One item brought me back to my early days in Los Angeles. I've written about the move, one of two risks I ever took in my life, thus far. It was November, 1981 and I had just moved into my own apartment. I had borrowed some furniture from my uncle's garage stash, bought a two hundred dollar bed, a small color television and some Pier One table and chairs for dining. I alsao adopted the first of my many California cats.
But I had a few days of doubt and loneliness. As the Christmas season approached, movies for the season were being run and I watched, for probably the 50th time, "It's a Wonderful Life", with Jimmy Stewart, Ward Bond, Beulah Bondi, and all those great actors of days gone by. I had always loved Jimmy Stewart and felt there was a depth in the roles he had after World War II. We have come to know that as a pilot in the war, he had come away likely with a case of PTSD. "It's a Wonderful Life" was his first film after the war, released in 1946, and gone is the innocent young man replaced with a man who is solid, good, but itchy for a life other than the one he has in the role of George Bailey. And so responsible, kind a man, that he gives up his dreams to stay in his native community of Bedford Falls. When he is accused of a shortfall in the books he did not cause, he wonders about the life he has led, and the unfairness of someone who did good being targeted by evil, and he considers killing himself, but is intercepted by an angel named Clarence who shows him what the lives of others would have been if George had never existed.
That holiday season in 1981 when I was a 27 year old transplant to Los Angeles, the actor's performance touched me deeply. I knew James Stewart lived somewhere on Rodeo Drive, and I figured that I could send a letter telling him how this movie, this moment, made a particular difference and it would get there. The mail service knew where he lived. He probably got lots of mail over the years there. I hoped it would get to him, and it would make a difference that yet another someone of a later generation still appreciated the movie and his work. I mailed my letter and forgot about it.
A few months later when I picked up my mail, there was a little envelope containing a simple "Thank you" card. I couldn't imagine why anyone would send me a "Thank You". I hadn't done anything for anyone. I hardly knew anyone in Los Angeles. When I opened it I was touched. Jimmy Stewart, I would hear later, answered all his fan mail, personally, even at this stage of his life, when he was over 70 years old.
For many years, the note was in a frame along with a photo of Mr. Stewart, hung in my kitchen. You can tell. It's a little yellowed at the bottom. Then it found its way back into my memory files, the hard copy ones. Every once in a while I'd come upon it and feel bad that it could end up in a trash bin somewhere when someone cleans out the paper I have collected over the years. It is so small. It could easily be overlooked.
Anyway, I am thinking maybe I ought to go to an auction house with it. So I went on line to see if it could be authenticated other than by provenance, meaning that I sent a letter and I got this back. I thought the handwriting was Mr. Stewart's as somehow or another I recognized it. But in doing the internet research I found other notes he wrote to other people, friends and fans, and as to the fans, it seems he often used much the same language as what he wrote to me, specifically calling the person's correspondence, a "kind and thoughtful letter." Mine had a little extra, "I want you to know." which I of course take as something more personal.
Before I got this note, I had seen Mr. Stewart in person, once at the Johnny Carson show, an episode that turns up often on favorite Carson show reels, and twice, at the Jimmy Stewart Relay Marathon that he did yearly for St. John's Hospital, where he did hosting and award giving duties, once along with actor Robert Wagner.
This is my only autograph. I rarely write to celebrities. The only other was to Peter O'Toole after I saw him in Pygmalion in New York. I admired him for his acting prowess and his passion. I admired Mr. Stewart for his grounded goodness and his quiet strong presence. I do wish I had had the chance to speak to him and get his take on his own life. But I have always been impressed that he took the time tor write to a lonely young woman just starting out on her new life in an unfamiliar place. It only made me appreciate him more, as a human being, not merely an actor.
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