Live Life Team
Throughout a career spanning forty years, Jimmy Stewart received no less than five Oscar nominations. He took his only statue in 1940 for his lead performance in “The Philadelphia Story”. Considering his vast body of work, it’s anyone’s guess why the Academy chose to honour him for this film as opposed to his others.
Stewart’s first nomination came one year earlier in Frank Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”. He showed terrific comedic chops in his earlier films and shined in Westerns like “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”. His subsequent nominations would be for his roles in classics like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Anatomy of a Murder”. However, sadly he would only receive one more statue, an Honorary Award in 1985.
While audiences loved him best as the hero, Alfred Hitchcock gave Stewart the chance to show off his range and abilities as an actor. In “Rope”, he plays an existential teacher trapped by his own students in a moral dilemma brought about by his own teachings. Many critics agree Stewart’s best performance was as Scottie Ferguson in “Vertigo”, a former cop who’s been duped by a con woman. Stewart’s performance has been ranked the #1 non-Oscar nominated performance of all time, beating out Anthony Perkins’s Norman Bates (another Hitchcock).
Few actors have made such a wide range of films and viewers familiar with classics like his many Capra and Hitchcock films will wonder why the Academy chose this film as Stewart’s only Oscar. It’s anyone’s guess.
