James Stewart

James Stewart was born a hundred years ago, died in 1997.
Mark Stein wrote this about him as an actor: "He played heroes, but they tended to be nervous heroes, men of exceptional courage who nevertheless, in defiance of the cliche, did know the meaning of the word 'fear'..... Stewart was the only golden-age leading man secure enough to show real fear."
For Stein there's a James Stewart moment in an early film called "Born to Dance" when Stewart sings (yes, he sings) "You'd be so easy to love", a Cole Porter number.
My James Stewart moment occurs at the end of the film "The Man who shot Liberty Valence" when he's on a train with his bitter-lipped wife (she had loved the John Wayne character but had married the James Stewart character) and he asks the train's conductor if the train could go a little faster as he has an important appointment. The man replies: "Anything for the man who shot Liberty Valence". And you get that James Stewart look, the one that says "I'm presenting this face of a Senator to the world but deep inside is the lie I have lived desiring to come out and reveal itself". He could do shiftiness without being shifty.
He had not, of course, shot the villain Liberty Valence, so he was living a lie. We all know who shot him don't we? John Wayne shot him.
But the great irony of the film is that the super hero, John Wayne, shot him in the back.
James Stewart was a WW2 war hero, a pilot who flew many missions and won awards; but when he returned to Hollywood he never spoke of it, and was fearful of flying. Probably he learnt what real fear was in the war and was able after the war to depict it in the characters he played - particularly in his westerns and in "Rear Window" and "Vertigo".