Jimmy Stewart: The Truth Behind the Legend
Ask a younger audience about Gary Cooper or Spencer Tracy, and you might get a blank stare. Jimmy Stewart, thanks to It’s a Wonderful Life, hasn’t suffered the same fate. Stewart’s fans are in for a treat with this anecdote-filled biography, which features a major bombshell: for years, Stewart provided undercover reports to the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover. Among the nuggets mined here: the rift over politics between conservative Stewart and his liberal best friend, Henry Fonda; Stewart being tempted by Grace Kelly; and how Stewart wanted to help Hoover rout the Mafia from Hollywood but ended up naming Communists. Unfortunately, these revelations and the text as a whole could have been better documented. Appended is a list of sources, but as Munn, a friend of both Stewart and Stewart’s wife, Gloria, testifies, it’s limited to “who I’ve quoted . . . along with the year (as best I can remember it)” and the location. Much of the information comes from phone calls and social chats with Gloria Stewart. Did Munn really write everything down? Still, shaky bona fides aside, this a fun Old Hollywood bio. --Ilene Cooper