i enjoyed the film, but i did a quick bit of arithmetic and i noticed that Steward was 50 and Novak 25 when they made this film. in other words he was twice her age with an age difference of 25 years between them.
Maybe things were a little different then but nowadays such an age difference would surely be frowned upon?
I noticed this too. But not necessarily shocking.
Jack Lemmon was 33. Just thought I'd say it! =]
Jack Lemmon: America's Sweetheart
"It's Magic Time"
I'm not shocked by it; look at Audrey Hepburn and all the older men she co-starred with in the 50's and 60's!
"I promise you, before I die I'll surely come to your doorstep"
<<Maybe things were a little different then but nowadays such an age difference would surely be frowned upon? >>
Not really, look at the Richard Gere/Jennifer Lopez film Shall We Dance. Twenty years difference between the two. Or Autumn in New York with Gere and Winona Rider? Or Venus with Peter O'Toole and Jodie Whittaker? Fifty years between them. Or Harrison Ford and Ann Heche in Six Days Seven Nights, 26 years? Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment, 39 years. The list goes on and on.
This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.
Peter O'Toole in Venus played an old man; the girl was his caretaker. There was no romance between them in the strict sense, though he flirted with her.
shareah, but Kim Novak was a very mature 25.
Truthfully I never noticed it but I'm quite aware of it when it occurs nowadays.
And the reverse also happened: Jane Wyman was perceptibly 11 years older than Rock Hudson in those Douglas Sirk melodramas.
Wow, I like the reverse idea! How about a little more of that for us women?
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I saw this for the first time this afternoon and didn't find the age difference shocking at all -- because in the film, you never know how old either of the characters are. James Stewart did have gray hair, but looked good for his age, and with Kim she might have been quite young or not. It didn't much matter -- and they had marvelous chemistry together. =)
shareI think when someone is a BIG STAR they get to play opposite anyone no matter
what the ages are.
Marge
Regarding mature leading men being romantically paired with much younger actresses on-screen, there's the Groucho Marx exemption and there's the Cary Grant exemption. Groucho could get away with chasing young babes because it was all part of the joke; the audience didn't take it seriously. As for Cary Grant, he could get away with it because . . . because he was Cary f---ing Grant!
All the universe . . . or nothingness. Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?
Not at all. People fall in love with whom they are going to fall in love with, and chemistry can occur between people you might least expect. They used to call things like this a May-December relationship. Well, now, more like May-October, in this case. ;)
I'm all right, I'm alllll right!
Stewart looked like a pedophile.
shareNo no, I think you have him mixed up with the late but not lamented Michael Jackson.
shareWhy? Just because he was accused by money grubbers? There isn't a single proof that MJ was a pedophile just because people found him weird due to his lupus and vitiligo.
What an evil thing accuse someone of, perhaps your projecting?
Come on, are you joking? A pedophile? A pedophile wants a 5 or 6 year old, not a 25 year old woman.
Personally I thought Jimmy Stewart got better looking as he got into middle-age, so the age difference doesn't bother me. Same thing with Cary Grant, as others have remarked, that man was beautiful no matter what his age.
Kim Novak does NOT look like a prepubescent child.
This will be the high point of my day; it's all downhill from here.
I've always thought Stewart looked 40ish in the movie, and Novak looked at least 30ish. I've always thought the character of Nicky was a couple of years younger than his sister, say 28 or so. Just my take on the *apparent* ages of the characters.
shareThe thing that always gets me about these types of romances: If, say, Morgan Freeman played the love interest of Gabrielle Union, no one in the movie bats an eye. Yet, if Pam Grier was the lover of Don Glover, the movie would be about "why is she with someone that young?" or "Dang, she's old enough to be his mama!". I think it's because a lot of Hollywood executives have much younger wives (or mistresses), so the older man/younger woman romances onscreen didn't seem unusual to them.
s to the left of me.
s to the right.
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you!
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I didn't think of her as that young, and the character seemed ageless, and as if she had an "old soul" - like she'd been around a while.
shareShe's a witch. She can stay that young as long as she wants. Just cast a spell.
On TCM it was said Stewart was upset about the age difference NOT Novak. With one minor exception, TCM told us, he ever after played married men or loners not the romantic lead with young women.
Yeah, some critics had started to complain about the age difference between Stewart and some of his leading ladies, and Stewart agreed. So Stewart planned to make this his last "May-December" romantic role. However, he did do one more after this, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," with Vera Miles (21 years his junior at the time).
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Yeah, I guess Robert Osborne on TCM was wrong. He missed that one, although it's not one of Stewart's more memorable films.
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Now you are saying you know more about the classic era than Osborne? Not even close, kiddo, not even close! Are you the arrogant little brat you pretend to be?
shareOsborne is often wrong and a lot of what he says is written for him.
share