James Stewart / Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America

With his gauche manner and his slender but reassuring figure, Stewart embodies a successful life; he’s the kind of guy everyone would like to be like. Mitchum, with his legendary nonchalance and his hangdog look is more like the loveable rogue everybody would like to have as partner. When they shared top billing in the 1978 The Big Sleep, these two actors, who had incarnated the American spirit for more than half a century, certainly did not suspect that they would both embark upon eternal sleep on almost the same day in 1997.