Had Richard Egan replaced Jimmy Stewart

Rating: 8/10 (23 January 2012)

This film has a great story, setting and Edith Head costumes, but the romantic underpinnings are impossible to believe. Is it too much to ask for a convincing romantic coupling in an A-list murder mystery? Richard Egan was appreciably more masculine and charismatic than Jimmy Stewart; and his career was sufficiently established for his casting not to represent a major risk. He also had a superb physique (see Demetrios and the Gladiators), which would have been the believable result of his adventurous occupation. His physical condition would have made it OK for him to appear shirtless or in underwear, attire apposite both to his broken leg and dangerous lifestyle. He never would have had to sport the ridiculous, grandmotherly pajamas Stewart does to hide his premature senescence. In fact, during the massage scene, one is actually more attracted to Thelma Ritter's personality and energy. Though Stewart's character condescends to Ritter as a much older woman, she is actually only 6 years his senior. Egan was a rugged, deep-voiced Californian who exuded a paradoxically gentlemanly refinement. He was an alpha male with the luster of a graduate Stanford education. At the time Rear Window was made, he actually had a lot of work and was probably not available. That is a pity, because his presence would have made it an artifact one would have liked to return to again and again. In 1954 he was busy holding his own against Tyrone Power, the pretty boy in Untamed who wins Susan Hayward's love. In that bodice ripper, Egan is made to seem too brutal and crude a match for the social climbing Katie (her GWTW consolation role). But that's what would have made him so right for Rear Window. At a glance, you believe he would seek the thrill of photographing mountain climbers in Nepal, race car drivers, Texan rodeos or tangle with Raymond Burr, but also have the physical magnetism and refinement to attract someone like Lisa Fremont. Yes, it seems many young women at the time were OK with men 21 years their senior (though most frequently in the minds of Hollywood producers). But even Grace Kelly, so frequently cast with granddaddies, found a real prince only 6 years olderâ€”a coup de grace. The casting of Stewart enervates the sexual excitement of Lisa's sleepover, rendering her lightly-packed Mark Cross bag powerless to titillate. If she were going to throw away her privileged existence in a very nice building at Park and 63rd by slumming with a photographer in the Village, it would hardly be with the glum actuary played by Stewart. With him one feels certain her honor is completely safe, in or out of the Edith Head negligee. That would not have been the case with Egan playing Jeff; and the movie would have survived with a more appealing adult sensibility.