A Promise Kept

by Dan E. Weisburd, Executive Producer-Director, Another Kind Of Valor

I’d like to share with you a kindness that someone extended to me once. It made possible the three years I have put into Another Kind Of Valor to get it to this point in time. Take a look at the picture below and you‘ll see the individual who had me promise to pursue the path I have taken. I‘m on the right. The fellow on the left turned out to be my best mentor. The time was during the Cold War, early 1950’s — I was a 19-year-old junior at UCLA studying in the Motion Picture Department, and smitten with the idea of flying. The man was Jimmy Stewart.

I was an ROTC cadet, impatient with the slow pace of my studies. So with the support of my ROTC Captain Larry Green, and my Cinema faculty advisor John Young, I‘d raised some money to do a film instead of just pretending that long days learning how to scrape emulsion and splice film was somehow fulfilling.

Mr. Stewart‘s agent at MCA had turned me down when I asked for Jimmy as a narrator. “Your film won’t make a dime, Dan. And my job is to get a fortune for Mr. Stewart‘s services. So I have to say no. But here‘s Jimmy‘s home phone number. Give him a call. Tell him what you’re up to, and maybe he’ll say yes. Cause like you, he‘s nuts about being a ‘Fly-boy.’”

So I called. He did say yes, and we made a date to record the narration the next day at the department’s radio studio. I had to assure him that there would be no big deal made of Jimmy Stewart coming on campus, and that we’d keep his arrival and departure inconspicuous — no small task, even without the electric red hair color that wasn’t softening as the studio promised it would.

My own very real panic suddenly set in because it was already the night before his campus arrival and I hadn’t written a word of the narration script. It was all in my head! So I stayed up all night and wrote each and every line I thought I’d possibly need. It didn’t come easily because I did not know the story I wanted to tell.

I was almost asleep on my feet the next day when we started taping. And Mr. Stewart seemed to be struggling with every word.

I apologized for some of the awkward writing. But he snapped, “Nonsense. The writing’s fine. The fault’s not in the stars, my boy. It’s in myself!” Still I offered to rewrite when he seemed to spend an eternity on one simple phrase after another.

Always he insisted it was good writing and that he was a tongue-tied stutterer, who stammered and struggled and swore a lot but eventually did a good job, adding “...and for some reason — that never ceases to amaze me — people like it! Can you believe that?” And he laughed, not at me, but at himself… a little red in the face. And he begged my patience, which I gladly showed I had. Then, when I tried to say, “…and my gratitude, too,” he brushed it off with feigned gruffness that seemed to mask a giggle and a playfulness.

Finally we were done. My shirt was wet with perspiration. Not just the armpits — the whole shirt down to the tails. “Mine too,” he said with a smile, like he was reading my mind, and I walked him to his car, where a classmate took our picture. I sucked in my gut, and tried to stand as tall, straight and confident with the same military bearing that he showed so casually, with no visible effort at all.

Mr. Stewart then asked if I had a girl friend. I said, yes, and he said he and his wife, Gloria, would like to have us over to the house for dinner. “We’d enjoy that, sir,” I answered, trying not to display my surprise. Trying not to look like the kid I felt I was in his very grownup but still fun-loving presence, I restrained myself and never did say he was my favorite actor or anything like that, for fear it would come out like a gratuitous compliment — though it was true.

Then he proceeded to tell me he had flown 38 bombing missions over Germany, “…scared every blessed time…” and came back to civilian life without a scratch, but that a lot of his buddies had been killed or wounded. And some were living out their years with glazed eyes in hospitals, and walking the streets endlessly going no place in particular, while he was doing work that he loved, and getting overpaid for it.

“If you get a chance, Dan, and you still make the kind of film you’re doing now… could you do me a favor and produce something that would stir up the public about helping and not ignoring those guys, who didn’t get the breaks I got? I mean they made me a General… Can you believe that? What do I know, or what did I do to deserve that?” Puzzled and truly humble, he stood looking dumbfounded… with that same speechless emphasis, and that perfect timing I’d seen come from him in film after film.

I promised him I would do what he asked. And now, 55 years later, I finally got around to making Another Kind Of Valor. And I wanted to dedicate the film to him. But I didn’t want to make the dedication look like I was using his celebrity coattails to draw attention to my effort, and to me.

I wanted to simply say, “In memory of my mentor James Stewart, who taught by example, in quiet, modest ways. Thank you, Jimmy. Sorry it took me so long. But I did keep my promise… though it’s half a century late, I’m afraid. And after a lot more wars, too. Ones that I wish had never happened. But, I appreciate your faith in me, and your kindness… which I’ve tried to learn to show to others. And I sure respect and love you, sir… General… Mr. Stewart. Honestly, I don’t know anyone who deserves that title more than you. Thanks.”