(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)
Wed 24 September 2025 17:15, UK
Although history will always remember him as one of Hollywood’s nicest guys, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that, despite his personal and professional persona, James Stewart was not a man to fuck with.
After all, as much as audiences adored the straight-laced everyman and as easy as he was to work with, he’s still the same guy who laughed in the face of death threats being made by the mob, with Stewart having no issues telling an organised crime syndicate that they were free to try, but he wouldn’t be intimidated.
That’s not the type of behaviour anyone would associate with an actor who was basically aw-shucks Americana made flesh, but those closest to the Academy Award-winning icon, including his longtime best friend, Henry Fonda, knew better than most that he had a hell of a temper when he was provoked.
When he first worked with fellow ‘Golden Age’ legend Spencer Tracy, neither was the household name they’d eventually become. 1935’s The Murder Man may have given Tracy top billing, but it wasn’t until the following year’s Fury that he became a star, and he soon won consecutive ‘Best Actor’ Oscars in 1937 and 1938.
Reuniting for the first time in 14 years, Richard Thorpe’s Malaya was largely sold and marketed on the back of its A-list leads. Unfortunately, Tracy immediately rubbed Stewart the wrong way by calling him a “son of a bitch,” which caused the latter to steer clear of him for several weeks. As the It’s a Wonderful Life favourite’s wife, Gloria, recalled, he was ready to beat the shit out of his opposite number.
“When Tracy called Jim a son of a bitch, Jim got mad,” she told Michael Munn. “He grabbed Tracy, who was much shorter but stockier, and said, ‘I ought to punch you right in the mouth’. That temper of Jim’s isn’t something even Spencer Tracy wants to see the worst of. And Tracy said, ‘Oh, yeah! Go on, take your best shot’. Jim knew he could knock Tracy out.”
Mercifully, he didn’t. However, after deciding against turning one of the industry’s most famous faces into a bloody pulp, Stewart issued a final warning: “You ever call me a son of a bitch again and I’ll knock the holy crap out of you.” To save face, literally, Tracy apologised, and the two mended fences and carried on shooting Malaya with no more bad blood between them.
“Jim has the patience of a saint,” Gloria explained. “But when his patience runs out, and it takes a hell of a lot to make it run out, you’d better watch yourself.” He may have given off the impression that butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, but as it turned out, whether it was Tracy or the mafia, Stewart was actually one of Tinseltown’s most formidable badasses. Who would have thought?
His wife, obviously, since they were married for 46 years, but Tracy probably didn’t expect the decidedly laid-back Stewart to end up perilously close to battering him. Still, the lesson was learned, and he never called him a “son of a bitch” again.
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