Apart from the fact that Stewart at almost 49 was nearly twice the age Lindbergh had been at the time of his flight (25) -- and, even worse, in the flashbacks had to portray Lindbergh at even younger ages -- there was another problem: Stewart's acting.
Stewart hero-worshipped Lindbergh and as a fellow flyer desperately wanted the part. Originally he was rejected because he was far too old for it. John Kerr was offered the role but turned it down because he hated Lindbergh's pro-Nazi, pro-Fascist war record and his racist and anti-Semitic views and refused to be a party to glorifying the aviator. As an arch-conservative, Stewart had few problems with Lindbergh's political views and the film in any case had nothing to do with that part of Lindbergh's life. Because Stewart was big box office and make-up tests demonstrated they could make him look younger, the producers went ahead and signed Stewart. When the film flopped, everybody concerned was stunned -- they had been sure they had a box-office success on their hands.
The main problems were, first, that make-up aside, audiences knew Stewart was too old to be playing a 20-something, and came across as ridiculous. But the other problem was that Stewart did absolutely nothing to lose himself in the role. He played Charles Lindbergh as Jimmy Stewart. You never get the sense you're seeing Lindbergh; you're always watching Jimmy-Stewart-with-dyed-hair aw-shucksing his way through the movie. Lindbergh in real life didn't act or sound like James Stewart (although he did have a very high-pitched voice), and about the only thing the two men broadly had in common was a tall, lanky frame.
Kerr, or another age-appropriate actor (Don Dubbins was also considered for the role), as a less familiar face, could have gotten into the part and been better accepted as Lindbergh. Whether they'd have turned in a good performance is another question, but at least they'd have been a better fit for it, and that was half the battle.
Stewart was an excellent actor, but he failed utterly to persuasively portray Charles Lindbergh in TSOSL. Maybe he wanted it too much, maybe he was intimidated by playing such a famous man, maybe he thought being Jimmy Stewart in a plane would be enough. It wasn't. His age was just another problem that made the film unconvincing to audiences. But I suspect that even had he made this movie in, say, 1937, he wouldn't have done it well. For whatever reasons he just couldn't or wouldn't get into this character as he usually did with others. Stewart himself may have sensed something was amiss -- I gather he created a lot of problems on the set, which was uncharacteristic of him.
Still and all, for some reason I like this movie. Must be Billy Wilder's influence.
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lewis-51
10 years ago
This is an old post, and there's probably no point responding, but I'll try anyway.
I agree with you that Stewart is too old, and that he portrays Lindbergh in too much of an "ah shucks" mold. Lindbergh wasn't like that. Nonetheless, the movie works.
Your statements about Charles Lindbergh, the man, are very inaccurate and misleading. He was not a Nazi sympathizer. He certainly was an isolationist before the War; that was the majority opinion in the US before December 1941. Many hundreds of other famous Americans also spoke out to try keep the US out of the war. Lindbergh was an honest and straight forward man who spoke his mind when people wanted him to. He was never in any way mean-spirited, though many of those who wanted to get the US into the war seemed to be.
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hobnob53
10 years ago
Your statements about Lindbergh are not true, lewis-51. Lindbergh as a Nazi sympathizer before and well into the war. His anti-Semitism and generally racist views were quite in line with Nazi ideology. He accepted medals from the Nazi government which he never renounced or returned. He was preparing to buy a house in Germany in 1938 when Kristallnacht made it impolitic for him to do so. Even then his chief complaint was that the Germans had erred in going to excess over "the Jewish problem", not that they were wrong to begin with. Lindbergh didn't support the extermination of the Jews, and after the war said he was sickened by the concentration camps. But he repeatedly blamed them for stirring up trouble and supported their "resettlement" in other lands, such as Madagascar. By his own words he admired Nazi ideology and accomplishments and supported pre-war German territorial claims in Europe.
He was much more than an isolationist. He was a defeatist who warned that America "could not win this war for Britain" and that democracy was finished in that country. In a speech for America First in Des Moines in September 1941 he denounced "Jewish influence" for leading the United States into war, which caused several members of that organization to resign in protest. Even after the US entered the war, Lindbergh told a dinner audience that it was too bad that the "white race" was divided in this war instead of being untied against "the barbarian" races. Not mean-spirited? He certainly was. Honest and straightforward? Indeed he was, as in the example above...which is why your claim that he wasn't sympathetic to Nazism is so patently false.
This is not to say he was a traitor in the sense that he supported Germany over the US when war finally came between the two countries. Before that he was, as FDR described him, a "copperhead" -- an old Civil War term for a Northerner who sympathized with the Southern secessionists and didn't think the Union could win. Fortunately he was wrong, but to the end of his life he retained his racial and other views that found voice in the Nazis' ideology, and never spoke out against Hitler or his regime.
You seem more critical of those who favored US entry into the war to defeat the Nazis, the Fascist regime of Italy and the militarists running Japan than to pro-Fascist individuals like Lindbergh. Why is that?
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movies789
10 years ago
You seem to despise Lindbergh with such a ferocity that you utterly ignore his history as an instructor pilot, test pilot, consultant and civilian combat pilot in the South Pacific during WWII. He had a distinguished record against the Japanese in that theater of the War.
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