The Winter I Fell In Love With Jimmy Stewart
Over the weekend, as I was putting up the Christmas tree, I decided to put in a movie I hadn’t seen in a while rather than turn on my usual go to this time of year—the Hallmark channel. “What’s this?” my five-year-old son asked, pointing to the TV.
“It’s A Wonderful Life. Those are two angels talking.”
He stared at the black and white images filling the television screen. “Does it have a bad guy in it?”
“Well…yeah.”
“Then I’m going to love it,” he said, settling in to watch.
Love might have turned out to be too strong a word, but surprisingly, he did watch the whole thing—or at least stayed in the living room the entire time it was on. Sometimes he was rolling around on the floor with his lightsaber doing Jedi moves. But even so, he kept asking questions about the movie. “Which one’s the bad guy? Is the bad guy going to shoot someone? Is that the bad guy? Is that the bad guy?”
He seemed to have trouble grasping the concept the bad guy in this movie was an old man in a wheelchair who never shot anyone and never went to jail. Not exactly the same response I had the first time I watched It’s A Wonderful Life. Granted, I was a little bit older. Around twelve years old. And like many people experiencing this movie for the first time, I watched it and afterwards whispered the same thing young Mary did sitting in Gower’s Drugstore. “George Bailey, I’ll love you till the day I die.”
And while that movie alone might have been enough to fan the flames of my eternal love for Jimmy Stewart, it was the next movie I watched a few weeks later, the day after Christmas, that cinched it for me.
I had just woken up and did what I usually did in those days when I had just woken up and didn’t have school. I went into my mom and dad’s bedroom (they were already awake and downstairs putzing around in the kitchen) and turned their TV on to AMC. The opening credits to a movie called You Gotta Stay Happy rolled across the screen and the name James Stewart appeared.
James Stewart? I leaned forward. Wasn’t that the actor in It’s A Wonderful Life?
I sank onto the bed, clad in the new pair of pajamas I’d received for Christmas and stared at the screen for the next hour and half, completely enraptured. By the end of the movie, it was official. I wasn’t just in love with George Bailey. I was in love with Jimmy Stewart. And for the next several years, I made it a point to watch any movie I could get my hands on starring him. You Gotta Stay Happy still remains one of my favorites—maybe because I’ll always associate that movie with the afterglow of Christmas and a cozy new pair of pajamas.
A year later, when I was in 8th grade, one of my English class assignments was to read a biography and then give a speech to the class about that person. Of course, I searched high and low at the public library for a book about Jimmy Stewart, but alas, could not find one—probably because he was still alive at the time and biographers were waiting for him to die so they could write his entire life story. I don’t know. But it turned out just as well. I ended up choosing Fred Astaire’s autobiography, Steps In Time. Why? Because I’d seen Holiday Inn, along with a handful of the movies he’d made with Ginger Rogers, and might have been a little in love with him too. Good thing Jimmy Stewart wasn’t the jealous type.
So while I still love a good Hallmark Christmas movie (I can hear my husband asking if there is such a thing), I decided this year I’m taking a little break. This year I’m going back to the classics.
The Shop Around the Corner is another great Jimmy Stewart movie I haven’t seen in a while. Why not watch that? Plus, it’s been a few years since I’ve seen White Christmas. (I can’t wait for my son to try to figure out who the bad guy in that one is.) And after that, maybe I’ll give The Bells of St. Mary’s another look.
How about you? What are you watching this year? Any recommendations? I’ve never seen Miracle on 34th Street. Maybe this is the year.
