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Harmony
October 2006
On Sale: October 10, 2006
Featuring: Jimmy Stewart
480 pages
ISBN: 1400052211
EAN: 9781400052219
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
Jimmy Stewart’s all-American good looks, boyish charm, and
deceptively easygoing style of acting made him one of
Hollywood’s greatest and most enduring stars. Despite the
indelible image he projected of innocence and quiet
self-assurance, Stewart’s life was more complex and
sophisticated than most of the characters he played. With
fresh insight and unprecedented access, bestselling
biographer Marc Eliot finally tells the previously untold
story of one of our greatest screen and real-life heroes. Born into a family of high military honor and economic
success dominated by a powerful father, Stewart developed an
interest in theater while attending Princeton University.
Upon graduation, he roomed with the then-unknown Henry
Fonda, and the two began a friendship that lasted a
lifetime. While he harbored a secret unrequited love for
Margaret Sullavan, Stewart was paired with many of
Hollywood’s most famous, most beautiful, and most alluring
leading ladies during his extended bachelorhood, among them
Ginger Rogers, Olivia de Havilland, Loretta Young, and the
notorious Marlene Dietrich. After becoming a star playing a hero in Frank Capra’s Mr.
Smith Goes to Washington in 1939 and winning an Academy
Award the following year for his performance in George
Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story, Stewart was drafted into the
Armed Forces and became a hero in real life. When he
returned to Hollywood, he discovered that not only the town
had changed, but so had he. Stewart’s combat experiences
left him emotionally scarred, and his deepening darkness
perfectly positioned him for the ’50s, in which he made his
greatest films, for Anthony Mann (Winchester ’73 and Bend of
the River) and, most spectacularly, Alfred Hitchcock, in his
triple meditation on marriage, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew
Too Much, and Vertigo, which many film critics regard as the
best American movie ever made. While Stewart's career thrived, so did his personal life. A
marriage in his forties, the adoption of his wife’s two sons
from a previous marriage, and the birth of his twin
daughters laid the foundation for a happy life, until an
unexpected tragedy had a shocking effect on his final years. Intimate and richly detailed, Jimmy Stewart is a fascinating
portrait of a multi-faceted and much-admired actor as well
as an extraordinary slice of Hollywood history.
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