Word: stewart
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From then on, the sanctified edginess in Stewart's movie parts took on the tinge of bitterness, despair. His typical character--the complicated man with a questionable past--was pretty much in a bad mood for the whole '50s. The Capra hero played by Stewart had been a figure of wild gestures; the Hitchcock hero was a man in moral traction, drawn to look at evil and wonder at its awful seductions. This was daring stuff. It took a bold man to twist and extend his star quality from sunny Jim into the darker shades of his mature roles...
...neurotic as the Stewart character could be, it was for the most part anti-erotic. Smart city gals (Hepburn, Sullavan, Jean Arthur, Rosalind Russell, Dietrich, Ginger Rogers, nearly the whole fabulous constellation of '30s star actresses) would toy with this bumpkin, only to find he had magically restored their emotional virginity. In his private life--which he kept private--Stewart was a responsible grownup, a bachelor until 1949, when he married Gloria McLean. She had two sons from a previous marriage; they had twin daughters...
...Clearly, Stewart loved Gloria with the generosity and tenacity of his best screen characters. They were a famously compatible couple, entertaining friends and, after Stewart's informal retirement in the late '70s, traveling on safaris. The Stewarts also made an annual trip to Washington, where they paid tribute to Gloria's son Ronald, who was killed in Vietnam...
Unlike Henry Fonda or Burt Lancaster, Stewart did not have the luck to star in melancholy-twilight masterpieces; his final films were mostly amiable and mundane. He eased into late maturity with rueful good humor, telling director Peter Bogdanovich, "After 70 it's all patch, patch, patch." And he remained touched by his celebrity. "We were coming out of Chasen's one night," says Bogdanovich, "when a man put his hand out and said, 'Mr. Stewart, I don't guess it means much to you, but I want you to know I think you're wonderful.' Jimmy had taken...
...later generation he was probably best known as the wry gentleman who every few months came calling on Johnny Carson. Stewart would uncoil himself in the Tonight Show guest seat, tell one of his hilariously laborious anecdotes, perhaps read one of the verses that, in 1989, made him a best-selling poet. One bit of doggerel elegized his pet golden retriever: "And now he's dead./ And there are nights when I think I feel him/ Climb upon our bed and lie between us,/ And I pat his head./ And there are nights when I think/ I feel that stare...