Reclaiming Jimmy

Let’s look a little deeper into the character of Jimmy Seymour from the film Broadway Serenade. Once Jimmy realizes that he never lost Mary Hale, his many attempts at self-sabotage unfold before his eyes. Jimmy is able to see clearly for the first time that it wasn’t Mary who had stopped loving him. It was Jimmy. He had stopped loving himself many years ago; he had abandoned himself, lost himself. He then acted-out in ways that forced Mary and others to abandon him as well.

Jimmy had accused Mary of being unfaithful to him, when deep down he really knew that she was true to him. The real problem was that Jimmy was never true to Jimmy. And as a result, Jimmy was filled with self-loathing and many personal insecurities about himself. He couldn’t trust in Jimmy and so he couldn’t trust in Mary or anyone else. He was overly critical of himself and this had made him into a very angry young man. His anger then spilled over onto Mary and others, alienating them further from Jimmy.

At his point of awakening, Jimmy is already in the gutter. His only friend, aside from Herman, is his liquor bottle. Jimmy now has a choice to make. It’s the most important choice of his entire life. Jimmy can do one of two things. First, he can take the coward’s way out. He can continue to be a martyr and the victim of his life. He can declare that it’s too late to set things right with Mary; pretending that she would never have him back because he just isn’t worthy of her. He could also give-up on his songwriting talents and whimper off with whatever liquor he was loving in the moment.

Or Jimmy could choose to realize that he indeed has worth and acknowledge that every person has worth in life, no exceptions. He could also decide that his many mistakes don’t make him any less valuable, or less lovable, of a person. After all, everyone makes mistakes and everyone can be forgiven. He could then ask God and Herman to help him get his feet back on the ground. And this is exactly what Jimmy does. As a result, he sobers-up and starts composing songs again. His songs eventually start to sell, and little-by-little Jimmy’s life begins to flourish.

As a result, Jimmy has the ability to return to Mary and to apologize to her for all of the bad words and behaviors he had hurled her way. It had all been about Jimmy hating himself. It had never been about Mary. In this scene, it’s obvious through Mary’s eyes that she still loves Jimmy, and that she wants to forgive him. But it’s equally obvious that her emotional pain is still great and that she is terrified of being hurt again.

The more Jimmy talks, however, the more Mary is able to see that Jimmy is indeed a different person. She can see that he has been growing into the Jimmy she had always seen deep inside of him. He was growing in all the right ways, just as she herself had been doing, and she decides that she is willing to take the chance of growing together with Jimmy once more.

Many of us are faced with making the same sort of choices that Jimmy—or Mary—had to make. We can grow into living life to the fullest, or we can crawl into an addictive hole and simply exist in our misery. If we choose to grow, we have to work hard to build a good relationship with ourselves and we have to believe we are worth it. Building a good relationship with ourselves is the key to eventually building a good relationship with someone else.