Cinema: Jimmy’s Life & Hard Times

Corporal James Stewart (The Philadelphia Story, etc.), on location at Moffett Field, Calif, since giving up his $1,500-a-week salary to play straight man for Uncle Sam, filed a bill of complaints with his Hollywood agent, Leland Hayward. Excerpts from the text printed in Sidney Skolsky’s column:

“Enclosed find two dollars and ten cents which is commission owed you by me from my salary [$21] of the month just passed. . . . Now . . . about the salary you got me for this job. … I could go up to the front office and raise hell myself, but I remember when I signed with you, you said that anytime I had any problem to just come to you and you would . . . get it straightened out. So I hope you will attend to this at once. . . .

“One of [the] reasons I’m unhappy [is] the dressing room they have given me over here. It’s a great big barn of a place . . . but the thing is they have put thirty guys in here with me. … I don’t know who they are … they have brought beds in here and are lying around. . . . I was treated much better … at Warner Bros. . . .”