James Stewart regretted the one movie he swore he’d never make: “Wasn’t as good as I’d hoped”
Every actor has their own set of reasons for the movies they will or won’t make, and James Stewart was no different. He swore that he’d never dip his toes into a genre that was among the industry’s most popular, and his excuse was more valid than most.
As one of Hollywood’s most famous names, it didn’t impact his career in the slightest. He was being offered the pick of the scripts, with his persona becoming so distinctive that many of them were written specifically with him in mind, so it was hardly a hindrance to his short and long-term prospects.
However, an aversion became a non-negotiable in March 1941, when the United States military drafted him to serve in World War II. He was an Academy Award winner by that point after claiming the ‘Best Actor’ prize for Mr Smith Goes to Washington, and he was undoubtedly one of the highest-profile names to see active combat during the conflict.
Instead of trying to leverage his fame to avoid being plunged into the thick of the action, Stewart was completely committed to the cause. By the end of the war, he’d been promoted to the rank of colonel, won several medals for his contributions to the effort, and flown almost two dozen combat missions as a bomber pilot. Needless to say, he returned a hero.
It took a while for his postwar career to get going again, though, with his return bombing so hard at the box office that it put a studio out of business. As bizarre as it seems now, It’s a Wonderful Life left Stewart wondering if he’d fallen out of favour with the public when his much-heralded comeback had fallen so embarrassingly short.
Of course, some of his best films were still to come. He’d make Harvey, Anatomy of a Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and more, but the one thing he swore he’d never do was star in a war movie. He wasn’t too keen on them before he’d served his country, and having been in the thick of it, a World War II story was the furthest thing from his mind.
Or it was, until he broke his own rule by agreeing to headline 1960’s The Mountain Road. He played a major based in China in 1944, who was tasked to prevent Japanese forces from advancing through the country. When Michael Munn asked Stewart why he’d suddenly reversed his no-war policy, he tried to explain it through a technicality.
“Technically, this was a film about events before World War II,” he offered, despite the narrative unfolding the year before it ended. “To be honest, I was simply taken with the story of this officer in the American army who finds that there’s a whole lot more to commanding than just wanting to be in command. That’s something I learned in the war, and I guess it struck a chord in me.”
He was free to make whatever kind of pictures he wanted, regardless of bending his self-imposed rules, even if The Mountain Road wasn’t worth going back on his word. “Unfortunately,” Stewart added. “The film wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be.”
