The one line Jimmy Stewart didn’t want to say: “It did cause him the most terrible distress”
Between the late 1930s and early 1960s, Jimmy Stewart was Hollywood‘s idea of the gold standard of American masculinity. Easy-going, approachable, and decent to his core, he simultaneously seemed like the Average Joe and the platonic ideal. Unlike Cary Grant, he wasn’t blindingly handsome or elegant. Unlike Clark Gable, he was amiable rather than rakish. And unlike Henry Fonda, he didn’t let his decency get in the way of a sense of humour.
His list of credits reads like a call sheet of Hollywood’s greatest Golden Age hits. Mr Smith Goes to Washington, The Shop Around the Corner, It’s a Wonderful Life, Harvey, and Anatomy of a Murder are all some of the greatest films the industry had to offer during the period, and they remain stone-cold classics. However, the film in which he first got to show his talents as a leading man is right up there with them – George Cukor’s 1940 romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story.
On the face of it, Stewart really didn’t stand a chance. He was the third wheel in a knockout romance between Katharine Hepburn as socialite Tracy Lord and Cary Grant as her ex-husband, C K Dexter Haven. Stewart plays Mike Connor, a reporter who is sent to Tracy’s home in Philadelphia to cover her upcoming nuptials to an extremely well-meaning but dull businessman.
Tracy and Dexter are on a glide path back into each other’s arms. Their chemistry is off the charts thanks to the innate chemistry between Hepburn and Grant, and their quick-witted banter is on another plane of existence to everyone around them. However, through sheer, unexpected charisma, Stewart stole every scene he was in. When he falls in love with Tracy, there is a part of you that wishes he might be the one who ultimately steals her heart.
Despite his masterful performance, however, Stewart did not find the whole thing to be a piece of cake. During the scene in which Mike professes his undying love for Tracy, Stewart needed to speak some pretty extravagant dialogue, including the line, “There’s a magnificence in you Tracy, a magnificence that comes out of your eyes, that’s in your voice, in the way you stand… You’ve got fires banked down in you, hearth fires and holocausts.”
“It did really cause him the most terrible distress,” Hepburn remembered, adding, “It was not exactly a Jimmy Stewart line.”
In her recollection, it was such an excruciating moment for the reserved actor that he “Nearly died” and forced Cukor to cut to the chase and tell him to “Just say it.” According to Hepburn, Stewart took a deep breath and dove in. “He was magnificent,” she said.
The line is quite a mouthful, but pulling it off must have been a watershed moment in Stewart’s development as an actor because the next time he was tasked with a similarly poetic line, he made it sound even more natural. The famous, “You want the moon? Just say the word and I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down” from It’s a Wonderful Life remains one of the most memorable and romantic moments of the film.
