This Day in Film History (Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ Acclaimed as Masterpiece Upon Re-Release)

Oct. 28, 1983—A quarter century after it underperformed at the box office and three years after the death of Alfred Hitchcock, the director’s moody psychological thriller Vertigo went back out in limited release in the U.S., giving film fans and critics a chance to reevaluate and better appreciate a work that Time Magazine had infamously termed "another Hitchcock-and-bull story."

Vertigo was one of five “missing Hitchcocks” withdrawn by the director from circulation for more than a decade. 

A London Times article in November 1983 offered several reasons for its disappearing act, including that Hitchcock increased the films’ value through their relative scarcity; that his hard-nosed agent had demanded steep prices for their re-release; and that the director and Paramount had faced lawsuits over the years that, in one case, complicated matters further.

Rear Window, re-released a short time before Vertigo’s, at the 1983 New York Film Festival, had been an unexpected financial success, perhaps benefiting in part from nostalgia over the death the year before of its beloved, glamorous co-star, Grace Kelly. Rope (1948) and The Trouble With Harry (1955) represented offbeat departures from Hitchcock’s higher-budget, studio fare. The fifth movie, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), was a color, big-budget remake of a project Hitchcock first handled before his move to the U.S.

But Vertigo may have benefited the most from the re-release. 

It had only broken even back in 1958, but over the next decade had become something of a cult classic, courtesy of French critics and American film school students about to make waves in the U.S. motion picture industry (perhaps most notably Brian DePalma, whose 1976 Obsession was—take your pick—an homage or a shameless imitation of “The Master of Suspense.”)

In a blog post from earlier this year commemorating the film’s 65^th anniversary, I mentioned that Hitchcock attributed the movie’s disappointing box-office returns to the aging appearance of the 50-year-old James Stewart, who was not an age-appropriate co-star for the 25-year-old Kim Novak.

But it’s doubtful that even a more youthful-looking Cary Grant (whom Hitch would soon cast in the considerably more successful North by Northwest) could have made the story of the acrophobic detective Scottie Ferguson and the “haunted” Madeleine Elster credible. 

So little of this film is realistic at all, including several plot developments. The audience had seen like if anything remotely like this before, including its implied necrophilia and downbeat ending.

Twenty-five years later, American filmgoers had seen far more surreal matter onscreen, as well as far more potentially risqué subject matter. 

Oddy enough, some Hitchcock fans would have been better prepared because of the publication of Donald Spoto’s biography of the director earlier that year, The Dark Side of Genius, to detect a case of art preceding life: in both instances, a lonely middle-aged man (Stewart in Vertigo, Hitchcock offscreen in the making of Marnie)  becoming dangerously obsessed with a cool blonde (on film, Novak; offscreen, Tippi Hedren fending Hitchcock in Marnie).

For a decade, Vertigo even managed to upstage Citizen Kane as #1 on the film magazine Sight and Sound’s list of the greatest films of all time. For ordinary film fans like me, long after its initial mystification has faded, it bears re-watching continually to see and ponder how Hitchcock continued to disturb us all the way to its astonishing conclusion.

A Wonderful Life Recalled: The Jimmy Stewart Museum, Indiana, PA

Upteen broadcasts of It’s a Wonderful Life this past month have surely heightened interest (not that it was ever lagging) in its star, Jimmy Stewart. Scott Eyman’s dual bio of the actor and his longtime friend Henry Fonda, Hank and Jim, will go part of the way toward satisfying that appetite. 

But physical artifacts linger longer in the mind. So, if you want a visceral sense of what made this embodiment of American values tick, you should, if you have the chance, travel to the town of Indiana, PA, the actor’s birthplace, where his life and career are celebrated in the Jimmy Stewart Museum.

In keeping with the star’s own wishes, the building in his honor is understated and intended to boost the fortunes of his town (about an hour’s drive east of Pittsburgh). But casual fans of the actor will find a vast assortment of eye-opening material in this space (converted from the third floor of the borough’s public library, and adjacent to the original site of the Philadelphia Street hardware store his father owned and operated for years). And even I, a more intense devotee, wanted to linger longer when I visited the museum in October.

There was a whole gallery here devoted to It’s a Wonderful Life. But the material I found most of interest related to his own family growing up. In an almost tangible way, Stewart was able to invest so much in George Bailey because he related so much to him.

Watching It’s a Wonderful Life over the holidays (again!), I was struck more than previously by the relationship between George and his father Peter. There was the quiet but palpable paternal pride in an intelligent, ambitious son; the transmission of the values of hard work and looking out for others; the hope/expectation that the son would eventually take over the business; and the son’s fear that the daily grind of eking out a living in a small town that had daily sapped his father’s vitality would happen to him, too, if he didn’t escape. 

Like George Bailey, young Jimmy Stewart saw his original dream—building something big—frustrated. But unlike George, Jimmy did manage to get away from his hometown. Shortly after graduation from Princeton University, believing opportunities for advancing as an architect in the Great Depression would be limited, he decided to pursue an interest that had increasingly captivated his interest in college: acting. Stints in summer stock and Broadway led eventually to his journey out to Hollywood and, eventually, stardom. 

Jimmy’s son Michael noted that both his parents carried to Hollywood a “small-town Christian Presbyterian ethic that nobody owes you a living. If you have bad breaks, get up and move on.” Jimmy had seen how his own father, Alexander Stewart, had taken one blow after another—first a fire, then the Depression—and managed to keep his business afloat. He maintained the same work ethic.

Hard work was not the only belief instilled in the Stewart family. So was patriotism, best exemplified by service to one’s country. His ancestors served in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Civil War, and during WWII Stewart became the most prominent Hollywood professional to serve in combat missions.

All of that translated to the screen, particularly in three films with his favorite director, Frank Capra (You Can’t Take It With You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It’s a Wonderful Life), in which Stewart carved out a remarkably enduring image as the embodiment of American decency and integrity. 

A timeline guides visitors chronologically through Stewart’s life, a 50-seat theater runs films about him, and a gift show includes must-have items for fans. 

Even so, I found most interesting the museum’s artifacts (many donated by the actor or his family), which testify both to Stewart’s near-endless variations on his Everyman image, as well as his film peers’ respect for his versatility, professionalism and kindness.

Among the items on display here are:

*Several of Stewart’s Army Air Corps and Strategic Air Command Reserve uniforms, including a military tuxedo;

*A gray, sweat-stained cowboy hat worn in seven of his westerns that he considered a good-luck charm;

*Scripts for several films, including his Oscar-nominated turn as the gentle tippler Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey;

*A room setting with original items from the office he kept in Hollywood;

*A replica of the booth where he usually dined with his wife in the famous Beverly Hills celebrity eatery Chasen’s; and,

*A fiberglass statue of Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

A sign in the museum prominently features the advice Stewart gave each of his daughters as they went away to college: “Always remember: be nice to people.” Words simple, unpretentious and true, taken to heart forever in the town where he grew up.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Shop Around the Corner,’ With Feuding Clerks at Xmas)

Alfred Kralik [played by James Stewart]: “There might be a lot we don't know about each other. You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.”

Klara Novak (Miss Novak) [played by Margaret Sullavan]: “Well, I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I'd find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter... which doesn't work.”— The Shop Around the Corner (1940), screenplay by Samson Raphaelson and an uncredited Ben Hecht, based on a play by Miklos Laszlo, directed by Ernst Lubitsch

You might know The Shop Around the Corner for its adaptations—musicals onscreen (In the Good Old Summertime, with Judy Garland and Van Johnson) and onstage (She Loves Me), as well as a snarky, not-as-fun Nora Ephron film (You’ve Got Mail). But the original is worth seeing for its own wonderful sake.

The plot is simple enough: Two clerks at a Budapest gift shop can barely stand one another, not realizing that they're falling in love through the mail as each other's anonymous pen pal.

If you are getting tired of watching It’s a Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time, this film—also starring James Stewart—is a wonderful holiday replacement. It’s contains a terrific screenplay, subtle direction by the incomparable Lubitsch, great humor and poignancy in equal doses, plenty of opportunities for a terrific ensemble cast (including “The Wizard of Oz” himself, Frank Morgan) to shine, and one of the great MGM pairs, Stewart and Margaret Sullavan.

Stewart appeared in this classic the same year as the movie that won him his only competitive Oscar, The Philadelphia Story. In many ways, his chief clerk here is a trickier role than his flashier award-winning one as cynical reporter Macaulay Connor. Kralik, a loyal, longstanding employee, is honest to a fault—and, at least on the surface, to Miss Novak, all too prosaic. Stewart’s pained restraint is remarkable as he responds to her insult above as a blend “of poetry and meanness.”

As for Sullavan—I considered her all-too-short career (and all-too-tragic life) in this prior post. Stewart had many other female co-stars throughout his long career—some more beautiful, some with more fire—but none as unique as Sullavan. She may never have been better onscreen as Miss Novak—vivacious, intelligent, romantic, and, in her need for a job on the eve of the holidays, more than a bit desperate. Without her, Kralik might be fated to live his life as an all-too-stolid bachelor, but Miss Novak may be in even more need of the stability he provides.

Central to Sullavan’s marvelous performance is what silent film actress-turned-film commentator Louise Brooks pointed to: “That wonderful voice of hers. Strange, fey, mysterious — like a voice singing in the snow."

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Harvey,’ on Smart vs. Pleasant)

“Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be‘—she always called me Elwood—‘In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.”—Elwood P. Dowd (played by James Stewart), in Harvey (1950), adapted by Mary Chase, Oscar Brodney and an uncredited Myles Connolly from Chase’s 1944 play, directed by Henry Koster

Less than two weeks until I see Jim Parsons in the Roundabout Theatre’s revival of Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy. Maybe he won’t measure up to James Stewart in his iconic role, but I bet he’ll have fun trying.

Too bad there’s no way we can send copies of today’s “Quote of the Day” to members of Congress and heads of multinational corporations…

This Day in Film History (‘Wonderful Life,’ American ‘Christmas Carol,’ Opens)

December 20, 1946—Arguably Frank Capra’s greatest tribute to the common man he celebrated his entire career, It’s a Wonderful Life, opened in New York City. Though the movie was nominated for five Oscars (including for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, for star James Stewart), it won none and languished at the box office. It would take another three decades of multiple showings on television before America recognized it as a classic.

You can examine this film from dozens of different perspectives, and they would all repay the scrutiny. It’s natural for many to focus especially on Stewart, in what might have been his quintessential Everyman role, or Donna Reed, still only in the early stages of her fine career.

But Stewart’s George Bailey needs a foil, a polar opposite who can test him and push him to the extremities of despair from which he needs to be rescued on Christmas Eve. That is supplied, in a masterful performance, by Lionel Barrymore (pictured left, with Stewart).

I have written a prior post about this movie as “An American Christmas Carol.” Its single greatest connection to the Charles Dickens classic was through Barrymore, who had made something of a holiday tradition in the 1930s with his radio broadcasts as Ebenezer Scrooge.

The actor was, in fact, ready to put his stamp on the role in the first American film version of it in 1938. His longtime studio, M-G-M, had cast him in the role when fate intervened. The death of Jean Harlow required reshooting of a few scenes of her last film, Saratoga. When Barrymore came back to that set for what was basically a mop-up operation, he slipped over a sound cable and broke his hip. For the rest of his life, he was confined to a wheelchair. (The role of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol went to the actor Barrymore recommended, Reginald Owen, who made something of a career highlight of it.)

By the time he signed up later that year as Grandpa Vanderkof in Capra’s adaptation of You Can’t Take It With You, Barrymore was in disabling pain. Arthritis in his “hands, elbows, feet and knees…[left him] stiff and knobby as old oak roots,” the director recalled in his memoir, The Name Above the Title. Only hourly shots got him through production.

When he heard about Capra’s first postwar production for his new venture, Liberty Films, Barrymore committed to the project without even reading the script, convincing MGM to loan him out for the project. In substance, if not in name, Mr. Potter was Scrooge, the film role that got away from Barrymore. You can practically see him tear into the part with relish.

More so than his accomplished siblings, John and Ethel, Lionel was not merely comfortable but accomplished with film--every aspect of the medium. He had been acting in short films as early as 1911, and had directed and composed as well as acted for the cinema.

In his most memorable outburst against the miserly small-town banker, Bailey lashes out against Potter as a “frustrated old man.” Barrymore had his own frustrations in life--not merely his terrible physical pain, but the sense of disappointment that he could not make a living out of what he saw as his real vocation: painting.

One of the things he learned about art--use all the colors in one’s palette--was something he employed in It’s a Wonderful Life. Barrymore's wheelchair becomes a prop--all the characters come to Potter, like some blighted sun god--and the most notable point when he moves it--right after discovering that George’s Uncle Billy has absentmindedly left him with the Bailey Savings and Loan’s cash--is the precise point when the plot propels forward in earnest. And then there’s that raspy voice--which the actor used most often beforehand to suggest an irascible but essentially kindly figure, but here to evoke villainy.

The ironic aspect of this, of course, was that, according to Capra, Barrymore was “the humblest, most cooperative actor I’ve ever known.” His performance stands out even amid the great cast of supporting players (Thomas Mitchell, Beulah Bondi, H.B. Warner, Gloria Grahame, Ward Bond, Frank Faylen, and Sheldon Leonard) that the director assembled for his Yuletide classic.

'This Day in Film History (Porter’s 'Under My Skin,' 'Easy to Love' Debut)

November 27, 1936—Given a three-year contract by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Cole Porter proceeded to prove he was worth every penny of his $3,000-a-week salary with his first original Hollywood score, Born to Dance. The musical yielded two standards, “Easy to Love” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”--the latter being, in my opinion, what Frank Sinatra memorably called “Cole Porter’s shining hour.”

Born to Dance is known to pop music and film aficionados for a nifty bit of trivia: It’s the only one of James Stewart’s nearly 100 films, TV programs and short in which he sang. (The great star joked in That’s Entertainment that his tune, “Easy to Love,” somehow became a hit despite his rendition, but he was being unduly modest: Porter himself thought Stewart had a perfectly fine voice and, when given the opportunity to have someone else in the film sing this song, affirmed that the 27-year-old MGM contract player would do just fine.)

More crucially, Stewart was at the receiving end of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” as female lead Virginia Bruce sang it to him in an attempt to convince his character of the sincerity of her love. For those who think the classic Hollywood musical should exploit the medium’s great asset—motion—and that dance is indispensable in this regard, the film also offers an instrumental reprise of the tune, with husband-and-wife team Georges and Jalna (seen in this YouTube scene) attempting to catch some of the magic emitted by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

In his breezy recap of the Great American Songbook, The House That George Built, Wilfred Sheed broke down how the gay songwriter was able to translate his own experiences into tunes that a broader heterosexual public could experience: “He had the formula down cold for alchemizing lust into romance, and for selling the customer on a lifetime of bliss in exchange for a few trifling minutes of hoop-di-do; but mainly because, like the greatest seducers, he meant what he was saying. More than anyone, he craved the happy ending he was selling, and was even more heartbroken when he didn’t get it. For the time being, anyway.”

Porter was part of a massive exodus of Broadway tunesmiths who, when the Great Depression left one musical after another dying on the vine, decamped for Hollywood. For all the lovely weather and cushy salaries they enjoyed, however, it wasn’t easy for composers in Tinseltown. They were at the beck and call of producers who could torpedo their best work for the most idiotic of reasons. (“Over the Rainbow,” written for an even greater MGM musical than Born to Dance, The Wizard of Oz, almost suffered this indignity before wiser heads prevailed.) They might have been kings of Broadway, but in Hollywood they represented just another set of hired hands, even having to submit to auditioning their songs for producers--a prospect filling Porter, for one, with deep unease.

Richard Whiting had made the long trek out West early in the decade; the Gershwin brothers did so, like Porter, in 1936 (“They Can’t Take That Away From Me” was a product of their collaboration there); and Johnny Mercer would follow a year later. Among the few musical craftsmen to bridle at their time in the sun were Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, who, despite creating two of their greatest hits in Hollywood (“Isn’t It Romantic?” and “Blue Moon”), could not wait to get back to Broadway by mid-decade.

In a prior post on Dinah Washington, I discussed why her cover version of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” was especially memorable. But, in truth, the song has proven adaptable to many different musicians, many of whom have managed to leave their own distinctive interpretations of it. Frank Sinatra, in the 1956 hit that thrust this work forever into the Great American Songbook, lent a quality of confidence overriding all obstacles; Katharine McPhee, in a performance with Chris Botti, endowed it with flirtatiousness; and Diane Krall slowed it down to emphasize the pain and vulnerability of the lyrics (“This affair never will go so well”).

On the Web site Jazz Standards, musicologist K. J. McElrath cites several reasons for its great adaptability by jazz musicians in particular, including the number of intermediate steps that allow singers to traverse its wide Bb to the F range, and the lack of “color tones” that allow musicians to, in effect, fill in the gaps.

This Day in Film History (Birth of Margaret Sullavan, Golden-Age Star Gone “Haywire“)

May 16, 1911—Margaret Sullavan, who glittered briefly as one of golden-age Hollywood’s finest actresses, then became one of the victims in a family as cursed as any in a Greek tragedy, was born on this date in Norfolk, Va.—or so she would claim.

(I wrote “claimed” in the above partly because several Internet references I came across gave her year of birth as 1909. Since a gentleman never asks a lady her age, we’ll take the actress’ word for it.)

There’s a good chance many reading this won’t recall Sullavan’s name—or, if they do, might confuse it with Maureen O’Sullivan (yes, Jane to Tarzan, not to mention Mia Farrow’s mom), who not only possessed a surname that sounded like hers but also was almost exactly the same age (born a day later); labored at the same studio, MGM, in the 1930s as an ingénue; and left in the 1940s to devote herself to her family. Talk about doppelgangers!

If you can distinguish between the two ladies, here’s what you’re likely to know about Margaret:
1) She starred in The Shop Around the Corner (1940), a sparkling Ernst Lubitsch comedy whose plot was copied by, among other films, the Judy Garland vehicle In the Good Old Summertime, the Broadway musical She Loves Me, and Nora Ephron’s too-clever-by-half Internet-age version, You’ve Got Mail.

2) Offscreen, her seemingly blessed family life—marriage to magnetic theatrical agent and producer Leland Hayward, three bright, attractive kids—collapsed due to her divorce, the children’s mounting depression, and her own suicide—a story recounted in eldest daughter Brooke Heyward’s 1977 bestseller, Haywire.

It’s a measure of the greatness of the Hollywood studio system that, though she worked in it for less than a decade, Sullivan had 16 films to her credit. But it’s a measure of the triviality of the same system that the actress, despairing of “this bizarre place,” refused to sign a long-term contract and left the studio as soon as she could. We do not, then, have the kind of vast, multi-decade filmography left by her MGM rival for roles and men, Katharine Hepburn.

I first became aware of Sullavan through a series held in the 1980s at New York’s late, lamented film revival house, the Regency: “Screen Teams.” I wasn’t surprised at other teams in this series—Tracy and Hepburn, Powell and Loy—but I was to find the immortal Jimmy Stewart paired with Sullavan, whom I hadn’t heard of up to that point.

As it happened, Stewart and Sullavan might have made for the most natural team of them all. After all, the two of them, along with Henry Fonda (Stewart’s great friend and Sullavan’s first husband), started out as part of the repertory University Players in Falmouth, Mass.

Sullavan pushed for Stewart to be her co-star after he joined MGM. In all, they made four films together. As for Fonda: though his marriage to Sullavan foundered after only two months, the two stayed on good terms thereafter, and their children became friends.

Children…this might be as good a point as any to deal with the tragedies that finally overwhelmed Sullavan and her family.

The first thing people would want to know is: how could it all go so wrong? How could children--and their parents--who seemed to have everything--a father’s personal plane that he flew everywhere, nannies, Jimmy Stewart for a babysitter, parties with Hollywood’s finest among the invited guests, with the children receiving invitations to pose for the cover of Life Magazine (Brooke) or join the famous Williamstown Theater Festival (younger sister Bridget)--have seen it all fall down?

It started with the parents’ tendencies--a wandering eye (Leland’s) that led to infidelity and divorce; a high-strung temperament (Margaret’s) that had already made most of her directors regard her as a pill and a half, and that only worsened in time. As Margaret advanced into middle age, her hearing difficulties radically worsened. Now that she had pretty much abandoned Hollywood for Broadway (she originated the role of “Sabrina” that went to Audrey Hepburn on the screen), this latter problem was disastrous--she would miss cues.

It all came to an end for Sullavan on New Year’s Day 1960, when she died of a drug overdose. It was eventually ruled accidental, but the coroner’s report was widely understood as a heavily hedged act of mercy to a heartbroken family.

Nor was that the end of the Heywards' problems. Bridget and Bill, each in a mental-health institution at the time of their mother’s death, would also kill themselves: Bridget, 21 years old, only eight months later, and Bill, in 2008, at age 66, with a shot to the heart.

Following Bridget‘s funeral, Brooke Heyward poured out her anguish to family friend Tom Mankiewicz: "I'm the daughter of a father who's been married five times. Mother killed herself. My sister killed herself. My brother has been in a mental institution. I'm 23 and divorced with two kids."

Mankiewicz, looking down from the 10th-floor apartment where the reception was held, laid out her choice in the starkest possible terms: "Brooke, either you've got to open the window right now and jump out, or say, 'I'm going to live,' because you're right, it's the worst family history that anybody ever had. Either you jump out the window or you live."

Hayward’s memoir, a #1 bestseller on its initial appearance, was released again this year, having gained additional poignancy because of the recent death of her brother.

As overwhelmingly sad as the offscreen life of her mother was, I can’t end this post with that tragedy. Had Margaret Sullavan lived the happiest of lives, she still would have been worth writing about because of her shining, if all too briefly glimpsed, talent.

Her fans (notably including Stephen Sondheim), though not quite a cult, note that she had only one indisputable classic, The Shop Around the Corner. But, as Orson Welles (who would certainly know about such things) once noted, “Sometimes one is all you need.” I would argue, though, that there is another unfairly neglected film of hers: Three Comrades (1938), the only film of hers that garnered her an Oscar nomination (also the only screenwriting credit for F. Scott Fitzgerald).

Sullavan was attractive enough to have become a silent-film actress, but the talkies were ready- made for her. It’s not so much her petite frame that everyone always remarked about her, but that voice--husky but supple. Critic Dan Callahan describes its range, with remarkable precision, in a film-by-film assessment in the online film journal Bright Lights:

“When you first hear it, it sounds limited and ephemeral, like Billie Holiday's singing voice. But Lady Day could do just about anything with her voice, and Sullavan's vocal range is limitless too, not hamstrung by particularity, but freed to roam wherever she chooses. She could bring it down low for a big booming growl; she could lift it up high, higher, oh higher!; or she could keep it in a middle register and break it into a thousand tingling laryngitis pieces.”

Shorter--but, like Sullavan herself, more magical--was the description of the same voice provided by the silent film actress turned shrewd observer of the place where she once worked, Louise Brooks: “That wonderful voice of hers. Strange, fey, mysterious — like a voice singing in the snow."

Quote of the Day (Frank Capra, on Gary Cooper)

“Every line in his face spelled honesty. So innate was his integrity he could be cast in phony parts, but never look phony himself.

“Tall, gaunt as Lincoln, cast in the frontier mold of Daniel Boone, Sam Houston, Kit Carson, this silent Montana cowpuncher embodied the true-blue virtues that won the West: durability, honesty, and native intelligence.”—Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (1971)
TV viewers of the April 1961 Academy Awards might have been surprised to see James Stewart take long strides to the stage to pick up an honorary Oscar being awarded that night to his friend Gary Cooper. That surprise probably turned to mass confusion, even consternation, as Stewart became emotional as he spoke of Coop.

Before long, front pages of newspapers around the world provided the answer to the mystery: the prostate and colon cancer that doctors thought they had successfully treated had metastized in the veteran star. The following month--on this day 50 years ago--the embodiment of the slow, laconic, but sure American Everyman had died.

In choosing an image to accompany this post, I thought at first of choosing a photo of the young Cooper, one that would make it understandable why he became one of Hollywood’s romantic leads, a 6-ft.-3-inch man that the always dependably salty Carole Lombard christened “Studs.”

But the more I considered it, there really was only one image for me. Much as I liked them, it wasn’t from one of the two films in which director Capra so shrewdly maximized Cooper’s considerable appeal, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Meet Joe Doe. It wasn’t even from one of the fine romantic comedies he made with Howard Hawks (Ball of Fire) or Billy Wilder (Love in the Afternoon).

No, it was from the genre in which Cooper (whose real first and middle names were Frank James, ironically echoing that of the brother of one of the West’s most notorious outlaws) first made his mark in the talkies, in The Virginian (1929): the western. In fact, it was from one of the truly great westerns of them all: High Noon (1952).

Some people have claimed that the intensity written all over Cooper’s face, in a performance that won him his second Academy Award, resulted not from his assimilation of the mounting tension his character, Marshal Will Kane, faces, but from the actor’s private medical struggle of the time (he was having an ulcer). Don’t you believe them.

There was a reason why Fred Zinnemann cast him: like every other director who ever worked with him, he knew that Cooper could convey volumes without saying a word. And so it was here, in a magnificent performance that returned the actor to the top of Hollywood’s A list, after a dry spell at the start of the 1950s.

By the time of the scene in this still, Cooper is showing that the task facing Kane--to stop a dangerous outlaw and his men before they reach town on the noon train in 90 minutes (reflecting the running time of the film)--has unexpectedly transformed from elemental to monumental. One by one, every able-bodied man in town has come up with an excuse not to help him form a posse to stop the outlaws.

Now, facing them alone, with even his Quaker bride-to-be indicating her disapproval, he’s being called on to summon not only every bit of experience and strength he ever learned in law enforcement, but also reserves within that he’s never known. And all of this still might not be enough. He’s weary and worried, but, as the Capra quote indicates, he is a Cooper stuff, with a common-man's greatness that Americans take to heart.

In other words, the burden on him might be huge and grossly unfair, but he will shoulder it. Like the fictional code created by his good friend, novelist Ernest Hemingway, he embodies the very definition of courage as "grace under pressure."

Cooper’s performance is what makes High Noon one of the most psychologically taut, and deeply satisfying, examples of the western genre created by Hollywood almost as soon as the frontier itself closed down. By film's end, Will Kane has become as toweringly mythic as the heroes to whom Capra likened Coop (yes, he does kill the villains), yet still, recognizably, a man (he flings down his badge in disgust with the town he was willing to save, but who, he now knows, would never do likewise for him).