career.”
While he didn’t name names, Stewart intimated that his cocaine-huffing paramour was a bigger name than he was, and she had the influence to have him removed from MGM’s roster. Things threatened to go from bad to worse when the pair were photographed by a reporter who knew about her expensive secret, until he was relieved to discover that producer and studio co-founder Louis B Mayer had his back.
“When she told Mayer to fire me, he showed her the photos and said he was either going to have to pay off the cameraman to keep the story out of print, or fire her,” Stewart recalled. “And he’d have to fire me, too, because the photo implicated me in her habit. So Mayer told her either Jimmy Stewart stays, and he’ll make the story go away, or he’ll just have to fire the both of us.”
The gentlemanly icon may have kept the other party’s name out of his recollections, but it may well have been Marlene Dietrich. The two were alleged to have had a tryst in the late 1930s; she was more famous when they did, and she struggled with alcohol and substance abuse. That’s merely a guess, though, with Stewart too nice to air out his dirty laundry in public.
