The accordion that launched a thousand screen legends was quiet now, and the truth it concealed was more scandalous than the final act of any film he ever graced. For decades, the image of Jimmy Stewart was one of unyielding decency, the stammering, idealistic everyman who championed virtue both on and off the screen, but in 1960, the death of Margaret Sullavan shattered the glass around that pristine facade, revealing a treacherous triangle and a life of deception that challenged everything the public thought they knew about the reluctant American icon.
The testament to that truth came from a source no one could ignore. Brooke Hayward, the daughter of Margaret Sullavan, published a memoir that laid bare the deepest secret of the notoriety that had defined her mother’s life. While the world had been shown a friendship between Sullavan, Stewart, and Henry Fonda, the pages of that biography revealed a hidden, explosive affair.
The revelation was clinical in its finality; while Sullavan was married to Fonda, she and Stewart, the man who once stood wringing his hands in her living room, had consumed a secret, year-long passion that entangled their emotions in a way none had ever suspected, painting the gentle soul of cinema as a man capable of immense, silent betrayal.
To understand the breaking point, one must start at the beginning of a legacy built on an unexpected geological shift of devotion. Before the majestic sweep of his later cinematic life, a young Jim Stewart was a reclusive child, drifting from his father’s hardware store but proving socially redundant in the bustling world of the 1920s. Those lonely hours, however, became the genesis of a hidden gift.
When a customer, lacking funds, traded his accordion for goods at the Stewart family’s hardware store, the local barber gave young Jim the keys to a future of expression.
That music, a deep and abiding love of the instrument, would become a fixture throughout his life, a heartbeat against the clamor of his destiny. Despite the dreams of flying that kept his head in the clouds, his father’s plan was to put him into Princeton and then, inevitably, back into the family business. He went to the IV league school in 1928, but in a shocking decision, he did not return to the business.
Instead of continuing his education, he followed a different call, the theater.
It was in the Greenwich Village theater world that the furniture of the most epic Hollywood drama was arranged. Here he met two people who would change the trajectory of his life and soul forever: the talented and fiery Henry Fonda, and the lovely, magnetic, and absolutely radiant Margaret Sullavan. The trio became inseparable; the three became the closest of friends, a unity of souls navigating the grit of a struggling new world.
But unbeknownst to the overwhelming population watching his shy eyes, the friendship was the fertile ground for a relentless storm.
Jimmy, the loyal observer, began to silently carry feelings for the lovely Margaret. Eventually, he was able to summon all his courage to lay his heart on the line. His proposition to her was famously awkward, slow, and shy, the archetypal Stewart maneuver, but it was genuine.
The answer was the strongest sentence a friend can give. Sullivan, the delicate force of nature, rejected him, and her rejection was of a particular, slow-burning disaster. Her adoration for Stewart would never cease, creating a dynamic where rejection and mentorship hinged on the love she could never quite give him.
That heartbreak would be the caustic fuel that masterfully propelled him into a place where he was never really happy.
After Jimmy had been put down as a lover, his best friend Henry Fonda stepped in. Fonda and Sullavan were married in 1931, leaving Stewart to stew in his own unrequited love. Yet Sullavan’s adoration for Stuart never ceased, a fragile thread that, broken as it was, would become the key to his success.
By 1936, Stuart had landed at MGM, but his films were failing to ignite. It was Sullavan who insisted he be screen-tested for her project, Next Time We Love, trusting his talent with a fervor that shocked the studio system.
Despite his lack of confidence on set, Margaret coached him, carving away the rough edges of his bumbling mannerisms that would one day become it, his signature. But the emotional proximity had a cost. His obsession only deepened when she married again, and he moved into a colonial home near her.
The disturbing proximity was enough to raise eyebrows, but it was the backdrop of his life as America’s most nebulously romantic bachelor.
His romantic life, a selenicism of the public image, was one of a voracious Heartbreaker. Introduced by Henry Fonda to Ginger Rogers, the pair enjoyed a whirlwind affair. Here, behind the scenes, on the set of Vivacious Lady, the passionate romance was, perhaps, more intimate.
Rogers took his virginity, a staggering piece of lore to the public who thought of him purely as a sweet idealist. But while Rogers broke ground, his longtime connection with Sullavan pulled him back.
During the making of The Shopworn Angel, the span of “the love triangle” mimicked his own life, and the actor Walter Pidgeon noted that Jimmy’s love for Margaret was so obvious that it was a painful performance to witness. Since he was friend-zoned, he oscillated between whoever was at hand. He had a concurrent, fiery six-week affair with Norma Shearer, and a relationship with Pious and upstanding Loretta Young, whom he would inevitably break the heart of, embodying the main pattern.
Then came the ever-dangerous Marlene Dietrich, a married woman. Their affair during Destry Rides Again was another stunning scandal, but it came crashing down when she told him she was pregnant. He made it chillingly clear he wanted an abortion.
She went through with it, but the relationship did not survive; he cut ties, brutally pulverizing her heart.
The clean-cut guy America loved was a conundrum behind the scenes, a philandering, demanding presence. Yet his career began to soar. In 1940, The Philadelphia Story was a triumph.
The movie brought him his greatest accolade, an Academy Award, beating out his old friend Fonda. But the night was tinged with a bizarre lack of self-belief; he felt his win was somehow fraudulent, an apology from the Academy for the Mr. Smith loss the year before.
Then, the stage doors of the Great War. World War II was a juggernaut that redefined everything. Jimmy was the first major American star to sign up; bulky it up and, thanks to his dream of aviation, he was going to go into combat, a stark juxtaposition to the studio’s desire to keep him eternally comfortable.
He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps, rising from private to colonel. During heavy service, he flew.
The war nearly destroyed him. His own combat experience included 20 missions, unrelenting stress, no sleep, and the massacre of his squadron in a single raid, killing 130 of his men in one fell swoop. He was never the same.
When he returned, he was emaciated and shattered, a commanding edge to him that hadn’t been there before. He questioned his ability to act and almost quit entirely, but he didn’t. Frank Capra, his friend, reached for him.
According to Stewart himself, it was Capra who brought him to It’s a Wonderful Life. Conceived as a paean to a determined spirit, the actor balked when he first saw the script. He asked what kind of film he wanted to make, and the answer was heartbreaking—he wanted a Western, perhaps something where he could be a hero with simple action.
He was scandalized to learn that the character’s arc involved the eventual consideration of suicide, the deepest human despair. The entire shoot was reportedly a nerve-wracking disaster. He questioned his own abilities, he’d rage at the pressure.
The result was a masterpiece, but a complete commercial bust upon release, not covering its cost. He became the favorite for the film, a classic that went beyond mere redemption. But his work with Hitchcock alienated him.
His roles in Rear Window and Vertigo were readable through the lens of an aging man, but Vertigo failed, and Hitchcock famously blamed the film’s failure on Stewart’s age — an ironic slight since Stewart, speculating on his own experience, realized the icy betrayal when Hitchcock cast a far more youthful Grant, who was 6 years his senior, in North by Northwest.
However, on the home front, a new stability existed. His romance with Gloria Hatrick McLean started with a disastrous drunk at a Christmas party, but after a second rendezvous, his break of pure, steadfast devotion. He married her in 1949, ending his playboy era.
They adopted two sons, then twins arrived in 1951. But that life wasn’t a substitute; he was a wonderful father.
The 1960 loss of Margaret Sullavan was a devastating blow. Suffering from hearing loss and a breakdown, she died by an accidental overdose. His wife Gloria observed that her passing completely broke him.
But the shadows weren’t done. His son, Ronald, was killed in the Vietnam Conflict in 1969, a grief fresh on the heels of the previous loss. His devotion to gloria remained his only stable thing until her death in 1994, and the broken actor died three years later.
But was the life truly wonderful? The memoir of Brooke Hayward, the daughter of his great love, Margaret Sullivan, exposed the twilight of dirty secrets. It documented a scandalous fact; during the time she was married to Henry Fonda, she and Jimmy, the man who had once propositioned her, wound up having a secret, illicit affair that lasted a year.
It wasn’t just a gentle, unrequited love story; it was a sexual triangle established with the backdrop of close friendship and betrayals. His dark secret breaks the fantasy of the respectable, innocent Jimmy. It makes his portrait a complex one of a man whose life was a mixture of his on-screen sagas, but the real pain, the man in love with a woman he couldn’t own, the war hero who looked too old, the patriot who lost his son, and the man who took warmth from a love he destroyed.
Jimmy Stewart died on July 2, 1997. Rather than just a national treasure, he leaves behind a historical marker of a great, troubled soul. Although President Clinton mourned a great actor, he also mourned the loss of a gentler, better time.
Yet, the despairing whisper revealed by Brooke Hayward tells a different story: his life never was quite wonderful, for Jimmy Stewart was swallowed by Hollywood’s own greatest rule—now and then, the story of his life was the biggest fabrication of all.
