Heres what my debate with Jay Branscomb was over. It started with me pointing out that Jimmy Stewart may have been a hero on screen (fighting for the rights of the little man), but off-screen he was considerably less. I then commented on how people are hoodwinked by the movie-idol image and dont know the real man--the contradiction of heroes on screen and assholes off screen. Jay Branscomb jumped into the argument by comparing Stewart to John Lennon, who in his personal life was cruel, and therefore this was suppose to undermine my argument. I had to point out to JB that I was not talking about Stewarts personal foibles but his public social-political stands, so that JBs analogy of defense for Stewart was off the mark. (Which begged my argument, since one could then reasonably compare Lennons public stands with Stewarts!) I had posted citations from the life of Stewart, which JB tried to discredit as dubious. I had to remind him that the major one was from a reputable Stewart biography (which was cited in the quotation--he obviously was too bothered to read what he objected to!) and supplied the rest from the standard-bearer of movie info--IMDb. This was ignored, and his next underhanded tactic was to accuse me of ad hominem because I wondered and then asked the question have you ever been cruel to a spouse or partner (he obviously missed the moral point of my question). In short, JB missed my point entirely! From the get-go the initial disagreement with Stewart fans wasnt over Stewarts career as a movie actor; his body of work, but what he did in his off-screen life--and the discrepancy between them. Agreeing that all people are flawed is vastly different from assessing the stances they take as citizens of the U.S. In point of fact, I demonstrated that the heroic movie actor Jimmy Stewart was a phony. This is what he actually was like in real life (I replicate here what I posted as evidence for this--and I can now see why JB took exception to me calling Stewart a hypocrite): Stewart was a big move star alright--and a bigger HYPOCRITE. This is a common syndrome in Hollywood. Actors play heroes on screen and are anything but off screen, and sometimes the opposite--villains (e.g, those like Jimmy Stewart, Robert Taylor, Gary Cooper, Adolphe Menjou, etc, who testified against their fellow actors for the House Committee on Un-American Activities Communist witch hunts). Bogart, a member of the Hollywood Ten, was a hero both on and off screen--unlike Stewart. Another off-screen hero, Henry Fonda, opposed Stewarts political views and his support of Reagan. In fact, during a debate with Stewart they got in a fist-fight over it! Too many Americans fall for the manufactured image of these actors and not who they are as real people. This is why there are those on this thread who will hail Stewart as a great man and yet know nothing about his real life as a man. They are so mesmerized by the movie idol propaganda that they dont know Stewart was an agent for the FBI for Hoovers communist witch hunt: Along with his friends John Wayne and Ward Bond, Stewart strongly supported blacklisting in Hollywood during the McCarthy Red Scare era of the late 1940s and early 1950s. According to Michael Munns biography *Jimmy Stewart: The Truth Behind the Legend* (2004), he worked as a secret agent for FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, rooting out suspected Communists from Hollywood. Hoover took advantage of Stewarts right-wing Republican politics and asked him to work undercover for the FBI in 1947, because Stewarts status as a famous, decorated war hero and officer in the Air Force Reserve made him the perfect choice to help flush out subversives, his late wife Gloria Stewart recalled. According to the book, Stewart was so keen to assist Hoover that he spied on his closest friends, including Cary Grant and Frank Capra, who had directed him in Its a Wonderful Life (1946). During the 1950s he served as a closed doors witness to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). José Ferrer, a liberal Democrat, believed Stewart only provided the names of Hollywood people he knew to be members of the Communist Party, not those he simply suspected of having communist sympathies. He was a frequent guest at the White House throughout the 1980s, addressing the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan on 20 January 1981. Throughout his long career as a film star, Stewart endorsed such Republican candidates as Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. In fact, Reagan and Stewart were good friends from Reagan’s Hollywood days, and after helping him win the presidency, Stewart said: I cannot tell you, Mr President, just how happy I am to finally be able to call you my Commander-in-Chief. Controversies arose in Stewart’s uncharacteristically squeaky-clean Hollywood career. One was his endorsement of Goldwater in 1964, who had just previously chosen to vote against the Civil Rights Act. It was a divisive time in U.S. history and Stewart was viewed by some as choosing the side of intolerance. Another was his congruity with the McCarthyism of the 1950s. While some Hollywood stars at the time (such as Lucille Ball or Humphrey Bogart) were either under suspicion for colluding with communists or being called to testify before McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities committee, Stewart was saying things like: I don’t think there’s any question that the Communists are behind a great deal of unrest in the United States. In addition, I feel they are still a potential danger in show business.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:54:01 +0000
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