I ASKED CARY GRANT AND JIMMY STEWART THE SAME QUESTION. HERE’S WHAT THEY SAID.
Cary Grant never won an Oscar, primarily, I suspect, because he made everything look so effortless. Why reward someone for having fun, for being charming?” Richard Russo, novelist and screenwriter (“Nobody’s Fool”)
“It’s well done if you can do a part and not have the acting show.” Jimmy Stewart
By Gregory N. Joseph
IMAGINE being an actor mulling the most fundamental question of all about your craft, and being able to ask not one, but two, legendary stars for their opinions: Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.
As a writer who also acts, I seized the opportunity to pose the same deceptively simple question about acting to each of these screen titans in separate interviews: How do you respond to critics who say you always play yourself?
To be sure, acting classes can be inspiring and useful in their own way, but can’t really match the insights and revelations of two actors of this magnitude, who really did it, their works helping define an era, their influence still recognized, and copied, to this day. (Full disclosure: After I appeared in an acting showcase, a writer-producer came backstage and offered praise, saying, “You really channeled Jimmy Stewart!”; truth to tell, I couldn’t have been more pleased.)
The American Film Institute has ranked Grant and Stewart №2 and №3, respectively (between Humprey Bogart and Marlon Brando), on its list of the greatest American male screen legends of the classical Hollywood cinema.
Ironically, Grant, who was effusive in his praise of Stewart’s acting style, linked it to Brando’s: “I think the reason Jimmy stood out from other actors was that he had the ability to talk naturally. He knew that in conversation people do often interrupt one another and that it’s not always so easy to get a thought out. It took a little while for the sound men to get used to him, but he had an enormous impact.” Added Grant: “Some years later, Marlon Brando came out and did the same things all over again. But what people forget is that Jimmy did it first. And he affected all of us, really.”
Admittedly, my question to Grant and Stewart was cheeky, and in retrospect, maybe even a little rude in its implication. Chalk it up to youthful indiscretion. Would I do it again? Probably not.
Yet their replies were very different and astonishgly revealing, shedding a rare light on two originals from Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Every time I watch either of their films, their words echo in my mind and I can’t help but think of the tremendous amount of work and thought each of these two utterly fascinating human beings put into their performances. Nothing that wound up on the screen was left to chance, and represented years of trial and error on their part. They clearly knew what they wanted to do in front of a camera and were able to transform intention into character as few actors are able to do. Their performances are still being discussed, debated and analyzed by movie fans, critics and film scholars alike.
That they made their portrayals — both actors had enormous range that is often overlooked — look so effortless and easy, so natural, is precisely the point.
When I spoke to Grant in 1985, it was in conjunction with the one-man tour he was conducting across the U.S. focusing on his career, presentations titled “A Conversation With Cary Grant” in which he showed clips from his movies and bantered with the audience. During our discussion, he was candid and unfailingly gracious, answering in full every question I put to him about his career, acting style, and personal life, no matter how thorny or difficult. As fate would have it, it was one of the last interviews he gave before succumbing to a massive stroke in 1986 at the age of 82 while on a leg of the tour in Davenport, Iowa.
When I talked to Stewart, it was during the 1987 holiday season for an article on the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” (which he very pointedly explained wasn’t conceived as a Christmas movie at all: “Christmas was just sort of a part of it, and a wonderful way to end the story”). Like Grant, Stewart, who died in 1997 at the age of 89, was generous with his time and willing to discuss any subject I broached, in detail, about his life and career. And like Grant, he remembered every speck of his performances and why he had made the onscreen choices that he did.
Grant began his reply about acting by admitting, with some pleasure (and, at this stage of his life, quite a bit of relief), that his screen persona wasn’t the real Cary Grant. The closest screen role to the real him, he said, was the tattered, charming but grumpy beachcomber-coastwatcher he played in the 1964 World War II romantic comedy “Father Goose,” not the suave guy with the square jaw, cleft chin, raven slick-backed hair, glittering brown eyes and lean, athletic build that made him a matinee idol for the ages. (It’s worth mentioning that “Father Goose” was a notable box office success; upon its release at Radio City during Christmas, it raked in $210,000, surpassing the record set by Grant’s own “Charade” the previous year.)
According to Michael Curtiz, who directed Grant in the title role of the highly fictionalized movie-biography of composer Cole Porter, “Night and Day,” the actor was unique: “Some actors squeeze a line to death — Cary tickles it to life.” (As for Porter, when someone suggested Fred Astaire bore a closer physical resemblance to him and might have been a better choice, he replied: “If they wanted Cary Grant to play you in a movie, would you complain?”)
When it came to my question about criticism that he just played himself, Grant had this to say, his voice at times flush with frustration and anger: “It’s very difficult for people to be yourselves at any time. You can walk into a party and not necessarily be yourself. You want to create an illusion or create a man that you possibly are not — or a woman, certainly some women I know go through some very difficult times, and I’ve always felt very sorry for them, not being able to be themselves.
“You don’t lose your own identity up on the screen. It’s always you, no matter how you behave. How can you lose your own identity, because you’re there, in the flesh, photographed and blown up. How the hell can you lose yourself? What do they mean? You mean you feel hypnotized?
“It’s rather stupid for critics to knock Gary Cooper or Duke Wayne for playing themselves, because they were both number one in the business for many years. It’s much more difficult than anyone could possibly imagine. None of this comes naturally, it’s from experience that takes practice.
“Just as a writer says he improves from year to year — you look at some of your old stuff and say, ‘My God!’ — well, so does an actor. You have to have ambition, which puts you at that next step.”
Grant admitted that he seldom watched his old movies.
“When I do,” he confided, “I always know, from duly acquired knowledge, that I could have done this or that better, and perhaps, so could the director.”
When I spoke with Stewart about charges he played himself over and over, the slow, aw-shucks trademark persona that defined him on and off the screen suddenly evaporated, giving way to a terse, hard-edged response that was diametrically different from his screen persona (in retrospect, it seemed more like the fighter-pilot hero he had been in World War II, and the Air Force general that he eventually became). Clearly, he had paid attention to criticism that he was merely repeating variations of himself in his performances and was anxious to finally get his reply off his chest.
“Whenever people say that I always play myself,” Stewart said in that unmistakably distinct voice that had mesmerized and charmed audiences for decades, as he moved in for the verbal kill, “I just quote Larry Olivier: ‘I always play myself with deference to the character.’ Well, if it’s good enough for Olivier, it’s good enough for Stewart.”
These two giants of Hollywood’s Golden Age may be long gone in the flesh, but their work lives on, thanks to platforms like the Turner Classic Movies cable channel and countless retrospectives and re-releases of their films (I recently took my family to a 70th anniversary theatrical showing of Stewart’s classic “Rear Window,” an Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece that still stirs spirited conversations, and controversy, and wows on the big screen).
If anyone wants to learn about acting, they would do well to study the films of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.
How good were they? So good we forgot they were acting at all.
