This post isn't about that movie. It's about Jimmy Stewart.
I became a fan of James Stewart late, having only seen It's A Wonderful Life in my first or second year of college.
Hey! I preferred animated Christmas specials when I was a kid! & I still haven't seen A Christmas Story!
Seeing "It's A Wonderful Life" began for me a period of watching Jimmy Stewart movies & especially movies Stewart made with Frank Capra. I came to admire how sincere & likable he was & how he seemed to embody the values that Capra championed in his films. (My favorite Capra movie with Stewart is You Can't Take It With You; my favorite non-Capra Stewart performance at the time may be his turn as a reluctant bad-ass in Destry Rides Again.)
Stewart's later Hitchock & westerns work - which I did enjoy - didn't touch me as much, but every Christmas during my 20s, I would see "It's A Wonderful Life" & say to myself, "I should write him a letter & just say thank you for how much his work has moved me." I said that recently about DeForest Kelley, & I'll probably say it again at some point when someone I adore dies - for some reason I never get around to writing those letters. But I found out some things toward the end of Stewart's life (he died in the late 90s, & there were a million tabloid headlines on a weekly basis for a few years with the lines, "Jimmy Stewart's Tragic Last ________") that made me hesitant to write that letter.
Which is stupid, I know. I didn't love the movies he was in, or his performances in them, any less, with this new information. Besides, an actor, like any artist, can sometimes betray his or her principles with their creation. They are simply being the best of what they can be.
The big thing was that he was a Republican. Not just any Republican, neither. He was a hardcore party man. He supported Barry Goldwater in 1964! He campaigned for Nixon! He was happy his pal Reagan became President!
You might not feel the same way I do - you might agree with him, or be apolitical - but man it gave me pause. The guy who played George Bailey supported Goldwater?
Another thing: he wrote poetry.
Okay, I'm just kidding about the second one. But there was a time when he'd appear on television talk shows, & in that voice, he'd read kinda banal rhyming stories. It made those of us who wanted to write real poetry wince to hear the singsong crap Stewart was reading on the Mike Douglas Show (when we should've been wincing at our self-importance).
It's funny to later have come to be moved by it. I remember seeing him read the poem to his dog on the Tonight Show (probably in reruns) & rolling my eyes - but then, that was before I had lost a dog that meant the world to me. (You can see Stewart reading the poem here & be warned: it'll probably make you cry.)
As usual, I've lost my train of thought. Oh I guess I wanted to say that I missed my chance - he died & I never sat down to write a letter. & I wanted to say that I am less affected by weird facts about artists & their oddball religious/political personal information. I don't let the fact that finding out some star I like is part of a wacky religion affect how I feel about their performances, & I'm hardly ever surprised when a musician or writer turns out to be the opposite of how, through their work, I perceived them. (Like, did you know Woody Guthrie's son is a Republican?)
I often learn things from songs in simple ways. In the Throwing Muses tune "Fear," Kristin Hersh sings, "This is much better than me, okay?" I have always interpreted that line as meaning, "This song - these things I create - are always going to be better than anything I am as a flawed human being."
It's helpful (at least for me) to think about artists in that way, & so, more than half a lifetime after weeping at the end of "It's A Wonderful Life," I can reconcile the creations Jimmy Stewart was involved with & the strangely conservative real person he was.
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