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Last July, on a jet from Los Angeles to New York, I was seated by a pair of charming young women from surburban St. Louis. In the neighborhood of twelve years old, they were both at that delightful point between childhood and adolescence when the world's possibilities seem to be opening up before you.
I attempted to break the ice with the young women by jokingly offering to trade the baby carrots that came with our in-flight meals for their brownies. "No way," they exclaimed, not sure what to make of a soul so confused as to even suggest such a swap. But my silly offer did indeed allow us to begin chatting.
One of the two girls was on a family vacation, and she'd been allowed to bring her close friend along. They'd spent ten days in Malibu and had made it into Los Angeles for only a day or so.
"So what did you see in L.A.?" I asked. They had, they said, done lots of shopping. Oh, and they went on a tour of movie stars' homes!
I'd made such a tour myself, I told them, though mine was self-guided. I asked whose homes they'd seen, and they reeled off a long list of contemporary names -- Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Julia Roberts, among them.
"Whose homes did you see?" they asked in return. "Oh, mostly older stars' homes," I admitted, feeling slightly guilty at letting them down. "You probably wouldn't know most of them."
"I did get to see Jimmy Stewart's house," I added, thinking that they would surely recognize Stewart's name, if not those of Spencer Tracy, Nat "King" Cole, Mary Pickford, and the dozens of other stars whose houses I'd driven by.
I was mistaken, of course. Stewart's name rang not the tiniest of bells with them. "Have you never seen It's a Wonderful Life," I asked, thinking that surely they had, that they simply didn't know it was Stewart who had starred in it.
But no, they had not seen that traditional holiday classic.
Suddenly feeling beyond ancient, I changed the subject. We talked about their lives in Missouri, about what they wanted to be when they grew up, and others among the topics that tend to arise when the ground between the young and not-so-young is not particularly common.
Eventually, the flight attendant came around, asking if we wished to buy headsets for the in-flight movie. "What's showing?" I asked. "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," came the response.
"Oh my god!" my young companions squealed. "That is so good. You've got to watch it!"
"You've seen it?" "Yes, and it's sooo good. We're going to watch it again."
So I watched the romantic comedy with my two new friends. I enjoyed it less than they did, but it was fun to watch it with them.
A few minutes after the movie ended, I scrounged in my carry-on for a piece of paper and a pen. "I have a movie to recommend to you -- The Shop Around the Corner," I said to the girls, scribbling the title on the paper scrap. "It's a romantic comedy, like the one we just watched. Now, I must warn you, it'll seem a little old-fashioned at first -- it's in black-and-white, even -- but if you give it a chance, I think you'll like it. And, best of all, it stars Jimmy Stewart, so if you see it, you'll know who he is from now on."
Before they deplaned in St. Louis, my new friends promised they would watch for the movie on TV or maybe even ask their moms to rent it for them. Of course, it's likely they were just humoring me, but I like to think that they kept their word. And I hope they found something to enjoy in what is one of my favorite pictures.
I thought they might like The Shop Around the Corner in particular because of the pen pal romance carried on between Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. In this era of text messaging and email, of IMs and chatrooms, it occurred to me that these girls might get a kick out of seeing how strangers wooed one another in days gone by. I hope I was right.
I was reminded of my encounter with my young friends by the occasion of Sullavan's 93rd birthday (IMDB.com says she was born on May 16th, actually, but Turner Classic Movies is offering a birthday tribute tonight). She's something of an enigmatic figure, is Sullavan, but she had a memorable, if brief, career.
She made only 17 pictures, a relatively paltry output for the golden years of the Hollywood studios, but then it's said that Hollywood was never where her heart was. She was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and studied acting from childhood. She'd reached Broadway by the age of 20 and at the age of 22 starred in her first film, Only Yesterday (1933).
After three years at Universal, Sullavan really blossomed at MGM, where she made six pictures. She won the New York Film Critics' Best Actress award and her lone Oscar nomination for Three Comrades (1938), in which she played Robert Taylor's ailing wife. She was delightful opposite Stewart in The Shopworn Angel (1938), and of course, in the aforementioned The Shop Around the Corner, which is rightly considered a career highlight for Stewart, Sullavan, and director Ernst Lubitsch. In all, Sullavan and Stewart made four pictures together.
It's said that Sullavan never really took to film acting, that she always preferred the stage, and indeed, when she was on the outs with the various studio heads, as she reportedly often was, she would return to Broadway where she felt more at home. She was known for being difficult in those days, and it's possible she was, of course, but even today, women are often held to different standards in the workplace, so one can only imagine how it must have been in the thirties and forties. (By contrast, Humphrey Bogart, for example, certainly made life difficult for his share of studio heads in those days -- he kept a store of funds he called his "Fuck You" money, so that he could tell studio heads just where to get off and not be unduly harmed by the suspensions that usually followed -- and yet it's rare one hears him described as "difficult.")
Sullavan left Hollyood for good (almost) in 1943, returning only once, in 1950, to make another picture, No Sad Songs for Me. In the interim, she returned to the Broadway stage and met with great acclaim and success.
Through the fifties, Sullavan was forced to fight a losing battle against deafness -- and despondency. She died, on New Year's Day of 1960, of a barbituate overdose. Her death was ruled a suicide.
Sullavan was married four times. She was wed to Henry Fonda for only a year and to William Wyler for less than 16 months. Her marriage to financier Leland Hayward lasted eleven years (they had three children together), and she had been with Kenneth Wagg ten years when she died.
She had a lovely voice, did Sullavan, and there's a certain sweet sadness that comes through in her work. Perhaps it carried over from her life. She could play innocence, as she did in the lovely The Good Fairy (1935; directed by William Wyler and written by the great Preston Sturges) and a certain prideful toughness (there's certainly no pushing around her haughty, if heartbroken, store clerk in The Shop Around the Corner), but through it all shines a melancholy that makes Sullavan's work especially memorable.
Tonight's five-film tribute on Turner Classic Movies, which begins at 8 p.m. Eastern, features, in order, Three Comrades, Cry Havoc (1943), The Shopworn Angel, The Shining Hour (1938), and The Mortal Storm (1940). I was disappointed to see that Shop and The Good Fairy, my favorites among Sullavan's films, were not included in tonight's line-up, but I'm looking forward to catching the four of these five pictures I've not yet seen.
Whether Sullavan's name rings a bell with you or this is the first you've ever heard of her, I recommend you crank up the Tivo or VCR tonight so that you can see these five films. You've got a treat in store. (If, like me, you're already a fan, you don't need convincing.)
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