Ken Bruce DJ versus
James Stewart Actor
On his BBC Radio Two
show this morning (9th January 2013) Ken Bruce asserted
that various actors always played the same character and then sited
John Wayne, Hugh Grant and James Stewart.
In that John Wayne
played a lot of tough guy roles, cowboys and soldiers and the like I
can see that argument. Hugh Grant has played a lot of hesitant,
bumbling Englishmen, is he in fact acting one could even wonder?
James Stewart, however,
the great James Stewart, who played roles as diverse as the eccentric
Elwood P Dowd conferring with his imaginary giant rabbit called
Harvey (a role Stewart played on stage as well as on film), through
the altruistic nice guy in It's A Wonderful Life and the determined
naïve politician in Mr Smith goes to Washington, to a series of hard
nosed western characters, is a different proposition altogether.
Stewart undertook,
comedy, drama and horror with the same consummate professionalism.
There are too many movies in his filmography to list them all, but
many horror aficionados regard Hitchcock's Vertigo as that director's
finest, starring Stewart alongside Kim Novak. I've already mentioned
his foray into the world of the mind in Harvey, but he also played a
hot tempered soldier, pleading insanity in the critically acclaimed
movie Anatomy Of A Murder.
He played straight
westerns and parodies of the genre such as Destry Rides Again. He was
somewhat famous for playing American heroes, it's true, but Charles
Lindbergh and Glenn Miller are very different kinds of American
heroes. I suggest that such versatility is beyond many actors and
further suggest that Stewart's distinctive voice did not come between
him and the many and various characters he portrayed! Sorry Mr. Bruce
but there it is!
Malcolm Snook - James Stewart fan and author of Hill's Heroes
No comments:
Post a Comment