The one actor James Stewart refused to work with: “That’s why they never did another movie”
The old saying posits that nice guys finish last, something that definitely didn’t apply to James Stewart. Hollywood’s ultimate everyman, the actor was celebrated by his peers as one of the most eminently likeable and affable personalities in the business, and it was a persona audiences fell in love with, too.
Some performers feel like they don’t have a bad or vindictive bone in their body, and Stewart was one of them. Hell, he was even a war hero, serving during World War II and becoming the highest-ranking actor in the history of the United States military after ascending to Brigadier General.
Onscreen, he was the embodiment of aw-shucks Americana, winning an Academy Award for Mr Smith Goes to Washington and bringing his signature drawl and effortless everyman antics to films like The Philadelphia Story, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and four Alfred Hitchcock classics.
Anyone who makes it to the top of the industry and stays there for as long as Stewart requires a certain amount of inner steel, though, and he wasn’t exactly a pushover. He was about the only actor who could intimidate Hitchcock whenever he stood up to the ‘Master of Suspense’, and he harboured such resentment for one of his co-stars that he refused to work with them again.
As ridiculous as it sounds now, given the movie’s status as a perennial favourite and an all-time classic, It’s a Wonderful Life was a box office bomb that killed a studio. Frank Capra’s festive fantasy has endured for generations as an annual staple of the Christmastime viewing calendar, but audiences were ambivalent in 1946.
Having made You Can’t Take It With You and Mr Smith Goes to Washington together, the star and filmmaker already had a creative shorthand and understanding. When it bombed in cinemas, Stewart blamed his co-star Donna Reed, vowing they’d never share another set.
“There was a lot of insecurity on set because Jimmy Stewart wasn’t sure if he wanted to act anymore,” Reed’s daughter, Mary Anne Owen, told Closer. “Mom was really not that well known. I mean, she was only 25, and I think she signed her MGM contract at 21. But she still didn’t understand why there was so much insecurity.”
When It’s a Wonderful Life crashed and burned in theatres, the leading man decided to point fingers. “She still didn’t understand why there was so much insecurity, and then Jimmy Stewart couldn’t understand why the movie didn’t do well,” she explained. “But that’s why they never did another movie together. He blamed her because she wasn’t as well known.”
It seems unfair to blame a relative newcomer for the film’s failings when Stewart and Capra were among the industry’s marquee names on either side of the camera, but that’s why Owen repeatedly used the word “insecurity” to describe the fallout from It’s a Wonderful Life. True to his word, the actor never made a second film with Reed.
