06/14/2024
Jimmy Stewart loved dogs, and he and his wife Gloria had several throughout their long-time marriage. Stewart was especially fond of his golden retriever Beau, who would sleep in a corner of the bedroom at night, but would sometimes sneak onto the bed and lie between Stewart and Gloria. According to Stewart, "I know that I should have pushed him off the bed, but I didn't. He was up there because he wanted me to pat his head, so that's what I would do. Somehow, my touching his hair made him happier, and just the feeling of him laying against me helped me sleep better."
When Beau became terminally ill and had to be euthanized, Stewart sat in his car, following the procedure, for ten minutes to clear his eyes of tears. He later recalled, "After he died there were a lot of nights when I was certain that I could feel him get into bed beside me and I would reach out and pat his head. The feeling was so real that I wrote a poem about it and about how much it hurt to realize that he wasn't going to be there anymore."
The poem, titled Beau, was first recited on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1981. As you will hear in his poem, Beau (like all his dogs) was not good at things like 'sit', 'stay' and 'come'. Stewart said, "The difference between 'trained OK' and 'trained perfectly' doesn't really matter all that much to me.... I suppose the truth is that I'd rather have a happy dog than a trained one."
The poem starts out with humor and ends with sadness - with both Stewart and Carson trying their best to hold back tears.
