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I never rank my favorite things, mostly because I change my mind faster than you can say Jack Robinson. But since I have recently watched all the films James Stewart made in the 1930s, I thought I would try and organize them in a top 10. This is what I came up with. Do not ask me to do this again tomorrow, because my choices will most likely be completely different.   ************************************************************************ #10: Navy Blue and Gold (1937) Directed by Sam Wood | Co- s tarring Robert Young , Tom Brown , Florence Rice and Lionel Barrymore | M etro-Goldwyn-Mayer John «Truck» Cross: I usually get second best, I guess. I'm not so lucky. Robert Montgomery, Tom Brown and James Stewart In this sports/military drama, Jimmy played John «Truck« Cross, a midshipman at the U nited S tates Naval Academy determined to defend the sullied reputation of his father, a former captain who was court-martialed and dismissed from the servic...

  At the 3rd Academy Awards ceremony, MGM's hugely successful prison drama The Big House (1930) earned writer Frances Marion an Oscar for Best Writing. Hoping that she would be inspired to repeat that accomplishment, Irving Thalberg, head of production at Metro, sent Marion to Chicago, Illinois to research story ideas. While flicking through the pages of The Saturday Evening Post , she found an article revealing that, in a city where people distrusted the police, a small group of leading citizens met in secret to arrange their own justice for criminals. Marion took inspiration from that story and wrote The Secret Six (1931), in which Wallace Beery and Lewis Stone, stars of The Big House , play two mobsters prosecuted by a half a dozen vigilantes. Thalberg was pleased with the leading roles Marion wrote for Beery and Stone, but asked if she could also fill out one of the minor leads for Clark Gable , a tall, dark and handsome 30-year-old actor whom Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had recen...