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If Jimmy Stewart had died in the war while flying bomber missions over Germany, I think we would have said some nice things about him, but I don't think it would have occurred to anyone to carve his face onto acting's Mount Rushmore. After the war, Stewart either had within him an undercurrent of rage and melancholy that he fought to control or during the war he perfectly observed rage and melancholy and could draw on that understanding like the truest method actor. Either way, after World War II, I think he was just about the finest actor around.
By nearly universal acclaim, mine included, Jimmy Stewart's performance in It's A Wonderful Life was his best. It was his (and Frank Capra's) first movie after a five year absence and he had serious doubts about his ability to revive his career. The scene where George Bailey is praying in Martini's bar and the tears begin to flow, Stewart said that was real. He started thinking about himself and the war and his fears about his career, and the tears just came.
There are two scenes in It's A Wonderful Life you should especially watch for, bits with no dialogue, just concentrating on Stewart's face. The first is when's he's leaving to go to college and the guy says "but they'll vote with Potter otherwise." The second is a bit later when his brother comes home on the train with Ruth Dakin (Ruth Dakin Bailey!). In both, you see realization, then despair, then the conscious rearranging of his face so that no one else will see—the whole set-up of the movie in a pair of five second bits. Damn fine acting, in my layman's opinion.
In other scenes, Stewart is able to hit notes of despair and self-pity and anger that are scary, and he's not afraid to take it out on his wife and children. For an actor who has a reputation as a nice guy, in many scenes in this movie and others in the post-war era, he's a completely unredeemed bastard.
Anyway, if you've never seen It's A Wonderful Life and you've convinced yourself in advance that it's pure treacle, trust me, you couldn't be more wrong.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: It's A Wonderful Life (prod. Frank Capra)
nominees: The Best Years of Our Lives (prod. Samuel Goldwyn); The Big Sleep (prod. Howard Hawks); Gilda (prod. Virginia Van Upp); Great Expectations (prod. Ronald Neame); The Killers (prod. Mark Hellinger); A Matter Of Life And Death (prod. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger); My Darling Clementine (prod. Samuel J. Engel); Notorious (prod. Alfred Hitchcock); The Postman Always Rings Twice (prod. Carey Wilson)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Make Mine Music (prod. Walt Disney)
nominees: Cluny Brown (prod. Ernst Lubitch); The Harvey Girls (prod. Arthur Freed); A Night in Casablanca (prod. David L. Loew); Road To Utopia (prod. Paul Jones)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: La belle et la bête (Beauty And The Beast) (prod. André Paulvé)
nominees: Paisà (Paisan) (prod. Rod E. Geiger and Roberto Rossellini); Sciuscià (Shoeshine) (prod. Giuseppe Amato and Paolo William Tamburella)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: James Stewart (It's A Wonderful Life)
nominees: Dana Andrews (The Best Years Of Our Lives); Humphrey Bogart (The Big Sleep); Henry Fonda (My Darling Clementine); John Garfield (The Postman Always Rings Twice); Cary Grant (Notorious); Fredric March (The Best Years Of Our Lives)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (Road To Utopia)
nominees: Ray Bolger (The Harvey Girls); Charles Boyer (Cluny Brown)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Rita Hayworth (Gilda)
nominees: Lauren Bacall (The Big Sleep); Ingrid Bergman (Notorious); Joan Crawford (Humoresque); Irene Dunne (Anna and the King of Siam); Deborah Kerr (I See A Dark Stranger); Donna Reed (It's A Wonderful Life); Lana Turner (The Postman Always Rings Twice)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jennifer Jones (Cluny Brown)
nominees: Judy Garland (The Harvey Girls); Dorothy Lamour (Road To Utopia)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Frank Capra (It's A Wonderful Life)
nominees: Vittorio de Sica (Sciuscià a.k.a. Shoeshine); John Ford (My Darling Clementine); Tay Garnett (The Postman Always Rings Twice); Howard Hawks (The Big Sleep); Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious); David Lean (Great Expectations); William Wyler (The Best Years Of Our Lives)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Jean Cocteau (La belle et la bête a.k.a. Beauty And The Beast)
nominees: Ernst Lubitsch (Cluny Brown)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Claude Rains (Notorious)
nominees: Lionel Barrymore (It's A Wonderful Life); Walter Brennan (My Darling Clementine); Oscar Levant (Humoresque); Thomas Mitchell (It's A Wonderful Life); Harold Russell (The Best Years Of Our Lives); Henry Travers (It's A Wonderful Life); Clifton Webb (The Razor's Edge)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Myrna Loy (The Best Years Of Our Lives)
nominees: Ethel Barrymore (The Spiral Staircase); Anne Baxter (The Razor's Edge); Ava Gardner (The Killers); Leopoldine Konstantin (Notorious); Jean Simmons (Great Expectations); Teresa Wright (The Best Years Of Our Lives)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Robert E. Sherwood, from the novella Glory For Me by MacKinlay Kantor based on a Time magazine article (The Best Years Of Our Lives)
nominees: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, from the novel by Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep); David Lean, Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan (Great Expectations); Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, with additional scenes by Jo Swerling, from a short story by Philip Van Doren Stern (It's A Wonderful Life); Ben Hecht (Notorious)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Christian Berard, Lucien Carre and Rene Moulaert (La belle et la bête a.k.a. Beauty And The Beast) (Art Direction-Set Decoration)
By 1942, war had been raging in Europe for more than two years, and in Asia for more than ten, but you'd never know it from the movies of the era. As far as Hollywood was concerned, the war started when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and not one minute before. Not that Hollywood's myopia was anything unique—their indifference was very much in step with the rest of America's.
Once they discovered the war, though, they discovered it with a vengeance.
Hollywood's war fell into three overlapping phases—the rally-the-troops phase as the country's leaders coaxed Americans from their deeply-ingrained isolationism; the middle phase when films began to examine exactly what we were fighting for; and the final phase, when Hollywood was already anticipating the shape of the post-war world.
Casablanca, the classic romance starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, was very much part of the first phase, which is why I have included it here, rather than in 1943 where I usually think of it belonging (it did, after all, win the Oscar for best picture that year). But in fact, Casablanca actually premiered in November 1942, and more to the point it is the story of one man's journey from personal isolationism to fully-committed patriotism—the essence of a first phase film. As such, it belongs with such titles as Mrs. Miniver, To Be Or Not To Be and Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Still, seeing it here makes my head spin a bit.
For those of you playing along at home, Casablanca would have swept the same Katie awards whether I had placed it in 1942 or 1943. But in case you're wondering, if I had put it in 1943, the winners in 1942 would have been Cat People (picture/drama), Alan Ladd (actor/drama), Greer Garson (actress/drama), Orson Welles (director/drama), Van Heflin (supporting actor) and To Be Or Not To Be (screenplay).
The other awards would, of course, have stayed the same.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Casablanca (prod. Hal B. Wallis)
nominees: Cat People (prod. Val Lewton); In Which We Serve (prod. Noel Coward); The Magnificent Ambersons (prod. Orson Welles); Now, Voyager (prod. Hal B. Wallis); Random Harvest (prod. Sidney Franklin)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: To Be Or Not To Be (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
nominees: Bambi (prod. Walt Disney); The Palm Beach Story (prod. Buddy G. DeSylva and Paul Jones); Woman of the Year (prod. Joseph L. Mankiewicz); Yankee Doodle Dandy (prod. Hal B. Wallis and Jack B. Warner)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Chichi ariki (There Was a Father) (prod. Shôchiku Film)
nominees: Aniki Bóbó (prod. António Lopes Ribeiro); L’Assassin Habite… au 21 (The Murderer Lives at Number 21) (prod. Alfred Greven)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca)
nominees: Ronald Colman (Random Harvest); Gary Cooper (The Pride Of The Yankees); Joseph Cotten (The Magnificent Ambersons); Alan Ladd (This Gun For Hire and The Glass Key)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: James Cagney (Yankee Doodle Dandy)
nominees: Jack Benny (To Be Or Not To Be); Joel McCrea (The Palm Beach Story); Spencer Tracy (Woman Of The Year); Monty Woolley (The Man Who Came To Dinner)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca)
nominees: Bette Davis (Now, Voyager); Greer Garson (Mrs. Miniver and Random Harvest); Simone Simon (Cat People)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Carole Lombard (To Be Or Not To Be)
nominees: Jean Arthur (The Talk of the Town); Claudette Colbert (The Palm Beach Story); Katharine Hepburn (Woman Of The Year); Veronica Lake (I Married A Witch); Ginger Rogers (The Major And The Minor)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Michael Curtiz (Casablanca)
nominees: Mervyn LeRoy (Random Harvest); Irving Rapper (Now, Voyager); Jacques Tourneur (Cat People); Orson Welles (The Magnificent Ambersons); William Wyler (Mrs. Miniver)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Ernst Lubitsch (To Be Or Not To Be)
nominees: Michael Curtiz (Yankee Doodle Dandy); George Stevens (Woman of the Year and The Talk of the Town); Preston Sturges (The Palm Beach Story); Billy Wilder (The Major and the Minor)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Claude Rains (Casablanca)
nominees: Van Heflin (Johnny Eager); Walter Huston (Yankee Doodle Dandy); Ronald Reagan (Kings Row); Sig Ruman (To Be Or Not To Be); S.Z. Sakall (Casablanca); Henry Travers (Mrs. Miniver); Dooley Wilson (Casablanca); Conrad Veidt (Casablanca)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Agnes Moorehead (The Magnificent Ambersons)
nominees: Mary Astor (The Palm Beach Story); Gladys Cooper (Now, Voyager); Susan Peters (Random Harvest); Mary Wickes (The Man Who Came To Dinner)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, from the play "Everybody Comes To Rick's" by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison (Casablanca)
nominees: Noel Coward (In Which We Serve); Orson Welles, from the novel by Booth Tarkington (The Magnificent Ambersons); Edwin Justus Mayer, story by Melchior Lengyel (To Be Or Not To Be)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Nicholas Musuraca (Cat People) (Cinematography); Albert S. D'Agostino; Al Fields and Darrell Silvera (The Magnificent Ambersons) (Art Direction-Set Decoration)
I'm out of the office for a few days, so as Halloween approaches, I'm reposting some essays about classic horror films. I'll catch up on comments early next week.
For the subject of Universal's next "monster" movie, producer Carl Laemmle, Jr., settled on the H.G. Wells novel The Invisible Man, and following the released of a mystery starring Paul Lucas called The Kiss Before The Mirror, director James Whale began production in June 1933.
The Invisible Man is the story of Dr. Jack Griffin who discovers a process that will render a man invisible, a secret he initially plans to sell to the highest bidder until he realizes to his horror that there's no way to reverse the process. Its screenplay proved to be a tough nut to crack—no less a writer than Preston Sturges tried and failed, as did Garrett Fort and John Balderson, who had successfully adapted Dracula. Ultimately it was playwright R.C. Sherriff, whose Journey's End had provided Whale's break, who figured it out. He focused on the practical problems of invisibility—for example, Griffin must hide for an hour after he eats while his meal digests. In addition, Sherriff and Whale agreed that since the film's audience would believe that "only a lunatic would want to make himself invisible anyway," the story would emphasize Griffin's descent into madness.
"We'll begin with a reign of terror," Griffin says as his megalomania takes hold, "a few murders here and there, murders of great men, murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction."
To play the invisible man, Whale had initially planned on Boris Karloff, who had been such a sensation in Frankenstein, but when he proved to be unavailable, Whale opted for Claude Rains, a veteran of the stage and an instructor at the Royal Academy where he counted both Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud among his students. Although he was reluctant to begin his movie career with a horror film, Rains proved to be an inspired choice. Since the audience can't see him until the final scene, Griffin's entire character must be conveyed through his voice—and Rains had one of the richest, most melodious voices in movie history.
The other key to the success of The Invisible Man was, of course, its special effects, and those concocted by John P. Fulton and Arthur Edeson are among the best of its era. To create the illusion of invisibility, Fulton clothed Rains from head to toe in black velvet and filmed him before a black background. The footage was then optically printed over the scenes filmed on the set. In addition, to cover imperfections, Edeson retouched over four thousand frames of film by hand.
The result is startlingly effective, especially when Rains unwinds the bandages that conceal his face to reveal first empty eye sockets, then holes where his mouth and nose should be, and finally, nothing at all.
But as convincing as the special effects were, the movie would have collapsed had Whale not known how to move the story along, pull memorable performances from his actors—Una O'Connor as a terrified bar maid is unforgettable—and ratchet up the tension as the film races toward its conclusion.
The film was the critical and commercial hit Laemmle had hoped for. The New York Times named it one of the year's ten best and Whale himself won the special recognition at the Venice Film Festival for his direction. Even more important to Universal, the box office appeal of Whale's films helped keep the studio afloat during the darkest days of the Depression.
In 2008, the Library of Congress added The Invisible Man to the National Film Registry.
Despite reaching such heights, though, glory proved to be fleeting for Whale. After 1935's Bride of Frankenstein—the sequel he had resisted making for as long as he could—he never again directed a horror picture, and although credited with directing Show Boat, he was actually fired before production ended, having uncharacteristically gone over budget. Afterwards, he directed a string of commercially unsuccessful pictures and was pretty much out of movies by 1941.
In 1957, after a series of strokes, Whale committed suicide by drowning himself in his swimming pool. One of the few openly-gay directors working in Hollywood, Whale's life was the subject of the 1998 film Gods and Monsters, starring Ian McKellen.
It was a close vote, but in the end King Kong edged out The Invisible Man as your choice for best picture (drama) of 1932-33.
Which is very convenient considering I've already written 2000 words about King Kong, with more on the way.
"We're million- aires, boys!" crowed Carl Denham, the leader of the expe- dition that dis- covered Kong and signed the forty-foot gorilla to a lucrative three-picture deal. "I'll share it with all of you. Why, in a few months, it'll be up in lights on Broadway: Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!"
Of the twenty-four votes cast, Kong picked up eight to Invisible's seven, with I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang, Red Dust and The Bitter Tea Of General Yen tallying four, three and two votes, respectively.
Asked what would have happened if the vote had gone the other way, Denham said, "Well, now you know why I brought along those cases of gas bombs."
Claude Rains, star of The Invisible Man, was devastated by the loss. "We'll begin with a reign of terror," he said, "a few murders here and there, murders of great men, murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction. An invisible man can rule the world!" he shouted. "No one will see him come, no one will see him go!"
Rains wasn't the only one unhappy with the vote's outcome. "After this, I'm afraid I'll be typecast as a forty-foot gorilla," said Kong, as he nursed a martini at the end of the bar. "There aren't that many parts for a forty-foot gorilla."
The all Marx Brothers all the time blog-a-thon comes to an end. Here are the nominees for best actor of 1932-33 (drama).
Nils Asther (The Bitter Tea Of General Yen)
Charles Laughton (The Old Dark House, Island Of Lost Souls and The Private Life Of Henry VIII)
Paul Muni (I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang)
Claude Rains (The Invisible Man)
Paul Robeson (The Emperor Jones)
Note: I've had trouble figuring out whether Charles Laughton belongs in drama or comedy—I had initially nominated him in the category of drama for his performance in The Private Life Of Henry VIII, but as Erik Beck of the Boston Becks pointed out, it's really a comedic performance (though it does, I think, have dramatic elements). I tried him out for a while in comedy, but then I took a second look at two more of his performances from 1932-33—The Old Dark House and Island Of Lost Souls—decided they were also nomination worthy, added them to list of credits and found that overall, he had tilted back into the category of drama.
Of course, the other solution would be to nominate him in both categories, in comedy for Henry VIII and in drama for the two horror classics, but I prefer to limit actors to one or the other in any given year. Leaves more slots for other actors and lets me spread the wealth. You're free to approach the question differently.
Although he directed all sorts of movies, including the musical Show Boat, the name James Whale will always be linked with horror. During an age characterized by great horror films, Whale directed four of the greatest—Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man and Bride Of Frankenstein. If he didn't invent the genre, Whale redefined it so thoroughly that it's difficult, even now, to make a horror film without dipping into his bag of tricks.
Born in Worcestershire, England, in 1889, the son of a factory worker and a nurse, Whale discovered an interest in the theater while putting on productions for his fellow prisoners of war in a German POW camp during World War I. After the war, he worked as an actor and director in London, with his big break coming in 1928 when he directed Journey's End, R.C. Sherriff's anti-war play about life in the trenches. Starring Colin Clive, later the star of Frankenstein, the play ran on London's West End for two years and brought Whale to the attention of Hollywood. There, he directed a film version of Journey's End as well as an adaptation of Robert E. Sherwood's Waterloo Bridge, the latter starring Mae Clarke.
Seeking to cash in on the box office phenomenon of Dracula, the classic thriller about a vampire turned loose on Victorian England starring Bela Lugosi, Whale directed one of the most famous and influential movies ever made, a screen adaptation of Mary Shelley's horror novel Frankenstein. The story of a young scientist who soon regrets cracking the secret of creation, Frankenstein contains more iconic images than any other movie of the period and it made an international star of Boris Karloff, who was both menacing and sympathetic as the monster.
Although he began his career as a theater director, Whale took full advantage of the opportunities film presented, using any number of techniques to distance Frankenstein from its literary and stage antecedents. In addition to the memorable use of sound effects, Whale abandoned the so-called proscenium arch—that is, the now long-forgotten habit of photographing a set from only one position, as if the camera had bought a ticket in the third row of a Broadway theater, that makes early sound movies feel so stagy—moving the camera around the room to get interesting angles, indeed, actually moving the camera, rather than leaving it bolted to the floor, such as for the long tracking shot of the father carrying his drowned daughter through the village square.
Frankenstein was 1931's box office champ, grossing $5 million (with an additional $7 million overseas) on a budget of $291,000.
Producer Carl Laemmle, Jr., wanted a sequel to Frankenstein, but Whale resisted. Ironically, despite helping to define the genre, he didn't much care for horror, and would have preferred to direct more movies like Waterloo Bridge—dramas and romances with literary antecedents. Business, though, was business, and after directing The Impatient Maiden, a little-seen drama starring Mae Clark and Lew Ayres, Whale turned back to the horror genre with an adaptation of J.B. Priestley's novel, Benighted, retitled The Old Dark House for the U.S. market.
The plot is a staple of the horror genre—strangers forced to spend the night in a scary house—although the threat, in this case, is not supernatural but based in the psychotic behaviors of the people who live there. Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart play a quarrelsome couple stranded by a storm in the mountains of Wales with Melvyn Douglas, their good-natured traveling companion. The three seek shelter in a nearby farmhouse belonging to Horace and Rebecca Femm, an elderly brother-sister couple played by Ernest Thesinger (later Dr. Pretorius in Bride Of Frankenstein) and a particularly belligerent Eva Moore.
"What are they doing here? What do they want? No beds! No beds!"
Upstairs is their crazy father and an even crazier brother.
Playing the Femm's mute butler is Boris Karloff, so heavily made up the producers added a note at the beginning of the movie to say that, yes, he was the same Karloff who had portrayed the monster in Frankenstein. Soon added to the mix are two more stranded travelers, Charles Laughton in his American film debut, and his mistress, played by Lilian Bond.
The fun lies in trying to decide who's merely eccentric and who's a homicidal maniac. Whale and cinematographer Arthur Edeson (All Quiet On The Western Front, Casablanca) do a wonderful job of creating a sense of foreboding with shadows and Expressionistic camera angles. Whale was also one of the first directors to grasp the possibilities of the sound medium, and rain, wind, creaking boards, screams and howls, contribute to the mood.
TV Guide also praised Whale's ability to "emphasize an actor's entrances and exits, or to delay them as needed (as in the case of Saul). His striking flair for composition and editing works an audience over thoroughly, and he adds to the film's impact by deliberately playing with the buildup of suspense."
And Nick Pinkerton in The Village Voice noted that Whale—who was born in a working class slum and invented for himself a cool, aristocratic bearing—was particularly sensitive to class distinctions, an awareness that shows in Laughton's character, "a knighted bigmouth industrialist, still smarting from slights before his social rise."
Despite a generally warm critical reception, The Old Dark House was a box office failure in the United States (it set records in Whale's native England). The film was thought lost for decades until it's rediscovery in the 1970s and its reputation has grown over the last few years until it is now regarded as one of Whale's best.
For the subject of Universal's next "monster" movie, producer Carl Laemmle, Jr., settled on the H.G. Wells novel The Invisible Man, and following the released of a mystery starring Paul Lucas called The Kiss Before The Mirror, Whale began production in June 1933.
The Invisible Man is the story of Dr. Jack Griffin who discovers a process that will render a man invisible, a secret he initially plans to sell to the highest bidder until he realizes to his horror that there's no way to reverse the process. Its screenplay proved to be a tough nut to crack—no less a writer than Preston Sturges tried and failed, as did Garrett Fort and John Balderson, who had successfully adapted Dracula. Ultimately it was playwright R.C. Sherriff, whose Journey's End had provided Whale's break, who figured it out. He focused on the practical problems of invisibility—for example, Griffin must hide for an hour after he eats while his meal digests. In addition, Sherriff and Whale agreed that since the film's audience would believe that "only a lunatic would want to make himself invisible anyway," the story would emphasize Griffin's descent into madness.
"We'll begin with a reign of terror," Griffin says as his megalomania takes hold, "a few murders here and there, murders of great men, murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction."
To play the invisible man, Whale had initially planned on Boris Karloff, who had been such a sensation in Frankenstein, but when he proved to be unavailable, Whale opted for Claude Rains, a veteran of the stage and an instructor at the Royal Academy where he counted both Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud among his students. Although he was reluctant to begin his movie career with a horror film, Rains proved to be an inspired choice. Since the audience can't see him until the final scene, Griffin's entire character must be conveyed through his voice—and Rains had one of the richest, most melodious voices in movie history.
The other key to the success of The Invisible Man was, of course, its special effects, and those concocted by John P. Fulton and Arthur Edeson are among the best of its era. To create the illusion of invisibility, Fulton clothed Rains from head to toe in black velvet and filmed him before a black background. The footage was then optically printed over the scenes filmed on the set. In addition, to cover imperfections, Edeson retouched over four thousand frames of film by hand.
The result is startlingly effective, especially when Rains unwinds the bandages that conceal his face to reveal first empty eye sockets, then holes where his mouth and nose should be, and finally, nothing at all.
But as convincing as the special effects were, the movie would have collapsed had Whale not known how to move the story along, pull memorable performances from his actors—Una O'Connor as a terrified bar maid is unforgettable—and ratchet up the tension as the film races toward its conclusion.
The film was the critical and commercial hit Laemmle had hoped for. The New York Times named it one of the year's ten best and Whale himself won the special recognition at the Venice Film Festival for his direction. Even more important to Universal, the box office appeal of Whale's films helped keep the studio afloat during the darkest days of the Depression.
In 2008, the Library of Congress added The Invisible Man to the National Film Registry.
Despite reaching such heights, though, glory proved to be fleeting for Whale. After 1935's Bride of Frankenstein—the sequel he had resisted making for as long as he could—he never again directed a horror picture, and although credited with directing Show Boat, he was actually fired before production ended, having uncharacteristically gone over budget. Afterwards, he directed a string of commercially unsuccessful pictures and was pretty much out of movies by 1941.
In 1957, after a series of strokes, Whale committed suicide by drowning himself in his swimming pool. One of the few openly-gay directors working in Hollywood, Whale's life was the subject of the 1998 film Gods and Monsters, starring Ian McKellen.
If Jimmy Stewart had died in the war while flying bomber missions over Germany, I think we would have said some nice things about him, but I don't think it would have occurred to anyone to carve his face onto acting's Mount Rushmore. After the war, Stewart either had within him an undercurrent of rage and melancholy that he fought to control or during the war he perfectly observed rage and melancholy and could draw on that understanding like the truest method actor. Either way, after World War II, I think he was just about the finest actor around.
There are two scenes in It's A Wonderful Life you should especially watch for, bits with no dialogue, just concentrating on Stewart's face. The first is when's he's leaving to go to college and the guy says "but they'll vote with Potter otherwise." The second is a bit later when his brother comes home on the train with Ruth Dakin (Ruth Dakin Bailey!). In both, you see realization, then despair, then the conscious rearranging of his face so that no one else will see—the whole set-up of the movie in a pair of five second bits. Damn fine acting, in my layman's opinion.
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