Jimmy Stewart: A Biography

by Marc Eliot

Harmony Books

Hardcover, 463 pages, $25.95

By Peter L. Winkler

cover art
 Amazon

Curious to see what Marc Eliot wrote about the films Stewart made with directors Anthony Mann and Otto Preminger, I read those sections of his book first and was appalled by its awfulness. Reading Eliot’s book reminded me of Pauline Kael’s review of the film Fahrenheit 451, in which she told how she horrified a Berkeley professor by burning a “crummy ghost-written” biography of a movie star in her fireplace.

Jimmy Stewart: A Biography is an ineptly researched and written assemblage of material from previously published sources. One need only turn the page to be greeted with a fresh example of Eliot’s ignorance of film history and technology. On the technical side, he mistakenly claims that How the West Was Won was released in Cinemascope instead of Cinerama, and describes another film as being made in VistaVision and 70mm, two physically incompatible formats. Otherwise, his book is overrun with superfluous plot summaries (Vertigo‘s takes up eight pages), and wrong-headed analyses of Stewart’s films. Further still, Eliot can’t even keep his facts straight. He makes this parenthetical observation about George Stevens’ film, Giant: “James Dean in his final screen performance before his sudden, early and tragic death in a car accident just prior to the film’s release.” James Dean died on 30 September 1955, about a week after filming his last scenes in Giant, but the film wasn’t released until November of the following year. Further, Eliot states that Cary Grant retired from acting after Monkey Business (1952), only to return seven years later in Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief. In a footnote on the same page, Eliot gives Thief‘s release date as 1955. That’s three years, not seven.

It goes on. Eliot’s interprets the first and best of Stewart’s films with Anthony Mann, Winchester ‘73, as an Oedipal saga. After all, says Eliot, the prized rifle of the film’s title is a phallic symbol. But Winchester ‘73 centers on Stewart’s character avenging his father’s murder and the theft of his rifle, both the doing of his brother. It’s not about a son’s struggle to displace his father and sexually possess his mother. Eliot mysteriously concludes that The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) is John Ford’s statement about Hollywood, though he doesn’t explain how. Then he claims that Ford’s film was a rebuke to Cecil B. DeMille’s fervid anti-Communism, which Eliot says was embodied in DeMille’s Biblical epics of the ‘50s. Rebukes were rather beside the point in 1962, since DeMille died in January 1959.

Ford had already famously rebuked DeMille at a heated meeting of the Directors Guild in 1950 when DeMille advocated requiring guild members to sign loyalty oaths. Ford stood up and said, “I make Westerns. I don’t think there is anyone in the room who knows more about what the American public wants than Cecil B. De Mille. In that respect I admire him.” Then, looking at De Mille, Ford said, “But I don’t like you, C.B. I don’t like what you stand for and I don’t like what you’ve been saying here tonight.”

After making the inexplicable observation that the art of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance “lay in its literal vision of God,” Eliot claims that the film remains little seen since its original release. Eliot also claims that Stewart’s 1967 film Firecreek “has had very little subsequent TV play and remains largely unseen,” but writes on page 388 that Stewart’s films “played in Los Angeles and New York in the ‘70s on local over-the-air independent stations on the average of two or three times per week.” That’s how this writer first saw both films. It was largely through innumerable TV screenings that Liberty Valance became so widely seen that it has achieved classic status and was issued on VHS in 1997 and later on DVD. Even Firecreek, the lesser of the two films, was issued on VHS and DVD.

It may seem that I have it in for Eliot, but finding glaring flaws in his book is almost an exercise in belaboring the obvious. I stumbled over this sentence while copying Eliot’s comment about James Dean: “It had become clear to the studio that Mann’s Westerns were of the highest quality, comparable to anything coming out of Hollywood, they were not able to sustain an audience.” Here’s Eliot’s jaw-dropping summary of the film “No Highway in the Sky”: “The film is an airplane drama about a plane in danger of exploding in flight due to structural defects, paranoia a popular theme in ‘50s films when commercial flying increased dramatically.” An airplane drama about a plane? I kid you not.

Jimmy Stewart was an honorable, modest man. He was also apparently an unreflective man who left no record of his interior life. In a misguided attempt to suggest one, Eliot describes events he can’t possibly know of, as when he writes about Stewart, stationed in England during WWII, breaking down in tears after reading his father’s letter declaring his love for his son. Eliot claims that Stewart was serviced by an unnamed actress at a going away party thrown by his friends before Stewart entered the Army Air Corps, and had, or wanted to have, an affair with his co-star Kim Novak. Perhaps Eliot has taken The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance‘s signature line too much to heart: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

Eliot betrays a lack of affection for his subject, especially in his treatment of Stewart’s life after his film career waned in the ‘60s. Eliot draws a sour picture of an increasingly joyless Stewart waiting for it all to end, especially after his son is killed in Vietnam and his contemporaries begin to depart from the scene. Eliot has Stewart sitting alone, watching his films on television, grumbling about their defects instead of enjoying them or attending a seemingly endless procession of what Eliot calls “rubber chicken” dinners and accepting various awards. Unlike many actors whose flamboyant, off-screen antics or personal psychodramas are the real reason we remain interested in them, Stewart’s films are his legacy. If you don’t get that right, you’re left with very little.

— 3 January 2007
 
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Comments

It is unfortunates like Winkler who make most criticism utterly worthless.  I can’t begin to refute all the nonsense and self-congratulatory garbage he passes off for “criticism” in his “review,” but I’ll point out a few (he seems to have read either a galley or the British edition, the latter which in early editions did not include my final corrections, something he could have discovered had he read the American edition).  Previously published sources?  Of course, except I interviewed Kim Novak, Frank Capra Jr., and Jimmy Stewart’s daughter, the latter the source for what I “couldn’t possibly know” about Jimmy watching his own movies.  Superfluous plot summaries?  In other words, if we discuss Picasso’s life we shouldn’t talk about his work (at the end of his “review” he says that the films of Jimmy Stewart are his legacy.  Which is it)?  James Dean’s death not prior to the release of “Giant?”  Besides this being the case, Winkler’s being upset about how long Dean was dead before the movie was released is idiotically and pathetically absurd.  Obviously Winkler has no understanding of Freudian analysis.  Sibling rivalry is an essential element of the Oedipal conflict.  Ford rebuking DeMille after DeMille’s death?  I didn’t know that the right to rebuke (or refute) ended when one side died.  And I claimed the film was only in part a rebuke, which helps explain how the film is about Hollywood (not to mention the description of the director-as-God analysis that Winkler must have missed).  Some of Jimmy’s films were little-seen and some were shown on TV.  There is a contradiction here that only Winkler sees.  For the rest, Winkler simply ignores the wealth of evidence presented in the book about Jimmy’s “interior life,” whatever that is supposed to mean.  Yes, there were a few copyediting mistakes that got through the first printing, but Winkler seems not to know the difference between a dropped word and the English language.  Can’t wait to read his book, if he ever goes beyond blogging as a writer.
It’s always the rank amateurs who write “personal” attacks that are supposed to pass for criticism.  What a bore.

Marc Eliot

Comment by Marc Eliot — January 3, 2007 @ 3:31 pm

I am not sure what the URL is.

Comment by Marc Eliot from USA - Amazon.com — January 3, 2007 @ 3:50 pm

Eliot’s “ignorance of film history”?  He studied with Andrew Sarris.  What are your qualifications, Winkler?  A membership at Blockbuster Video?

Comment by dave from USA — January 3, 2007 @ 5:54 pm

Dear Mr. Eliot:

If it were only me, but it isn’t. Even reviewers at Amazon.com point out the factual errors, inconsistencies, incompetent writing and other problems that are rife in your book. Like the reviewers at Amazon, I read the American edition of your book. To be precise, I checked it out from the public library in Studio City, California in December 2006. One or two errors in chronology might be attributable to bad copy editing, but the examples cited by me and even by casual, less careful reviewers on Amazon.com show that they are symptomatic of what’s wrong, not isolated, innocent mistakes.

In his recent review of your book in the “New York Review of Books,” Geoffrey O’Brien writes, “Stewart himself seems to step in to help out his biographer by animating what would otherwise be a succession of anecdotes, statistics, and plot summaries.” I hope that you have written to Mr. O’Brien to complain.

You contend that extensive plot summaries of Jimmy Stewart’s films are analogous to descriptions of Picasso’s art in a biography of him. It is an inapt analogy. Unless a biography of Picasso included reproductions of every work described, then some descriptions are necessary. Picasso’s works are displayed in diverse locations and are not readily accessible to the average reader. Stewart’s best known films have been shown on TV for decades and have been available on home video for quite some time. Presumably, anyone enamored enough with Jimmy Stewart to want to read a biography of him has seen his films enough to be familiar with their plots and don’t require having their recollection refreshed at great length.

Let’s just take one of your gaffes and how you deal with it to see who’s more credible. You wrote, “James Dean in his final screen performance before his sudden, early and tragic death in a car accident JUST PRIOR to the film’s release.” Once again, I point out that Dean died on September 30, 1955. That is hardly “just prior” to November 1956, when “Giant” was released.

What is your answer? “James Dean’s death not prior to the release of “Giant?” Besides this being the case, Winkler’s being upset about how long Dean was dead before the movie was released is idiotically and pathetically absurd.”

Do you think your potential readers are fools who can be distracted by you disingenuous attempt to correct your error by rewriting the sentence now that you’ve been caught? Or by resorting to name calling? (“idiotically and pathetically absurd”) Words carry meaning, Mr. Eliot. That’s why they should be carefully chosen. That is something you are incapable of, as you demonstrate repeatedly in your book.  “Just prior” is an inappropriate way to describe an event that preceded another by 13 months. I am upset because your repeated inability to get simple facts like this straight undermine the credibility of your entire effort. Facts that are amenable to simple research. As is often the case with bad books, it takes far more space to enumerate problems and explain them than one has room for in most reviews. It would take even more space to anticipate a writer’s possible responses and incorporate replies to them. Mr. Eliot can be grateful for the fact that my review wasn’t longer, or I would have had the opportunity to illustrate it with even more examples of slapdash research and writing.

Here’s one I didn’t have room for in my review that springs to mind. In one of your footnotes, you claim that Henry Fonda clashed with John Ford over Ford’s conservative politics while filming “Mister Roberts” and used Ford’s illness to have him replaced by Mervyn LeRoy. Had you bothered to read just a few pages of Joseph McBride’s superb biography,  “Searching For John Ford,” published in 2001, you could have avoided yet another mistake. As McBride amply documents, Fonda (as well as producer Leland Hayward) were upset about Ford’s deviations from the text and spirit of the play the film was adapted from, not political differences. They were also concerned by the worsening of Ford’s chronic alcoholism. When Ford underwent emergency gallbladder surgery, he was replaced by LeRoy. You speculate when the facts are as close as your local library. You have heard of libraries, haven’t you? They are big buildings where you can find lots of books on shelves and take them home without buying them. Amazing, isn’t it?

You toss around terms like Oedipal and when you are called on it, you have the temerity to attack me and assert your correctness without evidence. Sibling rivalry is note the source of the Oedipus complex, but an extension of it when two or more brothers compete to replace their father in their mother’s affections. I’ve seen “Winchester ’73” several times, and there is no evidence whatsoever in the film that Stewart’s and Stephen McNally’s rivalry is a competition to kill their father to posess their mother. Show it to me and I’ll eat my review with mustard and relish. You’ve read it in where it doesn’t belong in a pretentious attempt to give your plot summary depth and the appearance of critical analysis.

You take exception to my criticism that your book is assembled from previously published material. Here I will admit to a minor mistake. I should have written that your book is assembled mostly from previously published material. Or did my copy editor fail me?

According to you, I am a pathetic, absurd, amateurish bore. I wonder then what it is about my review that could possibly rouse you from you boredom long enough to pen an attack? Perhaps it is your thin-skinned sensitivity to my demonstration that the emperor is naked. Your book was torpedoed and you are rushing to control the damage. Your feyly affected indifference to my review (”What a bore”) is a transparent pose. Your expectation that any discerning reader should have to pay good money for your sloppy cut-and-paste job is the hight of arrogance.

As to your expectations for my first book, my answer is simple. Please have your editor, Shaye Areheart, contact me. I’m ready, willing, and able to produce a movie star biography for her.

Yours,
Peter L. Winkler

Comment by Peter L. Winkler from North Hollywood, CA — January 4, 2007 @ 7:24 pm

To Mr. Winkler:

Believe me, no one wants to publish you.  Your attacks are insanely personal, you do not understand the implications of film history, your John Ford comments are wrong, your analysis of Freud is inept, and your reading of the NY Review of Books is grossly innaccurate. Mr. O’Brien was talking about the character animated in my pages. He spent four pages delving into what I had written without a single personal attack. Actually, it’s a quite good piece.  As for the Amazon people with their need to point out every mistake, no one pays any attention to those.  Check out the two reviews the NY Times wrote or the one in your town, the Hollywood Reporter.

You are pathetic, petty, jealous, and my publishers would laugh you out the door based on your so-called “reviews” of my book.

Get a life.


You are a hopeless wannabe

Comment by Marc Eliot from USA - Amazon.com — January 5, 2007 @ 11:02 am

One final thought—seeing as how you were too cheap (or too broke) to actually buy the book, you might be interested to note that you more than likely read the British edition, because the cover you display in your review is the British one, not the American one.  That kind of, er, “mistake” is one you ought to what, be ashamed of?

I wish you luck in your attempts to publish a real piece of writing.  Try to avoid film as you apparently know nothing about it except dates and when people died and less than zero about historical perspective, psychology, Auteurism and professionalism (lack of personal outrage—the unmistakable mark of the amateur).  Please don’t read any more of my books.  I’m afraid the jet stream of meaning passing over your head might give you a bad cold.

Comment by Marc Eliot from USA - Amazon.com — January 5, 2007 @ 11:39 am

Dear Mr. Eliot:

The cover image for the review was procured by the editor(s) of this site. The cover of the US edition, which is the on I read, was entirely different. Your comment about my cheapness typifies your two responses, loaded with puerile invective. Yes, among many other subjects, I am concerned with the correct dates for historical events, which is one part of being a competent film historian. You have just admitted that you don’t.

Unfortunately for you, I have already found editors happy to pay for my writing, as I have written for Playboy, Filmfax, and other paying periodicals.

Your professional success remains an unsolved mystery.

Sincerely,
Peter L. Winkler

Comment by Peter L. Winkler from North Hollywood — January 6, 2007 @ 3:34 am

We closed this thread earlier in the week due to a high degree of nasty personal invective and threatening profanity.  We’ve re-opened it, but will close it again if this resumes.  These commenting tools are meant for community discussion not flame wars or vulgarity.

Comment by SysAdmin — January 8, 2007 @ 11:45 pm

— PopMatters sponsor —

Scott Eyman (biographer of John Ford and Louis B. Mayer) echoes my review, calling Eliot’s book “bewilderingly bad” and “dismal” and Eliot’s analysis of “Liberty Valance” “ridiculous” and concludes his review in the New York Observer by writing, <b>“There is no—repeat, no—excuse for a book this badly written, this reportorially suspect.”</b>

If that weren’t damning enough, he’s joined by reviewers for The Washington Post and The Telegraph. You can get the links for the full reviews on my blog. Read ‘em and weep, Mr. Eliot.

http://preciouscargo.blogspot.com/2007/01/award-for-worst-book-of-year-goes-to.html

Comment by Peter L. Winkler from North Hollywood, CA — January 9, 2007 @ 2:01 pm

Mr. Winkler,

After trying to read Mr. Elliot’s biography and also reading your review, I think you hit the nail on the head in many respects.  Mr. Elliot’s angry and over-emotional responses to your review proved to me that he is the kind of writer I took him for when I got about 2/3 of the way through this book before throwing in the towel.  Mr. Elliot’s Cary Grant biography was not much better, but as I am an avid researcher of Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, I try to keep up on the current bios.  I am glad that I, like you, checked this biography out at the library, as I didn’t want to give Mr. Elliot the purchasing money yet, after I felt it was wasted on the Cary Grant bio.  I think the Grant bio was a little better, and Elliot can be entertaining in the way he writes, but he puts in so many details, personal thought details - in both bios - that he could not possibly have known unless he had been a fly on the wall, literally.  I think Mr. Elliot’s response of emotional attacks showed that he does not have legitimate hard research to back up his books.  I am not looking forward to the next bio he comes out with!

Comment by Alan J Feldman from Glendale, CA — September 10, 2009 @ 11:57 pm

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