Movie Stars’ Obits Reveal Our Illusions

Whenever a Hollywood film legend dies, an extraordinary thing happens.

America mourns. People across the land shake their heads sadly and share fond memories as if the departed were an old friend. We didn’t know Jimmy Stewart, but we like to think we did. We could always count on him dropping by around Christmas to remind us that an average, decent businessman could have a wonderful life. He’d show up other days, too. Heck of a nice guy.

It’s as though our willing suspension of disbelief extends beyond the screen and beyond the grave. These stars are so exalted that epic-length obituaries seem inadequate. We want more, and so writers oblige with meditative essays that explore how the great thespian helped define “the American soul.”

Thus, Stewart’s death, so soon after Robert Mitchum’s, inevitably inspired ruminations on how the two men represented the sunny and shadowy sides of American life. Thus, Time magazine published a Garry Wills essay cautioning of the hidden dangers of the mythic American innocence that Stewart seemed to embody. And thus, I’m now jumping on this bandwagon of verbiage.

These commentaries may ring true or false. What interests me more than the quality is the quantity. The fact that so much intellectual energy is devoted to a movie actor’s life work says something about our society and our times.

Think about it: What other public figures get such star treatment after they’re gone? Only presidents--and they may not be remembered so fondly. In the post-mortem media derby, screen legends and presidents are the winners. Other prominent artists, business titans, athletic heroes and superstar scientists typically finish in the place and show positions. Vice presidents, Supreme Court justices and senators seldom finish in the money.

Not that this bothers me. Not too much, anyway. Why, I’ve indulged in a little gratuitous philosophical thumb-sucking myself in lengthy obits of Gene Kelly and Audrey Hepburn. Writing up their lives was an honor. It was also an honor to write Carl Anderson’s obit. Carl who?, you ask. Caltech professor. Won a Nobel Prize for physics. His obit was much shorter and buried inside the paper. Supporting actors on lame sitcoms get better news play.

But it’s the Hollywood heavyweights who really make us misty and philosophical. Consider how Tom Shales of the Washington Post began his tribute to Henry Fonda after Fonda’s death in August 1982:

“Henry Fonda stood up to bullies. He didn’t usually shoot them, like John Wayne did, but he stood up to them. He confronted them, he talked them down, he shamed them into submission. There never has been a shortage of bullies for the shaming. . . .

“He came to epitomize the proud, tough, lean individualist who sticks to his principles so firmly they become part of his skin. Henry Fonda grew to symbolize some of the aspects of the American character that we prize most. . . .

“As Tom Joad, the oppressed Everyman of John Steinbeck’s ‘The Grapes of Wrath,’ Fonda promised he would be around forever, and in roles like that, he will be. . . . “

Shales properly saluted Steinbeck, the Nobel laureate whose novels and stories inspired many movies. On a hunch I asked Ron the Librarian to dig Steinbeck’s 1968 obituary out of The Times’ microfiche morgue. It’s probably fair to say that Steinbeck, in his art, was at least the equal of Fonda and Stewart in theirs. Steinbeck’s obit was less than one-third the length of theirs. And don’t forget all those photos published alongside the movie star obits.

Those images, on film and stored in our brains, make the screen personas seem so genuine. In his Time essay, Wills suggests that the images and roles we associate with Stewart promoted America’s belief in its own innocence and goodness--a delusion with dark consequences:

“When Stewart goes to Washington as Mr. Smith, a band of amused journalists ask him what he knows about governmental procedure or the passing of bills. His answer: ‘I don’t pretend to know.’ And that too is a guarantee of virtue.”

The film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Wills argues, was “too American, too comfortably nested in our native illusions.”

These illusions, Wills suggests, are what got us into Vietnam, thinking we could succeed where “the French, despite many years of knowledge about Indochinese culture, language and religion, had failed. . . . Like Jefferson Smith, we ‘did not pretend to know.’ But we brought clean hands. We were not like other nations. We free, we do not colonize. We give, we do not take. We are the original sinless. But the clean hands were those of Lieut. William Calley.”

His point is not that Jimmy Stewart led us down a primrose path to the My Lai massacre, but that America’s belief in its own goodness, fostered by our movies, did its part.

During the war, America’s supposed righteousness was celebrated by “The Green Berets,” starring John Wayne. Vietnam vet Oliver Stone would later provide a different viewpoint.

In his book, “John Wayne’s America,” Wills offered his meditations on the Duke and his work. His books have concerned Nixon, the Kennedys, Lincoln and Jefferson. Dead presidents and dead movie stars.

The lives of Stewart and Wayne, on screen and off, could be a case study of how Hollywood shapes our beliefs. My tastes ran more to Stewart and Fonda, but as recently as 1995, a Harris Poll of Americans judged John Wayne to be the No. 1 movie star.

These days, both Duke-bashing and Duke-defending seem beside the point. Is it John Wayne’s fault that people wanted to see him as a great American hero because of the way he played cowboys and soldiers? Wayne wasn’t a war hero, he just played one in the movies. But he still has an airport named after him.

Ah, but Jimmy Stewart really did leave Hollywood early during World War II to risk his life as a bomber pilot. We think of him as George Bailey, who was judged 4-F and missed the war. Stewart actually had more in common with George’s flyboy brother, Harry, the war hero.

If you’ve never seen “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” starring both Stewart and Wayne, rent it tonight. Great flick. I won’t give away the plot, but there’s a certain irony concerning our two heroes.

The story concerns the nature of myth and reality. The best line is spoken neither by Stewart’s character nor Wayne’s, but a newspaper editor.

“When the legend becomes fact,” he says, “print the legend.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St. , Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.