The only co-star James Stewart hated working with: “Shall I change his diapers too?”
One of the core tenets of becoming known as one of Hollywood’s nicest guys is never speaking ill of colleagues, collaborators, or co-stars, but even the industry’s ultimate everyman, James Stewart, had an exception to the rule.
Stewart was always the consummate professional, regardless of who he was working with or what movie he was making. He didn’t get into arguments, he wasn’t embroiled in public feuds, and he always tried to find the positives, even if the folks he shared the screen with didn’t always feel the same way.
Then again, he did point the finger of blame at Donna Reed for Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life failing so miserably in cinemas that it killed an entire studio, but seeing as he didn’t make that assumption until after the Christmastime classic had been released, the point still stands.
That’s not to say Stewart didn’t have a temper, though. Bizarrely, based on his reputation for being the embodiment of onscreen aw-shucks Americana, it was typically organised crime that made him blow his top, with the Academy Award winner laughing in the face of death threats being made against him by the mob.
His desire to run the mafia out of town also contributed to the only argument he ever had with his longtime best friend, Henry Fonda, so it’s clear that anything to do with illicit activities and the criminal underworld made his blood boil. With such a long and illustrious career, it’s impressive that only Reed and the mob got him so worked up away from the set.
On it, Joan Crawford stands alone. When the pair first shared the screen in 1936’s The Gorgeous Hussy, Stewart wasn’t quite a star, with his breakthrough in Capra’s You Can’t Take it With You still a couple of years away. Crawford, on the other hand, was already renowned as one of Tinseltown’s most difficult personalities.
He’d only made his film debut the previous year, whereas she’d navigated the transition from silent cinema to the talkies without sacrificing her stardom. Stewart was fully aware that there was a cavernous gulf between their experience, visibility, and comfort performing in front of the cameras, and so was she.
“I was still pretty green, I guess,” he told Michael Munn. “Joan Crawford certainly thought so. She kind of played up a bit, complained to [producer Louis B] Mayer that her husband [Franchot Tone] didn’t have enough lines, and he told her to be more professional around the newcomers, which I guess meant me.”
Hollywood history is littered with tales that prove professionalism wasn’t Crawford’s strongest suit, and Stewart wound up on the end of one of her famously acerbic tongue-lashings: “She said, ‘Shall I change his diapers too?'” he recalled. “I guess that was the one Hollywood actress I didn’t get on too well with.”
Someone like Stewart saying he “didn’t get on too well” with somebody is the equivalent of another person saying “I fucking hate them with every fibre of my being,” not that he was alone in having a miserable time trying to shine opposite Crawford.
