The movie that made James Stewart an enemy of Nazi Germany: “They would not forget our picture”
In addition to being one of the most popular leading men of his day and his indisputable status as one of ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood’s most iconic and unforgettable stars, James Stewart was also a war hero and the highest-ranking actor in the history of the United States military after being promoted to Brigadier General in 1959.
He took five years off from his day job to enlist and serve his country during World War II, rising to the rank of colonel and flying 20 combat missions over Germany as the commanding officer of a bomber squadron, returning to cinema as a decorated veteran with several medals for his service and bravery.
Once he returned, Stewart tried to stay away from making films about war for obvious reasons. However, he’d already made himself some potentially powerful enemies among the Nazi party before America had even officially entered the conflict in December 1941, all because of one film the Germans didn’t like.
One of four starring roles in 1940, the year before he swapped the silver screen for the battlefield, The Mortal Storm was released seven months before George Cukor’s classic romantic comedy, The Philadelphia Story, which won him the Academy Award for ‘Best Actor’.
It was already a notable picture for being the first production from MGM that explicitly addressed the persecution unfolding on the other side of the world under the regime, with Stewart playing a character forced to flee from Germany to Austria due to his political leanings. Beyond that, painting the Nazis in a bad light didn’t go unnoticed.
“It was clearly anti-Nazi, and the director only made a meagre effort to disguise the fact,” Stewart recalled. “In fact, it was so obvious that a representative from Germany told Metro that after the war was won by Germany, they would not forget our picture. Actually, at the time, it looked like they would win the war because France was just about to fall.”
Still, he took it all in his stride, as did filmmaker Frank Borzage and co-star Margaret Sullivan, with the hardy bunch insisting “We didn’t give a damn about the threats.” Fellow cast member Robert Young wasn’t quite in the same boat, though, after voicing his concerns that he feared for his family’s safety if the Germans were to make good on their threats.
“It may be that I and some of the others who didn’t take the threat seriously were just too naive to realise that had Germany won the war, we would have been in big trouble, just for making a motion picture,” Stewart confessed. “I figure, in the end, that was an example of the fight for freedom that the war was about.”
Unsurprisingly, The Mortal Storm was not granted a theatrical release in Germany. In fact, thanks to its strong anti-war and anti-Nazi sentiments, it caused such fury in the country’s political corridors of power that every single MGM film from that point on was banned from local cinemas until the end of the war.
