george washington and george bailey

I wanted to write down some thoughts about two books that I read earlier this summer, 1776 by David McCullough and Jimmy Stewart: A Biography by Marc Eliot.

1776 - As a historian, I thought that I would naturally be pleased with this book. And in many ways, I was. I enjoyed reading about lesser-known individuals that were involved with the Revolutionary War, such as Henry Knox and Nathanael Greene.

However, my main motivation for reading this book was to learn more about George Washington's character and personality, and I was disappointed to not find more information in McCullough's book (I guess I should have read a biography on Washington if I wanted to learn more about him, eh?). Earlier this spring, on a visit to Mount Vernon, I realized that George Washington is kind of an enigma to me. In fact, I could sum up my knowledge of him in a short list:

1. Didn't chop down cherry tree, cannot tell a lie
2. Likes to remodel Mount Vernon
3. Owned slaves
4. Married a rich widow
5. Was a general
6. Liked liberty
7. Crossed the Delaware
   
8. Wore dentures
9. Didn't want to be president
   

Does anyone have anything else that they could immediately add to this list? If I made lists about the other founding fathers, such as Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson, I think they would be considerably longer. I could chat with Ben Franklin about bifocals or electricity, and it would be easy to talk to Jefferson about Neoclassical architecture or his work as an ambassador in France. But what would one chat about with George Washington?

Anyhow, it seems like McCullough also found George Washington's feelings and character a little hard to analyze; he used words like "imperturbable" to describe the general. It seems like the austere Washington didn't want to get too close to his men or associates for fear of losing respect and authority as general. Or, who knows - maybe Washington was an introvert?*

Aside from my Washington disappointment, I felt like the book was moderately engaging. It got rather dull in the middle when the troops kept losing battles in New York. But I guess McCullough wasn't at liberty (hee hee! And neither were the colonists!) to change history and spice things up a bit. I found myself hoping that Washington would cross the Delaware soon so that something exciting would happen...and so that the book would end and I could start this one:

Jimmy Stewart: A Biography - For anyone who likes reading about actors from the silver screen, this is quite an entertaining book. Not only do you follow Stewart's career in Hollywood, but you also learn more about the actors and actresses with whom he worked (e.g. Katherine Hepburn, Kim Novak, June Allyson, Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, etc.). I was also impressed to find out that Stewart appeared in about eighty films, not to mention his appearances in other short films and television shows.

Eliot does a good job of describing the plot, virtues, and shortcomings of many of Stewart's films. His discussions were so interesting that I immediately went out and rented Vertigo after finishing the book, partly to see if I agreed with his discussion of the film. (This is a great film, by the way. I highly recommend it.)

The thing that bothered me most about this book were all of the Freudian references and analyses. Call me crazy, but when I picked up this biography on Stewart, I thought that I would be reading about what it was like to play Jefferson Smith, George Bailey, and Elwood P. Dowd. I wasn't expecting to read someone's Freudian analysis on why and how Jimmy Stewart's wife Gloria looks like Jimmy's mother (they look nothing alike, by the way). It seemed like in the sections where Eliot was not able to gather a lot of historical information or evidence, he tried to flesh out the missing sections with psychoanalysis. Unconvincing psychoanalysis. Downright silly psychoanalysis. Don't get me wrong, I think that Freud's theories have plenty of value. But I feel like his theories were misapplied in this biography, and I think that Eliot is a little bit too concerned with sex in this book. Perhaps he felt like making the book "sexier" would have it sell better? Hmm.

One interesting thing I learned: Jimmy Stewart became increasingly deaf as he got older, which was said to have resulted from the filming of It's a Wonderful Life, when Stewart's character George Bailey jumps into the icy river to save Clarence. Isn't it ironic that Stewart began to lose his hearing after this scene, when in the film George Bailey regains hearing in his "sore ear" after saving Clarence and receiving his wish to have never been born? The character regains hearing when the actor really loses hearing.

And my final interesting discovery: Jimmy Stewart wore a toupee.

All in all, an entertaining book. Take out all of the Freudian blah, and this is a fun read.

*It really is a pity that Martha Washington destroyed all of George's letters to her (except for three letters which survived by accident). Although I can respect Martha's wishes to have her relationship with her husband kept private, as a historian I cannot help but lament. The loss of those letters makes the melancholic work of recreating a lost time period (a recreation that already only can happen with fragments of remaining historical evidence) even more melancholy.