The one and only movie James Stewart shot entirely in the UK: “We were all freezing”
Few actors have ever embodied the essence of onscreen Americana like James Stewart, so it only made sense that the majority of his filmography was shot in the United States.
Several of his westerns were filmed in Canada, with the mountainous terrain providing a better backdrop than the filmmakers could hope to find in their home country, but very rarely did the ‘Golden Age’ icon travel overseas to lead a picture.
Alfred Hitchcock’s 1956 remake of his own film, The Man Who Knew Too Much, did some location shooting in London and Marrakech, but all of the interior scenes were captured on the Paramount Studios lot in Hollywood, so it can’t really be called a genuine international adventure for the iconic star.
However, there was one title that fit the bill, with Stewart pitching up in London in late 1950 for the three-month production of Henry Koster’s No Highway in the Sky. Cast as a mathematician investigating the cause behind the crash of a commercial jet, he finds himself travelling on the very same model.
During a stop-off, he sabotages the aircraft to save lives, only to have his sanity questioned, setting him up for a courtroom showdown where he can only rely on a stewardess and the actor Marlene Dietrich for support. It wasn’t a British film by any means, but it was the only time he made a movie from beginning to end in England.
It wasn’t an entirely happy experience, though, with the leading man having to undergo an emergency appendectomy mid-production, while co-star Kenneth More revealed that Dietrich, who Stewart had some history with, wasn’t being the most cooperative colleague.
“We were shooting out on a runway in a bitter wind in December,” he recalled. “James Stewart had come out of hospital and gamely stood and froze with the rest of us, waiting for Marlene Dietrich to come out of her trailer. She always had to look absolutely perfect, and as soon as she stepped out into the wind, her hair, which was pretty well lacquered anyway, would blow out of place and she had to go back inside.”
Or, to put a finer point on it, “Marlene wasn’t a bitch, but she did think only of herself,” More concluded. “We were all freezing, and Marlene was holding everything up, and Jimmy Stewart took charge and sorted it.” That sounds about right, considering both of their individual reputations, just like it sounds about right that the wintry British weather was a pain in the arse.
No Highway in the Sky was a hit at the UK box office, if less so in America, with Koster declaring it to be “one of my finest pictures”. It wasn’t one of Stewart’s, but it does hold an interesting place in his history as the only one of the Academy Award winner’s credits to be captured entirely on British soil.
