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Boston Globe (17/May/1985) - Jimmy Stewart still shines

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JIMMY STEWART STILL SHINES; ACTOR WILL BE HONORED AT CANNES FILM FESTIVAL

CANNES, France — Yesterday in a villa in Cannes, French culture minister Jack Lang was pinning a medal on Hollywood's Jack Valenti when Jimmy Stewart walked in from the terrace through a French door. The ceremony didn't stop. Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Stewart just stood off to one side politely with his hands folded in front of him. But you could feel the center of gravity shift to him. The photographers' cameras, too. Nearly 77 — his birthday is Monday — Stewart has white hair and wears a hearing aid. But his eyes are as blue as ever, his carriage is just as erect. In person, no less than in his films, he's in a class by himself when it comes to backing into the limelight.

Stewart will be honored on Sunday with a Cannes Film Festival tribute. It will include a showing of a newly restored print of "The Glenn Miller Story," directed by Anthony Mann in 1954. Not unmindful of the success of Stewart's recently reissued Alfred Hitchcock films — "Rear Window" and "Vertigo" — Universal has spruced up and Dolbyized the film about the bandleader who died in a plane crash on his way to entertain troops in 1944. The film will play a couple of other festival dates, then reopen in the United States this fall.

There are actors who are nothing like their screen selves. Not Stewart. He sounds and carries himself exactly like the tall, narrow-shouldered endearingly awkward figure we remember from a score of film roles. Afterfiguratively tipping his hat to "The Glenn Miller Story," Stewart lists his own favorites among his films. "I like the Capra film — 'It's a Wonderful Life.' The Lindbergh, too — 'Spirit of St. Louis.' And some of the Westerns — 'The Man who Shot Liberty Valance,' with Duke Wayne, and 'The Man from Laramie' also directed by Anthony Mann . . .

"I think it all started, this whole revival business, with those Hitchcock pictures. They were very well made, right down to the last detail. It was part of his ability and experience to make stories and develop characters that stood the test of time very well. People have said they didn't get the feeling they were old pictures revived, but that they were modern stories."

On Tuesday, Stewart flies to Washington, where President Ronald Reagan will present him with the Freedom Medal, the highest honor the United States can bestow on an individual. Stewart already got his special Oscar. What next? "Well," Stewart says in his patented aw'shucks manner, "June Allyson and I are just going to travel all around and plug the movie. We're going to England in July. On the fourth of June we'll go to Tokyo for a couple of days. Tokyo! Jeez, I sound like I'm going down to the streetcar station!"

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