The All American Hero

摘要

The story goes that when the news first hit Hollywood of Ronald Reagan's ambitions to be president, Jack Warner, the legendarily blunt mogul, responded, "No. Jimmy Stewart for president, Ronald Reagan for best friend." We know the images that flashed through Warner's head, because they were the same images the words "Jimmy Stewart" evoke in us all; they were why we voted for him, with our box-office dollars, for half a century, throughout his 80-film career. There was no movie star we trusted m quite the way we warmed to the man who played Jefferson Smith in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," the lanky innocent whose naivete the sharks of the Capitol foolishly thought they could exploit. His was a decency, filtered through drawling Midwestern diffidence, that helped a nation define itself.