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James Stewart (actor)
Encyclopedia
James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and his everyman
persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards
, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime Achievement
award. He was a major MGM contract star. He also had a noted military career and was a World War II
and Vietnam War
veteran
, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General
in the United States Air Force Reserve
.
, the son of Elizabeth Ruth (née Jackson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. Stewart's parents were of Scottish
Presbyterian origin. His Jackson ancestors served in the American Revolution, the War of 1812
and the American Civil War
. The eldest of three children (he had two younger sisters, Virginia and Mary), he was expected to continue his father's business, which had been in the family for three generations.
His mother was an excellent pianist but his father discouraged Stewart's request for lessons. But when his father accepted a gift of an accordion from a guest, young Stewart quickly learned to play the instrument, which became a fixture off-stage during his acting career. As the family grew, music continued to be an important part of family life.
Stewart attended Mercersburg Academy
prep school, graduating in 1928. He was active in a variety of activities. He played on the football and track teams, was art editor of the KARUX yearbook, and a member of the choir
club, glee
club, and John Marshall Literary Society. During his first summer break, Stewart returned to Indiana, Pennsylvania, to work as a brick loader for a local construction company and on highway and road construction jobs where he painted lines on the roads. Over the following two summers, he took a job as an assistant with a professional magician. He also made his first appearance on the stage at Mercersburg, as Buquet in the play The Wolves.
A shy child, Stewart spent much of his after-school time in the basement working on model airplanes, mechanical drawing and chemistry—all with a dream of going into aviation. But he abandoned visions of being a pilot when his father insisted that instead of the United States Naval Academy
he attend Princeton University
.
Stewart enrolled at Princeton in 1928 as a member of the class of 1932. He excelled at studying architecture
, so impressing his professors with his thesis on an airport design that he was awarded a scholarship for graduate studies; but he gradually became attracted to the school's drama and music clubs, including the Princeton Triangle Club
. He was a member of the Princeton Charter Club
as well as a head cheerleader
. In his spare time, he enjoyed going to the movies at the time when 'talkies' were just displacing silent films.
His acting and accordion talents at Princeton led him to be invited to the University Players
, an intercollegiate summer stock company in West Falmouth, a town on Cape Cod
, Massachusetts. The company had been organized in 1928 and would run until 1932, with Joshua Logan
, Bretaigne Windust
, and Charles Leatherbee as directors. Stewart performed in bit parts in the Players' productions in Cape Cod during the summer of 1932, after he graduated. The troupe had previously included Henry Fonda
, who married Margaret Sullavan
on Christmas Day 1931, while the University Players were in Baltimore
, Maryland
, for an 18-week winter season. Sullavan, who had rejoined the University Players in Baltimore in November 1931 at the close of the post-Broadway tour of A Modern Virgin, left the Players for good at the end of The Trial of Mary Dugan
in Baltimore in March 1932. By the time Stewart joined the University Players on Cape Cod after his graduation from Princeton in 1932, Fonda and Sullavan's brief marriage had ended. Stewart and Fonda became great friends over the summer of 1932 when they shared an apartment with Joshua Logan and Myron McCormick
. When Stewart came to New York at the end of the summer stock season, which had included the Broadway try-out of Goodbye Again, he shared an apartment with Fonda, who had by then finalized his divorce from Sullavan. Along with fellow University Players Alfred Dalrymple and Myron McCormick, Stewart debuted on Broadway as a chauffeur in the comedy Goodbye Again, in which he had two lines. The New Yorker
noted, "Mr. James Stewart's chauffeur... comes on for three minutes and walks off to a round of spontaneous applause."
The play was a moderate success, but times were hard. Many Broadway theaters had been converted to movie houses and the Depression
was reaching bottom. "From 1932 through 1934," Stewart later recalled, "I'd only worked three months. Every play I got into folded." By 1934, he had gotten more substantial stage roles, including the modest hit Page Miss Glory and his first dramatic stage role in Sidney Howard
's Yellow Jack
, which convinced him to continue his acting career. However, Stewart and Fonda, still roommates, were both struggling.
In the fall of 1934, Fonda's success in The Farmer Takes a Wife
took him to Hollywood. Finally, Stewart attracted the interest of MGM
scout Bill Grady who saw Stewart on the opening night of Divided by Three, a glittering première with many luminaries in attendance, including Irving Berlin
and Moss Hart
and Fonda, who had returned to New York for the show. With Fonda's encouragement, Stewart agreed to take a screen test, after which he signed a contract with MGM in April 1935, as a contract player for up to seven years at $350 a week.
Upon Stewart's arrival by train in Los Angeles, Fonda greeted him at the station and took him to Fonda's studio-supplied lodging, next door to Greta Garbo
. Stewart's first job at the studio was as a participant in screen tests with newly arrived starlets. At first, he had trouble being cast in Hollywood films owing to his gangling looks and shy, humble screen presence. Aside from an unbilled appearance in a Shemp Howard comedy short
called Art Trouble
in 1934, his first film was the poorly received Spencer Tracy
vehicle The Murder Man
(1935), but Rose Marie
(1936), an adaptation of a popular operetta, was more successful. After mixed success in films, he received his first substantial part in 1936
's After the Thin Man
, featuring a shocking sequence near the end which showcased his acting ability.
On the romantic front, he found himself dating newly divorced Ginger Rogers
, whom he had revered while a student at Princeton only a few years earlier. The romance soon cooled, however, and by chance Stewart encountered Margaret Sullavan again. Stewart found his footing in Hollywood thanks largely to Sullavan, who campaigned for Stewart to be her leading man in the 1936 romantic comedy Next Time We Love
. She rehearsed extensively with him, having a noticeable effect on his confidence. She encouraged Stewart to feel comfortable with his unique mannerisms and boyish charm and use them naturally as his own style. In the meantime, roommate Fonda continued to arrange parties with starlets, who found Stewart different from the other young actors and irresistible in his own way. Stewart was enjoying Hollywood life and had no regrets about giving up the stage, as he worked six days a week in the MGM factory. In 1936, he acquired big-time agent Leland Hayward
, who would eventually marry Sullavan. Hayward started to chart Stewart's career, deciding the best path for him was through loan-outs to other studios.
In 1938, Stewart had a brief, tumultuous, and well-publicized romance with Hollywood queen Norma Shearer
, whose husband, Irving Thalberg
, head of production at MGM, had died two years earlier. Stewart began a successful partnership with director Frank Capra
in 1938
, when he was loaned out to Columbia Pictures
to star in You Can't Take It With You
. Frank Capra had been impressed by Stewart's minor role in Navy Blue and Gold
(1937). The director had recently completed several popular movies, including It Happened One Night
(1934), and was looking for the right actor to suit his needs — other recent actors in Capra's films such as Clark Gable
, Ronald Colman
, and Gary Cooper
did not quite fit. Not only was Stewart just what he was looking for, but Capra also found Stewart understood that prototype intuitively and required very little directing. Later Capra commented, "I think he's probably the best actor who's ever hit the screen."
The heart-warming Depression-era film You Can't Take It With You
, starring Capra's "favorite actress", comedienne Jean Arthur
, won the 1938
Best Picture
Academy Award
. The following year saw Stewart work with Capra and Arthur again in the political comedy-drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
. Stewart replaced intended star Gary Cooper
in the film, playing an idealist thrown into the political arena. Upon its October 1939 release, the film garnered critical praise and became a box-office success. Stewart was nominated for the first of five Academy Awards
for Best Actor
. Even after this great success, Stewart's parents were still trying to talk him into leaving Hollywood and its sinful ways and to return to his home town to lead a decent life. Instead, he took a secret trip to Europe to take a break and returned home in 1939 just as Germany invaded Poland
.
Destry Rides Again
, also released in 1939, became Stewart's first western film, a genre with which he would become identified later in his career. In this western parody, Stewart is a pacifist lawman and Marlene Dietrich
is the dancing saloon girl who comes to love him, but doesn't get him. In the film, Dietrich sings her famous song "The Boys In the Back Room". Off-screen, Dietrich did get her man, but the romance was short-lived. Made for Each Other
(1939) had Stewart sharing the screen with irrepressible Carole Lombard
in a melodrama that garnered good reviews for both stars, but did less well with the public. Newsweek
wrote that they were "perfectly cast in the leading roles." Between movies, Stewart began a radio career and became a distinctive voice on the "Lux Radio Theater
", "The Screen Guild Theater
" and other shows. So well-known had his slow drawl become that comedians started to impersonate him, a form of flattery which continued for most of his life.
In 1940, Stewart and Margaret Sullavan reunited for two films. The first, the Ernst Lubitsch
romantic comedy, The Shop Around the Corner
, starred Stewart and Sullavan as co-workers unknowingly involved in a pen-pal romance who cannot stand each other in real life (this was later remade into the musical, In the Good Old Summertime
with Judy Garland and Van Johnson, and later as the romantic comedy You've Got Mail
with Tom Hanks
and Meg Ryan
). It was Stewart's fifth film of the year and that rare film shot in sequence; it was completed in only 27 days. The Mortal Storm
, directed by Frank Borzage
, was one of the first blatantly anti-Nazi
films to be produced in Hollywood and featured the pair as friends and then lovers caught in turmoil upon Hitler
's rise to power.
Stewart also starred with Cary Grant
and Katharine Hepburn
in George Cukor
's classic The Philadelphia Story (1940). His performance as an intrusive, fast-talking reporter earned him his only Academy Award
in a competitive category (Best Actor, 1941), and he beat out his good friend Henry Fonda (The Grapes of Wrath
). Stewart thought his performance "entertaining and slick and smooth" but lacking the "guts" of "Mr. Smith." Stewart gave the Oscar statuette to his father, who displayed it for many years in a case inside the front door of his hardware store, alongside other family awards and military medals.
During the months before he began military service, Stewart appeared in a series of screwball comedies
with varying levels of success. He followed the mediocre No Time for Comedy
(1940) and Come Live with Me
(1941) with the Judy Garland
musical Ziegfeld Girl
and the George Marshall
romantic comedy Pot o' Gold. Stewart was drafted in late 1940, a situation that coincided with the lapse in his MGM
contract, marking a turning point in Stewart's career, with 28 movies to his credit at that point.
, and his father had served during both the Spanish-American War
and World War I
. Stewart considered his father to be the biggest influence on his life, so it was not surprising that, when another war eventually came, he too was eager to serve. Members of his family had previously been in the infantry, but Stewart chose to become a military flyer.
An early interest in flying led Stewart to gain his Private Pilot certificate
in 1935 and Commercial Pilot certificate
in 1938. He often flew cross-country to visit his parents in Pennsylvania, navigating by the railroad tracks. Nearly two years before the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor
, Stewart had accumulated over 400 hours of flying time.
Considered a highly proficient pilot, he even entered a cross-country race as a co-pilot in 1939. Stewart, along with musician/composer Hoagy Carmichael
, saw the need for trained war pilots, and joined with other Hollywood celebrities to invest in Thunderbird Field
, a pilot-training school built and operated by Southwest Airways in Glendale, Arizona
. This airfield became part of the United States Army Air Forces
training establishment and trained more than 10,000 pilots during World War II, and is now the home of Thunderbird School of Global Management
.
Later in 1940, Stewart was drafted into the United States Army
but was rejected for failing to meet height and weight requirements for new recruits—Stewart was five pounds (2.3 kg) under the standard. To get up to 148 pounds, he sought out the help of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's muscle man and trainer Don Loomis, who was noted for his ability to add or subtract pounds in his studio gymnasium. Stewart subsequently attempted to enlist in the Army Air Corps
, but still came in under the weight requirement, although he persuaded the AAC enlistment officer to run new tests, this time passing the weigh-in, with the result that Stewart enlisted in the Army in March 1941. He became the first major American movie star to wear a military uniform in World War II
.
Stewart enlisted as a private and then began pilot training in the USAAC. Stewart continued his military training and earned a commission as a second lieutenant in January 1942, just after the attack on Pearl Harbor
brought the US directly into the conflict. He was posted to Moffett Field and then Mather Field as an instructor pilot in single- and twin-engine aircraft.
Public appearances by Stewart were limited engagements scheduled by the Army Air Forces. "Stewart appeared several times on network radio with Edgar Bergen
and Charlie McCarthy. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, he performed with Orson Welles
, Edward G. Robinson
, Walter Huston
, and Lionel Barrymore
in an all-network radio program called We Hold These Truths, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights." In early 1942, Stewart was asked to appear in a propaganda film to help recruit the anticipated 100,000 airmen that the USAAF would need to win the war. The USAAC's First Motion Picture Unit
shot scenes of Lieutenant Stewart in his pilot's flight suit and recorded his voice for narration. The short film, Winning Your Wings
, appeared nationwide beginning in late May and was very successful, resulting in 150,000 new recruits.
Stewart was concerned that his expertise and celebrity status would relegate him to instructor duties "behind the lines." His fears were confirmed when he was stationed for six months at Kirtland Air Force Base
in Albuquerque, New Mexico
, to train bombardiers. He was transferred to Hobbs AAF
to become an instructor pilot for the four-engine B-17 Flying Fortress, where he trained B-17 pilots for nine months at Gowen Field in Boise, Idaho
.
Still, the war was moving on. For the 36-year-old Stewart, combat duty seemed far away and unreachable and he had no clear plans for the future. But then a rumor that Stewart would be taken off flying status and assigned to making training films or selling bonds called for his immediate and decisive action, because what he dreaded most was the hope-shattering spectre of a dead end." Stewart appealed to his commander, a pre-war aviator, who understood the situation and reassigned him to a unit going overseas.
In August 1943, Stewart was assigned to the 445th Bombardment Group at Sioux City AAB
, Iowa, first as operations officer of the 703d Bombardment Squadron
and then as its commander, at the rank of captain. In December, the 445th Bombardment Group flew its B-24 Liberator bombers to RAF Tibenham
, Norfolk
, England
and immediately began combat operations. While flying missions over Germany, Stewart was promoted to major. In March 1944, he was transferred as group operations officer to the 453rd Bombardment Group
, a new B-24 unit that had been experiencing difficulties. As a means to inspire his new group, Stewart flew as command pilot in the lead B-24 on numerous missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. These missions went uncounted at Stewart's orders. His "official" total is listed as 20 and is limited to those with the 445th. In 1944, he twice received the Distinguished Flying Cross
for actions in combat and was awarded the Croix de Guerre
. He also received the Air Medal
with three oak leaf cluster
s. In July 1944, after flying 20 combat missions, Stewart was made Chief of Staff
of the 2nd Combat Bombardment Wing
of the Eighth Air Force
, and though he was no longer required or expected to fly missions, he continued to do so. Before the war ended, he was promoted to colonel, one of the few Americans to rise from private to colonel in four years.
At the beginning of June 1945, Stewart was the presiding officer of the court-martial
of a pilot and navigator who were charged with dereliction of duty when they accidentally bombed the Swiss city of Zurich the previous March—the first instance of U.S. personnel being tried for an attack on a neutral country. The Court acquitted the accused.
Stewart continued to play a role in the United States Air Force Reserve
after the war, achieving the rank of Brigadier General
on July 23, 1959. Stewart did not often talk of his wartime service, perhaps due to his desire to be seen as a regular soldier doing his duty instead of as a celebrity. He did appear on the TV series The World At War to discuss the October 14, 1943, bombing mission to Schweinfurt
, which was the center of the German ball-bearing industry. This mission is known in USAF history as Black Thursday
due to the high casualties it sustained; 60 aircraft were lost out of 291 B-17s dispatched unescorted to Schweinfurt. The available escort aircraft lacked the range to accompany them. Upon his request, he was identified only as "James Stewart, Squadron Commander" in the documentary.
After the war, Stewart served as Air Force Reserve commander of Dobbins Air Reserve Base
in the early 1950s. In 1966, Brigadier General James Stewart flew as a non-duty observer in a B-52
on a bombing mission during the Vietnam War
. At the time of his B-52 flight, he refused the release of any publicity regarding his participation, as he did not want it treated as a stunt, but as part of his job as an officer in the Air Force Reserve. After 27 years of service, Stewart retired from the Air Force on May 31, 1968. After his retirement, he was promoted to Major General
by President
Ronald Reagan
.
After the war, Stewart took time off to reassess his career, and he spent much time with his friend Fonda. He was an early investor in Southwest Airways, founded by Leland Hayward
, and considered going into the aviation industry if his re-started film career did not prosper. Upon Stewart's return to Hollywood in fall 1945, he decided not to renew his MGM
contract. He signed with an MCA
talent agency. His former agent Leland Hayward got out of the talent business in 1944 after selling his A-list of stars, including Stewart, to MCA. The move made Stewart one of the first independently contracted actors, and gave him more freedom to choose roles. Stewart was able to work without limits on director and studio availability for the remainder of his career.
For his first film in five years, Stewart appeared in his third and final Frank Capra
production, It's a Wonderful Life
. Capra paid RKO for the rights to the story and formed his own production company, Liberty Films
. The female lead went to Donna Reed
, after Capra's perennial first choice, Jean Arthur
, was unavailable, and after turn-downs from Ginger Rogers
, Olivia de Havilland
, Ann Dvorak
and Martha Scott
. Stewart appeared as George Bailey
, an upstanding small-town man who becomes increasingly frustrated by his ordinary existence and financial troubles. Driven to suicide
on Christmas Eve
, he is led to reassess his life by Clarence Odbody
AS2, an "angel, second class", played by Henry Travers
.
After viewing It's a Wonderful Life, President Harry S Truman concluded, "If Bess and I had a son we'd want him to be just like Jimmy Stewart."
Although the film was nominated for five Academy Awards
, including Stewart's third Best Actor
nomination, it received mixed reviews and only disappointingly moderate success at the box office, possibly due to its dark nature. However, in the decades since the film's release, it grew to define Stewart's film persona and is widely considered as a sentimental Christmas film classic and, according to the American Film Institute
, one of the best movies
ever made. The movie had actually fallen into public domain
for years and was rebroadcast often by television stations during this period as a result, establishing a huge audience familiarity.
In the aftermath of the film, Capra's production company went into bankruptcy, while Stewart started to have doubts about his ability to act after his military hiatus. His father kept insisting he come home and marry a local girl. Meanwhile in Hollywood, his generation of actors were fading and a new wave of actors would soon remake the town, including Marlon Brando
, Montgomery Clift
, and James Dean
.
After a poorly received Magic Town
(1947) and the completion of Rope
(1948) and Call Northside 777
(1948), Stewart had two flops with On Our Merry Way
(1948), a comedic musical ensemble in which Stewart and Henry Fonda
played two musicians named "Slim" and "Lank," and You Gotta Stay Happy
(1949), for which the posters depicted Stewart being kissed on one cheek by top-billed Joan Fontaine
and on the other by a chimpanzee
. In the documentary film
James Stewart: A Wonderful Life (1987), hosted by Johnny Carson
, Stewart said that he went back to Westerns
in 1950 in part because a string of films that were flops.
Stewart decided to return to the stage for the Mary Chase
-penned comedy, Harvey
, which had opened to nearly universal praise in November 1944. Elwood P. Dowd, the protagonist and Stewart's character, is a wealthy eccentric living with his sister and his niece, and whose best friend is an invisible rabbit as large as a man. Dowd's eccentricity, especially the friendship with the rabbit, is ruining the niece's hopes of finding a husband. While trying to have Dowd committed to a sanatorium
, his sister is committed herself while the play follows Dowd on an ordinary day in his not-so-ordinary life. Stewart took over the role from Frank Fay
and gained an increased Broadway
following in the unconventional play. The play, which ran for nearly three years with Stewart as its star, was successfully adapted into a 1950
film
, directed by Henry Koster
, with Stewart as Dowd and Josephine Hull
as his sister, Veta. Bing Crosby
was the first choice for the movie but he declined. Stewart received his fourth Best Actor
nomination for his performance in the film.
After Harvey, the comedic adventure film Malaya
(1949) with Spencer Tracy
and the conventional but highly successful biographical film The Stratton Story
in 1949
, Stewart's first pairing with "on-screen wife" June Allyson
, his career took another turn. During the 1950s, he expanded into the western and suspense
genres, thanks largely to collaborations with directors Anthony Mann
and Alfred Hitchcock
.
Other notable performances by Stewart during this time include the critically acclaimed 1950
Delmer Daves
western Broken Arrow
, which featured Stewart as an ex-soldier and Indian agent making peace with the Apache
; a troubled clown in the 1952
Best Picture
The Greatest Show on Earth
; and Stewart's role as Charles Lindbergh
in Billy Wilder
's 1957
film The Spirit of St. Louis
. He also starred in the western radio show The Six Shooter
for its one-season run from 1953 to 1954. During this time Stewart wore the same cowboy hat
and rode the same horse, named "Pie", in most of his Westerns.
increased Stewart's popularity and sent his career into the realm of the western. Stewart's first appearance in a film directed by Mann came with the 1950
western, Winchester '73. In choosing Mann (after first choice Fritz Lang
declined), Stewart cemented a powerful partnership. The film, which became a massive box office hit upon its release, set the pattern for their future collaborations. In it, Stewart is a tough, revengeful sharpshooter, the winner of a prized rifle which is stolen and then passes through many hands, until the showdown between Stewart and his brother (Stephen McNally
).
Other Stewart-Mann westerns, such as Bend of the River
(1952
), The Naked Spur
(1953
), The Far Country
(1954
) and The Man from Laramie
(1955
), were perennial favorites among young audiences entranced by the American West. Frequently, the films featured Stewart as a troubled cowboy seeking redemption, while facing corrupt cattlemen, ranchers and outlaws—a man who knows violence first hand and struggles to control it. The Stewart-Mann collaborations laid the foundation for many of the westerns of the 1950s and remain popular today for their grittier, more realistic depiction of the classic movie genre. Audiences saw Stewart's screen persona evolve into a more mature, more ambiguous, and edgier presence.
Stewart and Mann also collaborated on other films outside the western genre. 1954
's The Glenn Miller Story
was critically acclaimed, garnering Stewart a BAFTA Award nomination, and (together with The Spirit of St. Louis) cemented the popularity of Stewart's portrayals of 'American heroes'. Thunder Bay
, released the same year, transplanted the plot arc of their western collaborations to a more contemporary setting, with Stewart as a Louisiana
oil driller facing corruption. Strategic Air Command
, released in 1955
, allowed Stewart to use his experiences in the United States Air Force on film.
Stewart's starring role in Winchester '73 was also a turning point in Hollywood. Universal Studios
, who wanted Stewart to appear in both that film and Harvey, balked at his $200,000 asking price. Stewart's agent, Lew Wasserman
, brokered an alternate deal, in which Stewart would appear in both films for no pay, in exchange for a percentage of the profits and cast and director approval.
This wasn't the first such deal at Universal; Abbott and Costello
also had a profit participation contract, but they were no longer top-flight moneymakers by 1950. Stewart ended up earning about $600,000 for Winchester '73 alone. Hollywood's other stars quickly capitalized on this new way of doing business, which further undermined the decaying "studio system
".
The second collaboration to define Stewart's career in the 1950s was with acclaimed mystery and suspense director Alfred Hitchcock
. Like Mann, Hitchcock uncovered new depths to Stewart's acting, showing a protagonist confronting his fears and his repressed desires. Stewart's first movie with Hitchcock was the technologically innovative 1948
film Rope
, shot in long "real time" takes.
The two collaborated for the second of four times on the 1954 hit Rear Window
, one of Hitchcock's masterpieces. Stewart portrays photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries, loosely based on Life
photographer Robert Capa
, who projects his fantasies and fears onto the people he observes out his apartment window while on hiatus due to a broken leg. Jeffries gets into more than he can handle, however, when he believes he has witnessed a salesman (Raymond Burr
) commit a murder, and when his glamorous girlfriend (Grace Kelly
), at first disdainful of his voyeurism and skeptical about any crime, eventually is drawn in and tries to help solve the mystery. Limited by his wheelchair, Stewart is masterfully led by Hitchcock to react to what his character sees with mostly facial responses. It was a landmark year for Stewart, becoming the highest grossing actor of 1954 and the most popular Hollywood star in the world, displacing John Wayne
. Hitchcock and Stewart formed a corporation, Patron Inc., to produce the film, which later became the subject of a Supreme Court case Stewart v. Abend
(1990).
After starring in Hitchcock's remake of the director's earlier
production, The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1956), with co-star Doris Day
, Stewart starred, with Kim Novak
, in what many consider Hitchcock's most personal film, Vertigo
(1958). The movie starred Stewart as John "Scottie" Ferguson, a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia
, who develops an obsession with a woman he is shadowing. Scottie's obsession inevitably leads to the destruction of everything he once had and believed in. Though the film is widely considered a classic today, Vertigo met with negative reviews and poor box office receipts upon its release, and marked the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock. Stewart was also disappointed. The director blamed the film's failure on Stewart looking too old to still attract audiences, and cast Cary Grant
as Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest
(1959), a role Stewart had very much wanted (Grant was actually four years older than Stewart). Today, Vertigo
is ranked second only to Citizen Kane
in the 2002 Sight & Sound
critics poll for the greatest films ever made.
and received his fifth and final Academy Award for Best Actor
nomination, for his role in the 1959
Otto Preminger
film Anatomy of a Murder
. The early courtroom drama starred Stewart as Paul Biegler, the lawyer of a hot-tempered soldier (played by Ben Gazzara
) who claims temporary insanity after murdering a tavern owner who raped his wife. The film featured a career-making performance by George C. Scott
as the prosecutor. The film was sexually frank for its time (some thought it sordid), and its provocative promotional campaign helped gain it box office success, though Ben-Hur
outgrossed all movies by a huge margin and swept the Academy Awards that year. Stewart's nomination was one of seven for the film (Charlton Heston
was the winner), and saw his transition into the final decades of his career.
On January 1, 1960, Stewart received the devastating news of the death of Margaret Sullavan (her death was later identified as apparent suicide; the county coroner, however, officially ruled the death an accident). As a friend, mentor, and focus of his early romantic urges, she had a unique influence on Stewart's life. On April 17, 1961, longtime friend Gary Cooper was too ill to attend the 33rd Academy Awards ceremony
, so Stewart accepted the honorary Oscar on his behalf. Stewart's emotional speech hinted that something was seriously wrong, and the next day newspapers ran the headline, "Gary Cooper has cancer." One month later, on May 13, 1961, six days after his 60th birthday, Cooper died.
In the early 1960s Stewart took leading roles in three John Ford
films, his first work with the acclaimed director. The first, Two Rode Together
, paired him with Richard Widmark
in a Western with thematic echoes of Ford's The Searchers
. The next, 1962
's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
(with John Wayne
), is a classic "psychological" western, with Stewart featured as an Eastern attorney who goes against his non-violent principles when he is forced to confront a psychopathic outlaw (played by Lee Marvin
) in a small frontier town. At story's end, Stewart's character—now a rising political figure—faces a difficult ethical choice as he attempts to reconcile his actions with his personal integrity. The film's billing is unusual in that Stewart was given top billing over Wayne in the trailers and on the posters but Wayne had top billing in the film itself, a system later repeated by Robert Redford
and Dustin Hoffman
in All the President's Men
. The film garnered mixed reviews but was an instant hit at the box office, and is now ranked as one of Ford's foremost classics.
How the West Was Won
(which Ford co-directed, though without directing Stewart's scenes) and Cheyenne Autumn
were western epics released in 1962 and 1964
respectively. While the Cinerama
production How the West Was Won went on to win three Oscars
and reaped massive box office figures, Cheyenne Autumn
, in which a white-suited Stewart played Wyatt Earp
in a long semi-comedic sequence in the middle of the movie, failed domestically and was quickly forgotten. It was Ford's final Western and Stewart's last feature film with Ford. Stewart's entertaining middle sequence is not directly connected with the rest of the film and was often excised in later theatrical exhibition prints and some television broadcasts.
Having played his last romantic lead in 1958
's Bell, Book and Candle
, and silver-haired (although not all was his—he wore a partial hairpiece starting with It's a Wonderful Life and in every film thereafter), Stewart transitioned into more family-related films in the 1960s when he signed a multi-movie deal with 20th Century Fox. These included the successful Henry Koster
outing Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
(1962
), and the less memorable films Take Her, She's Mine
(1963
) and Dear Brigitte
(1965
), which featured French model Brigitte Bardot
as the object of Stewart's son's mash notes. The Civil War
period film Shenandoah
(1965) and the western family film The Rare Breed
fared better at the box office; the Civil War movie, with strong antiwar and humanitarian themes, was a smash hit in the South.
As an aviator, Stewart was particularly interested in aviation films and had pushed to appear in several in the 1950s; most notably Strategic Air Command and The Spirit of St. Louis. He continued in this vein in the 1960s, most notably in a role as a hard-bitten pilot in The Flight of the Phoenix
(1965). Subbing for Stewart, famed stunt pilot and air racer Paul Mantz
was killed when he crashed the "Tallmantz Phoenix P-1
", the specially made, single-engine movie model, in an abortive "touch-and-go". Stewart also narrated the film X-15
in 1961. In 1964, he and several other military aviators, including Curtis LeMay
, Paul Tibbets
, and Bruce Sundlun
were founding directors of the board of Tibbets' Executive Jet Aviation Corporation
.
After a progression of lesser western films in the late '60s and early '70s, James Stewart transitioned from cinema to television. In the 1950s he had made guest appearances on the Jack Benny
Program (Benny was his real life neighbor and good friend). Stewart first starred in the NBC comedy The Jimmy Stewart Show
, on which he played a college professor. He followed it with the CBS mystery
Hawkins
, in which he played a small town lawyer investigating his cases. The series garnered Stewart a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Dramatic TV Series, but failed to gain a wide audience and was cancelled after one season. (Andy Griffith
fared much better later in Matlock, based on a similar formula.) During this time, Stewart periodically appeared on Johnny Carson
's The Tonight Show
, sharing poems he had written at different times in his life. His poems were later compiled into a short collection titled Jimmy Stewart and His Poems (1989).
Stewart returned to films after an absence of five years with a major supporting role in John Wayne
's final film, The Shootist
(1976) where Stewart played a doctor giving Wayne's gunfighter a terminal cancer diagnosis. At one point, both Wayne and Stewart were flubbing their lines repeatedly and Stewart turned to director Don Siegel
and said, "You'd better get two better actors". Stewart also appeared in supporting roles in Airport '77
, the 1978 remake
of The Big Sleep
with Robert Mitchum
as Raymond Chandler
's Philip Marlowe
, and The Magic of Lassie
(1978). The latter film received poor reviews and flopped at the box office. Some critics expressed their dismay at seeing the 70-year-old veteran singing as the grandfather. Stewart responded it was the only script he had been offered without any sex, profanity or graphic violence.
, Stewart went into semi-retirement from acting. He donated his papers, films, and other records to Brigham Young University
's Harold B. Lee Library
in 1983. Stewart had diversified investments including real estate, oil wells, a charter-plane company and membership on major corporate boards, and he became a multimillionaire. In the 1980s and 1990s, he did voiceovers for commercials for Campbell's Soups
.
Stewart's best friend Henry Fonda
died in 1982 and his long-time friend Grace Kelly
, his favorite female co-star, was killed in a car crash shortly afterwards. A few months later, Stewart starred with Bette Davis
in Right of Way
, the first made-for-cable movie. He filmed several television movie
s in the 1980s, including Mr. Krueger's Christmas
, which allowed him to fulfill a lifelong dream to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
. He made frequent visits to the Reagan White House and traveled on the lecture circuit. The re-release of his Hitchcock films gained Stewart renewed recognition. Rear Window
and Vertigo
were particularly praised by film critics, which helped bring these pictures to the attention of younger movie-goers. He was presented an Academy Honorary Award
by his friend Cary Grant
in 1985, "for his 50 years of memorable performances, for his high ideals both on and off the screen, with respect and affection of his colleagues."
Stewart became a real life "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in 1988, when he made an impassioned plea in Congressional hearings, along with colleagues Burt Lancaster
, Katharine Hepburn
, Ginger Rogers
, and film director Martin Scorsese
, against Ted Turner
's decision to 'colorize
' classic black and white films, including It's a Wonderful Life. Stewart stated, "the coloring of black-and-white films is wrong. It's morally and artistically wrong and these profiteers should leave our film industry alone".
In 1989, Stewart joined Peter F. Paul
in founding the American Spirit Foundation
to apply entertainment industry resources to developing innovative approaches to public education and to assist the emerging democracy movements in the former Iron Curtain
countries. Paul arranged for Stewart, through the offices of President Boris Yeltsin
, to send a special print of It's a Wonderful Life, translated by Lomonosov Moscow State University, to Russia as the first American program ever to be broadcast on Russian television. On January 5, 1992, coinciding with the first day of the existence of the democratic Commonwealth of Independent States
and Russia, and the first free Russian Orthodox
Christmas Day, Russian TV Channel 2 broadcast It's a Wonderful Life to 200 million Russians who celebrated an American holiday tradition with the American people for the first time in Russian history.
In association with politicians and celebrities such as President Ronald Reagan
, Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, California Governor George Deukmejian
, Bob Hope
and Charlton Heston
, Stewart worked from 1987 to 1993 on projects that enhanced the public appreciation and understanding of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
In 1991, James Stewart voiced the character of Sheriff Wylie Burp in the movie An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
, which was his last film role.
Shortly before his 80th birthday, he was asked how he wanted to be remembered. "As someone who 'believed in hard work and love of country, love of family and love of community.'"
Stewart died from a pulmonary embolism
on July 2, 1997, at his home in Beverly Hills. His death came one day after fellow screen legend and The Big Sleep
co-star Robert Mitchum
had died. Stewart is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery
in Glendale
, California.
"America lost a national treasure today," President Bill Clinton
said on the day Stewart died. "Jimmy Stewart was a great actor, a gentleman and a patriot."
James Stewart was almost universally described by his collaborators as a kind, soft-spoken man and a true professional.
Joan Crawford
, Stewart's co-star in the early period, praised him as an "endearing perfectionist" with "a droll sense of humor and a shy way of watching you to see if you react to that humor."
When Henry Fonda moved to Hollywood in 1934, he was again a roommate with Stewart in an apartment in Brentwood and the two gained a reputation as playboys. Once married, both men's children noted that their favorite activity when not working seemed to be quietly sharing time together while building and painting model airplanes
, a hobby they had taken up in New York, years earlier.
After World War II, Stewart settled down, at age 41, marrying former model Gloria Hatrick McLean (1918–1994) on August 9, 1949. As Stewart loved to recount in self-mockery, "I, I, I pitched the big question to her last night and to my surprise she, she, she said yes!".
Stewart adopted her two sons, Michael and Ronald, and with Gloria he had twin daughters, Judy and Kelly, on May 7, 1951. The couple remained married until her death from lung cancer on February 16, 1994. Ronald McLean was killed in action on June 8, 1969, at the age of 24, while serving as a Marine Corps Lieutenant in Vietnam
. Kelly Stewart is an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis
.
While visiting India in 1959, Stewart reportedly smuggled the remains of a supposed yeti
, the so-called Pangboche Hand
, by hiding them in his luggage (specifically, in his wife's underwear) when he flew from India to London, as a favor to Tom Slick
.
James Stewart was active in philanthropic affairs over the years. His signature charity event, "The Jimmy Stewart Relay Marathon Race", held each year since 1982, has raised millions of dollars for the Child and Family Development Center at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California
.
Stewart was a lifelong supporter of Scouting
. He was a Second Class Scout when he was a youth, an adult Scout leader, and a recipient of the prestigious Silver Buffalo Award
from the Boy Scouts of America
(BSA). In later years, he made advertisements for BSA, which led to him sometimes incorrectly being identified as an Eagle Scout
. (Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
, was also the leader of the "Boy Rangers", a fictional organization patterned after cub scouts.) An award for Boy Scouts, "The James M. Stewart Good Citizenship Award" has been presented since May 17, 2003.
One of Stewart's lesser-known talents was his homespun poetry. He once read a poem that he had written about his dog, entitled "Beau
," while on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
. By the end of this reading, Carson's eyes were welling with tears. This was later parodied on a late 1980s episode of the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live
, with Dana Carvey
as Stewart reciting the poem on Weekend Update
and bringing anchor Dennis Miller
to tears.
In addition to poetry, Stewart talked during Tonight Show appearances about his avid gardening. Stewart purchased the house next door to his own home at 918 North Roxbury Drive, razed the house, and installed his garden in the lot.
and actively campaigned for Richard Nixon
and Ronald Reagan
. He was a "hawk" on the Vietnam War
. Following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy
in 1968, Stewart, Charlton Heston
, Kirk Douglas
and Gregory Peck
issued a statement calling for support of President Lyndon B. Johnson
's Gun Control Act of 1968
.
One of his best friends was fellow actor Henry Fonda
, despite the fact that the two men had very different political ideologies. A political argument in 1947 resulted in a fist fight between them, but the two apparently maintained their friendship by never discussing politics again. There is a brief reference to their political differences in character in their movie The Cheyenne Social Club
. In the last years of his life, he donated to the campaign of Bob Dole
in the 1996 presidential election and to Democratic Florida
governor Bob Graham
in his successful run for the Senate.
From the beginning of James Stewart's career in 1935
through his final theatrical project in 1991
, he appeared in 92 films, television programs and shorts. Through the course of this illustrious career, he appeared in many landmark and critically acclaimed films, including such classics as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
, Rear Window
, The Spirit of St. Louis
, Vertigo
, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
. His roles in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
, The Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life
, Harvey
, and Anatomy of a Murder
earned him Academy Award
nominations (he won for Philadelphia Story). Stewart's career defied the boundaries of genre and trend, and he made his mark in screwball comedies
, suspense thrillers, westerns, biographies
and family films.
, The Philadelphia Story, Harvey
, It's a Wonderful Life
, Shenandoah
, Rear Window
, Rope
, The Man Who Knew Too Much
, The Shop Around the Corner
, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
and Vertigo
. He is the most represented leading actor on the AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) and AFI's 10 Top 10
lists. He is also the most represented leading actor on the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time list presented by Entertainment Weekly
. As of 2007, ten of his films have been inducted into the United States National Film Registry
.
Stewart left his mark on a wide range of film genres, including westerns, suspense thrillers
, family films, biographies and screwball comedies
. He worked for a number of renowned directors later in his career, most notably Alfred Hitchcock
, John Ford
, Billy Wilder
, Frank Capra
, George Cukor
, and Anthony Mann
. He won many of the industry's highest honors and earned Lifetime Achievement awards from every major film organization. He died at age 89, leaving behind a legacy of classic performances, and is considered one of the finest actors of the "Golden Age of Hollywood
". He was named the third Greatest Male Star of All Time
by the American Film Institute
.
Everyman
In literature and drama, the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances...
persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
, winning one in competition and receiving one Lifetime Achievement
Academy Honorary Award
The Academy Honorary Award, instituted in 1948 for the 21st Academy Awards , is given by the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to celebrate motion picture achievements that are not covered by existing Academy Awards, although prior winners of...
award. He was a major MGM contract star. He also had a noted military career and was a World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
veteran
Veteran
A veteran is a person who has had long service or experience in a particular occupation or field; " A veteran of ..."...
, who rose to the rank of Brigadier General
Brigadier general (United States)
A brigadier general in the United States Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, is a one-star general officer, with the pay grade of O-7. Brigadier general ranks above a colonel and below major general. Brigadier general is equivalent to the rank of rear admiral in the other uniformed...
in the United States Air Force Reserve
Air Force Reserve Command
The Air Force Reserve Command is a major command of the U.S. Air Force with its headquarters at Robins AFB, Georgia.It stood up as a major command of the Air Force on 17 February 1997....
.
Early life and career
James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908 in Indiana, PennsylvaniaIndiana, Pennsylvania
Indiana is a borough in and the county seat of Indiana County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 14,895 at the 2000 census.The borough and the region as a whole promotes itself as the "Christmas Tree Capital of the World" because the national Christmas Tree Grower's Association was...
, the son of Elizabeth Ruth (née Jackson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. Stewart's parents were of Scottish
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
Presbyterian origin. His Jackson ancestors served in the American Revolution, the War of 1812
War of 1812
The War of 1812 was a military conflict fought between the forces of the United States of America and those of the British Empire. The Americans declared war in 1812 for several reasons, including trade restrictions because of Britain's ongoing war with France, impressment of American merchant...
and the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
. The eldest of three children (he had two younger sisters, Virginia and Mary), he was expected to continue his father's business, which had been in the family for three generations.
His mother was an excellent pianist but his father discouraged Stewart's request for lessons. But when his father accepted a gift of an accordion from a guest, young Stewart quickly learned to play the instrument, which became a fixture off-stage during his acting career. As the family grew, music continued to be an important part of family life.
Stewart attended Mercersburg Academy
Mercersburg Academy
Mercersburg Academy is an independent, coeducational boarding school for grades 9-12 located in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, United States. The school's mission is:...
prep school, graduating in 1928. He was active in a variety of activities. He played on the football and track teams, was art editor of the KARUX yearbook, and a member of the choir
Choir
A choir, chorale or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform.A body of singers who perform together as a group is called a choir or chorus...
club, glee
Glee (music)
A glee is an English type of part song spanning the late baroque, classical and early romantic periods. It is usually scored for at least three voices, and generally intended to be sung unaccompanied. Glees often consist of a number of short, musically contrasted movements and their texts can be...
club, and John Marshall Literary Society. During his first summer break, Stewart returned to Indiana, Pennsylvania, to work as a brick loader for a local construction company and on highway and road construction jobs where he painted lines on the roads. Over the following two summers, he took a job as an assistant with a professional magician. He also made his first appearance on the stage at Mercersburg, as Buquet in the play The Wolves.
A shy child, Stewart spent much of his after-school time in the basement working on model airplanes, mechanical drawing and chemistry—all with a dream of going into aviation. But he abandoned visions of being a pilot when his father insisted that instead of the United States Naval Academy
United States Naval Academy
The United States Naval Academy is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located in Annapolis, Maryland, United States...
he attend Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
.
Stewart enrolled at Princeton in 1928 as a member of the class of 1932. He excelled at studying architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, so impressing his professors with his thesis on an airport design that he was awarded a scholarship for graduate studies; but he gradually became attracted to the school's drama and music clubs, including the Princeton Triangle Club
Princeton Triangle Club
The Princeton Triangle Club is a theater troupe at Princeton University. Founded in 1891, it is the oldest touring collegiate musical-comedy troupe in the United States, and the only co-ed collegiate troupe that takes an original student-written musical on a national tour every year...
. He was a member of the Princeton Charter Club
Princeton Charter Club
The Princeton Charter Club is one of Princeton University's ten active undergraduate eating clubs located on or near Prospect Avenue in Princeton, New Jersey, United States.-Club history:...
as well as a head cheerleader
Cheerleading
Cheerleading is a physical activity, sometimes a competitive sport, based on organized routines, usually ranging from one to three minutes, which contain the components of tumbling, dance, jumps, cheers, and stunting to direct spectators of events to cheer on sports teams at games or to participate...
. In his spare time, he enjoyed going to the movies at the time when 'talkies' were just displacing silent films.
University Players
The University Players was primarily a summer stock theater company located in West Falmouth, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, from 1928 to 1932. It was formed in 1928 by eighteen college undergraduates...
, an intercollegiate summer stock company in West Falmouth, a town on Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
, Massachusetts. The company had been organized in 1928 and would run until 1932, with Joshua Logan
Joshua Logan
Joshua Lockwood Logan III was an American stage and film director and writer.-Early years:Logan was born in Texarkana, Texas, the son of Susan and Joshua Lockwood Logan. When he was three years old his father committed suicide...
, Bretaigne Windust
Bretaigne Windust
Bretaigne Windust was a French-born theatre, film, and television director.-Early life:He was born Ernest Bretaigne Windust in Paris, France, the son of English violin virtuoso Ernest Joseph Windust and singer Elizabeth Amory Day from New York City...
, and Charles Leatherbee as directors. Stewart performed in bit parts in the Players' productions in Cape Cod during the summer of 1932, after he graduated. The troupe had previously included Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
, who married Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday...
on Christmas Day 1931, while the University Players were in Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, for an 18-week winter season. Sullavan, who had rejoined the University Players in Baltimore in November 1931 at the close of the post-Broadway tour of A Modern Virgin, left the Players for good at the end of The Trial of Mary Dugan
The Trial of Mary Dugan
The Trial of Mary Dugan is a play written by Bayard Veiller.The melodrama concerns a sensational courtroom trial of a showgirl accused of killing of her millionaire lover. Her defense attorney is her brother, Jimmy Dugan. It was first presented on Broadway in 1927, with Ann Harding in the title...
in Baltimore in March 1932. By the time Stewart joined the University Players on Cape Cod after his graduation from Princeton in 1932, Fonda and Sullavan's brief marriage had ended. Stewart and Fonda became great friends over the summer of 1932 when they shared an apartment with Joshua Logan and Myron McCormick
Myron McCormick
Myron McCormick was an American actor of stage, radio and film.McCormick was born as Walter Myron McCormick in Albany, Indiana....
. When Stewart came to New York at the end of the summer stock season, which had included the Broadway try-out of Goodbye Again, he shared an apartment with Fonda, who had by then finalized his divorce from Sullavan. Along with fellow University Players Alfred Dalrymple and Myron McCormick, Stewart debuted on Broadway as a chauffeur in the comedy Goodbye Again, in which he had two lines. The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
noted, "Mr. James Stewart's chauffeur... comes on for three minutes and walks off to a round of spontaneous applause."
The play was a moderate success, but times were hard. Many Broadway theaters had been converted to movie houses and the Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
was reaching bottom. "From 1932 through 1934," Stewart later recalled, "I'd only worked three months. Every play I got into folded." By 1934, he had gotten more substantial stage roles, including the modest hit Page Miss Glory and his first dramatic stage role in Sidney Howard
Sidney Howard
Sidney Coe Howard was an American playwright and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1925 and a posthumous Academy Award in 1940 for the screenplay for Gone with the Wind.-Early life:...
's Yellow Jack
Yellow Jack (play and film)
Yellow Jack is a 1934 play and a 1938 Hollywood movie, both co-written by Sidney Howard and Paul de Kruif ....
, which convinced him to continue his acting career. However, Stewart and Fonda, still roommates, were both struggling.
In the fall of 1934, Fonda's success in The Farmer Takes a Wife
The Farmer Takes a Wife
The Farmer Takes a Wife is a 1934 play by Frank B. Elser and Marc Connelly based on the novel Rome Haul by Walter D. Edmonds. It was well-received upon its opening night on Broadway on October 30, 1934 at the 46th Street Theatre. The production was directed by Marc Connelly and used set designs by...
took him to Hollywood. Finally, Stewart attracted the interest of MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
scout Bill Grady who saw Stewart on the opening night of Divided by Three, a glittering première with many luminaries in attendance, including Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
and Moss Hart
Moss Hart
Moss Hart was an American playwright and theatre director, best known for his interpretations of musical theater on Broadway.-Early years:...
and Fonda, who had returned to New York for the show. With Fonda's encouragement, Stewart agreed to take a screen test, after which he signed a contract with MGM in April 1935, as a contract player for up to seven years at $350 a week.
Upon Stewart's arrival by train in Los Angeles, Fonda greeted him at the station and took him to Fonda's studio-supplied lodging, next door to Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo
Greta Garbo , born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, was a Swedish film actress. Garbo was an international star and icon during Hollywood's silent and classic periods. Many of Garbo's films were sensational hits, and all but three were profitable...
. Stewart's first job at the studio was as a participant in screen tests with newly arrived starlets. At first, he had trouble being cast in Hollywood films owing to his gangling looks and shy, humble screen presence. Aside from an unbilled appearance in a Shemp Howard comedy short
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
called Art Trouble
Art Trouble
Art Trouble is a 1934 comedy short starring Harry Gribbon and Shemp Howard; the film is notable for featuring James Stewart in his first screen role. The short was directed by Ralph Staub...
in 1934, his first film was the poorly received Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 75 films from 1930 to 1967. Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, ranking among the top ten box office draws for almost every year from 1938 to 1951...
vehicle The Murder Man
The Murder Man
The Murder Man is a 1935 crime-drama film starring Spencer Tracy, Virginia Bruce, and Lionel Atwill, and directed by Tim Whelan. It was Tracy's first film in what would be a twenty-year career with MGM. Tracy plays an investigative reporter who specializes in murder cases...
(1935), but Rose Marie
Rose Marie (films)
The 1924 Broadway musical Rose-Marie has been the basis of three MGM films of the same title. The best-known film adaptation was released in 1936; however, a silent version was released in 1928 and another film was released in 1954. All three versions are set in the Canadian wilderness...
(1936), an adaptation of a popular operetta, was more successful. After mixed success in films, he received his first substantial part in 1936
1936 in film
The year 1936 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May 29 - Fritz Lang's first Hollywood film Fury, starring Spencer Tracy and Bruce Cabot, is released.*November 6 - first Porky Pig animated cartoon...
's After the Thin Man
After the Thin Man
After the Thin Man is a 1936 American film, starring William Powell, Myrna Loy, and James Stewart, that is the sequel to the film The Thin Man. The movie presents Powell and Loy as Dashiell Hammett's characters Nick and Nora Charles. The film was directed by W. S...
, featuring a shocking sequence near the end which showcased his acting ability.
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....
, whom he had revered while a student at Princeton only a few years earlier. The romance soon cooled, however, and by chance Stewart encountered Margaret Sullavan again. Stewart found his footing in Hollywood thanks largely to Sullavan, who campaigned for Stewart to be her leading man in the 1936 romantic comedy Next Time We Love
Next Time We Love
Next Time We Love is a 1936 melodrama film directed by Edward H. Griffith and starring Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart and Ray Milland. It was written by Melville Baker with Preston Sturges and Doris Anderson, who were both uncredited, based on Ursula Parrott's 1935 novel Next Time We Live, which...
. She rehearsed extensively with him, having a noticeable effect on his confidence. She encouraged Stewart to feel comfortable with his unique mannerisms and boyish charm and use them naturally as his own style. In the meantime, roommate Fonda continued to arrange parties with starlets, who found Stewart different from the other young actors and irresistible in his own way. Stewart was enjoying Hollywood life and had no regrets about giving up the stage, as he worked six days a week in the MGM factory. In 1936, he acquired big-time agent Leland Hayward
Leland Hayward
Leland Hayward was a Hollywood and Broadway agent and theatrical producer. He produced the original Broadway stage productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The Sound of Music.-Early years:...
, who would eventually marry Sullavan. Hayward started to chart Stewart's career, deciding the best path for him was through loan-outs to other studios.
Pre-war success
In 1938, Stewart had a brief, tumultuous, and well-publicized romance with Hollywood queen Norma Shearer
Norma Shearer
Edith Norma Shearer was a Canadian-American actress. Shearer was one of the most popular actresses in North America from the mid-1920s through the 1930s...
, whose husband, Irving Thalberg
Irving Thalberg
Irving Grant Thalberg was an American film producer during the early years of motion pictures. He was called "The Boy Wonder" for his youth and his extraordinary ability to select the right scripts, choose the right actors, gather the best production staff and make very profitable films.-Life and...
, head of production at MGM, had died two years earlier. Stewart began a successful partnership with director Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
in 1938
1938 in film
The year 1938 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*January — MGM announces that Judy Garland would be cast in the role of "Dorothy" in the upcoming Wizard of Oz motion picture. Ray Bolger is cast as the "Tinman" and Buddy Ebsen is cast as the "Scarecrow". At Bolger's insistence,...
, when he was loaned out to Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
to star in You Can't Take It With You
You Can't Take It with You (film)
You Can't Take It With You Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The cast includes James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Lionel Barrymore and Edward Arnold....
. Frank Capra had been impressed by Stewart's minor role in Navy Blue and Gold
Navy Blue and Gold (film)
Navy Blue and Gold is a 1937 American Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film starring Robert Young, James Stewart and Lionel Barrymore.-Cast:*Robert Young as Roger Ash*James Stewart as "Truck" Cross*Lionel Barrymore as Captain "Skinny" Dawes...
(1937). The director had recently completed several popular movies, including It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night is a 1934 American romantic comedy film with elements of screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra, in which a pampered socialite tries to get out from under her father's thumb, and falls in love with a roguish reporter . The plot was based on the story Night Bus by Samuel...
(1934), and was looking for the right actor to suit his needs — other recent actors in Capra's films such as Clark Gable
Clark Gable
William Clark Gable , known as Clark Gable, was an American film actor most famous for his role as Rhett Butler in the 1939 Civil War epic film Gone with the Wind, in which he starred with Vivien Leigh...
, Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...
, and Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
did not quite fit. Not only was Stewart just what he was looking for, but Capra also found Stewart understood that prototype intuitively and required very little directing. Later Capra commented, "I think he's probably the best actor who's ever hit the screen."
The heart-warming Depression-era film You Can't Take It With You
You Can't Take It with You
You Can't Take It with You is a comedic play in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The original production of the play opened at the Booth Theater on December 14, 1936, and played for 837 performances...
, starring Capra's "favorite actress", comedienne Jean Arthur
Jean Arthur
Jean Arthur was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. She remains arguably the epitome of the female screwball comedy actress. As James Harvey wrote in his recounting of the era, "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur...
, won the 1938
1938 in film
The year 1938 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*January — MGM announces that Judy Garland would be cast in the role of "Dorothy" in the upcoming Wizard of Oz motion picture. Ray Bolger is cast as the "Tinman" and Buddy Ebsen is cast as the "Scarecrow". At Bolger's insistence,...
Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
. The following year saw Stewart work with Capra and Arthur again in the political comedy-drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1939 American drama film starring Jean Arthur and James Stewart about one man's effect on American politics. It was directed by Frank Capra and written by Sidney Buchman, based on Lewis R. Foster's unpublished story. Mr...
. Stewart replaced intended star Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
in the film, playing an idealist thrown into the political arena. Upon its October 1939 release, the film garnered critical praise and became a box-office success. Stewart was nominated for the first of five Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
. Even after this great success, Stewart's parents were still trying to talk him into leaving Hollywood and its sinful ways and to return to his home town to lead a decent life. Instead, he took a secret trip to Europe to take a break and returned home in 1939 just as Germany invaded Poland
Invasion of Poland (1939)
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...
.
Destry Rides Again
Destry Rides Again
Destry Rides Again is a western starring Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. The supporting cast includes Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, Brian Donlevy, Allen Jenkins, Irene Hervey, Billy Gilbert, Bill Cody, Jr., and Una Merkel. The original Max Brand novel was translated into an "oater" with the...
, also released in 1939, became Stewart's first western film, a genre with which he would become identified later in his career. In this western parody, Stewart is a pacifist lawman and Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
is the dancing saloon girl who comes to love him, but doesn't get him. In the film, Dietrich sings her famous song "The Boys In the Back Room". Off-screen, Dietrich did get her man, but the romance was short-lived. Made for Each Other
Made for Each Other (1939 film)
Made for Each Other is a 1939 drama film directed by John Cromwell and produced by David O. Selznick. It stars Carole Lombard and James Stewart as a couple who get married after only knowing each other very briefly.-Plot:...
(1939) had Stewart sharing the screen with irrepressible Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard
Carole Lombard was an American actress. She was particularly noted for her comedic roles in the screwball comedies of the 1930s...
in a melodrama that garnered good reviews for both stars, but did less well with the public. Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
wrote that they were "perfectly cast in the leading roles." Between movies, Stewart began a radio career and became a distinctive voice on the "Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater
Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network ; CBS and NBC . Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences...
", "The Screen Guild Theater
The Screen Guild Theater
The Screen Guild Theater was a popular radio anthology series during the Golden Age of Radio, broadcast from 1939 until 1952, with leading Hollywood actors performing in adaptations of popular motion pictures such as Going My Way and The Postman Always Rings Twice.The show had a long run, lasting...
" and other shows. So well-known had his slow drawl become that comedians started to impersonate him, a form of flattery which continued for most of his life.
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch was a German-born film director. His urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director; as his prestige grew, his films were promoted as having "the Lubitsch touch."In 1947 he received an Honorary Academy Award for his...
romantic comedy, The Shop Around the Corner
The Shop Around the Corner
-External links:* Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, Issue 1, 2010...
, starred Stewart and Sullavan as co-workers unknowingly involved in a pen-pal romance who cannot stand each other in real life (this was later remade into the musical, In the Good Old Summertime
In the Good Old Summertime
In the Good Old Summertime is a 1949 musical film directed by Robert Z. Leonard. It starred Judy Garland, Van Johnson and S.Z. Sakall.The film is a musical adaptation of the 1940 film, The Shop Around the Corner, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, and...
with Judy Garland and Van Johnson, and later as the romantic comedy You've Got Mail
You've Got Mail
You've Got Mail is a 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Nora Ephron, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. It was written by Nora and Delia Ephron based on the play Parfumerie by Miklós László. The film is about two letter-writing lovers who are completely unaware that their sweetheart is in...
with Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
and Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan
Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra , professionally known as Meg Ryan, is an American actress and producer. Raised in Bethel, Connecticut, Ryan began her acting career in 1981 in minor roles, before joining the cast of the CBS soap opera As the World Turns in 1982...
). It was Stewart's fifth film of the year and that rare film shot in sequence; it was completed in only 27 days. The Mortal Storm
The Mortal Storm
The Mortal Storm is a drama film from MGM starring Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, and directed by Frank Borzage.-Production background:...
, directed by Frank Borzage
Frank Borzage
Frank Borzage was an American film director and actor.-Biography:Frank Borzage's father, Luigi Borzaga, was born in Ronzone, in 1859. As a stonemason, he sometimes worked in Switzerland; he met his future wife, Maria Ruegg , where she worked in a silk factory...
, was one of the first blatantly anti-Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
films to be produced in Hollywood and featured the pair as friends and then lovers caught in turmoil upon Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's rise to power.
Stewart also starred with Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
and Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
in George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
's classic The Philadelphia Story (1940). His performance as an intrusive, fast-talking reporter earned him his only Academy Award
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
in a competitive category (Best Actor, 1941), and he beat out his good friend Henry Fonda (The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath (film)
The Grapes of Wrath is a 1940 drama film directed by John Ford. It was based on John Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The screenplay was written by Nunnally Johnson and the executive producer was Darryl F...
). Stewart thought his performance "entertaining and slick and smooth" but lacking the "guts" of "Mr. Smith." Stewart gave the Oscar statuette to his father, who displayed it for many years in a case inside the front door of his hardware store, alongside other family awards and military medals.
During the months before he began military service, Stewart appeared in a series of screwball comedies
Screwball Comedy
Screwball Comedy is an album by the Japanese band Soul Flower Union. The album found the band going into a simpler, harder-rocking direction, after several heavily world-music influenced albums.-Track listing:...
with varying levels of success. He followed the mediocre No Time for Comedy
No Time for Comedy
No Time for Comedy is a 1940 comedy-drama film based on the play of the same name by S. N. Behrman, starring James Stewart, Rosalind Russell, Genevieve Tobin and Charles Ruggles.-Plot summary:...
(1940) and Come Live with Me
Come Live with Me
Come Live with Me is a 1941 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer romantic comedy film starring James Stewart and Hedy Lamarr, directed by Clarence Brown.-Plot:...
(1941) with the Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
musical Ziegfeld Girl
Ziegfeld Girl (film)
Ziegfeld Girl is a 1941 American film starring James Stewart, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and Lana Turner, and co-starring Tony Martin, Jackie Cooper, Eve Arden, and Philip Dorn. Released by MGM, it was directed by Robert Z...
and the George Marshall
George Marshall
George Catlett Marshall was an American military leader, Chief of Staff of the Army, Secretary of State, and the third Secretary of Defense...
romantic comedy Pot o' Gold. Stewart was drafted in late 1940, a situation that coincided with the lapse in his MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
contract, marking a turning point in Stewart's career, with 28 movies to his credit at that point.
Military service
The Stewart family had deep military roots as both grandfathers had fought in the Civil WarAmerican Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, and his father had served during both the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
and World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. Stewart considered his father to be the biggest influence on his life, so it was not surprising that, when another war eventually came, he too was eager to serve. Members of his family had previously been in the infantry, but Stewart chose to become a military flyer.
An early interest in flying led Stewart to gain his Private Pilot certificate
Private Pilot License
A Private Pilot License or, in the United States of America, a Private Pilot Certificate, is a license that permits the holder to act as the pilot of an aircraft privately . The requirements to obtain the license are determined by the International Civil Aviation Authority , but the actual...
in 1935 and Commercial Pilot certificate
Commercial Pilot Licence
A Commercial Pilot License or, in the United States, a Commercial Pilot Certificate, is a qualification that permits the holder to act as the Pilot In Command of a single pilot aircraft, or as co-pilot of a multi-pilot aircraft and be paid for his/her work.The basic requirements to obtain the...
in 1938. He often flew cross-country to visit his parents in Pennsylvania, navigating by the railroad tracks. Nearly two years before the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
, Stewart had accumulated over 400 hours of flying time.
Considered a highly proficient pilot, he even entered a cross-country race as a co-pilot in 1939. Stewart, along with musician/composer Hoagy Carmichael
Hoagy Carmichael
Howard Hoagland "Hoagy" Carmichael was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust", "Georgia On My Mind", "The Nearness of You", and "Heart and Soul", four of the most-recorded American songs of all time.Alec Wilder, in his study of the...
, saw the need for trained war pilots, and joined with other Hollywood celebrities to invest in Thunderbird Field
Thunderbird Field
Thunderbird Field was a military airfield in Glendale, Arizona, used for contract primary flight training of Allied pilots during World War II. Created in part by actor James Stewart, the field became part of the United States Army Air Forces training establishment just prior to American entry...
, a pilot-training school built and operated by Southwest Airways in Glendale, Arizona
Glendale, Arizona
Glendale is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA, located about nine miles northwest from Downtown Phoenix. According to 2010 Census Bureau, the population of the city is 226,721....
. This airfield became part of the United States Army Air Forces
United States Army Air Forces
The United States Army Air Forces was the military aviation arm of the United States of America during and immediately after World War II, and the direct predecessor of the United States Air Force....
training establishment and trained more than 10,000 pilots during World War II, and is now the home of Thunderbird School of Global Management
Thunderbird School of Global Management
Thunderbird School of Global Management is a private business school whose main campus is located in Glendale, Arizona. Founded in 1946 by retired U.S...
.
Later in 1940, Stewart was drafted into the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
but was rejected for failing to meet height and weight requirements for new recruits—Stewart was five pounds (2.3 kg) under the standard. To get up to 148 pounds, he sought out the help of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's muscle man and trainer Don Loomis, who was noted for his ability to add or subtract pounds in his studio gymnasium. Stewart subsequently attempted to enlist in the Army Air Corps
United States Army Air Corps
The United States Army Air Corps was a forerunner of the United States Air Force. Renamed from the Air Service on 2 July 1926, it was part of the United States Army and the predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces , established in 1941...
, but still came in under the weight requirement, although he persuaded the AAC enlistment officer to run new tests, this time passing the weigh-in, with the result that Stewart enlisted in the Army in March 1941. He became the first major American movie star to wear a military uniform in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the morning of December 7, 1941...
brought the US directly into the conflict. He was posted to Moffett Field and then Mather Field as an instructor pilot in single- and twin-engine aircraft.
Public appearances by Stewart were limited engagements scheduled by the Army Air Forces. "Stewart appeared several times on network radio with Edgar Bergen
Edgar Bergen
Edgar John Bergen was an American actor and radio performer, best known as a ventriloquist.-Early life:...
and Charlie McCarthy. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, he performed with Orson Welles
Orson Welles
George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...
, Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson
Edward G. Robinson was a Romanian-born American actor. A popular star during Hollywood's Golden Age, he is best remembered for his roles as gangsters, such as Rico in his star-making film Little Caesar and as Rocco in Key Largo...
, Walter Huston
Walter Huston
Walter Thomas Huston was a Canadian-born American actor. He was the father of actor and director John Huston and the grandfather of actress Anjelica Huston and actor Danny Huston.-Life and career:...
, and Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage, screen and radio. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul...
in an all-network radio program called We Hold These Truths, dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Bill of Rights." In early 1942, Stewart was asked to appear in a propaganda film to help recruit the anticipated 100,000 airmen that the USAAF would need to win the war. The USAAC's First Motion Picture Unit
First Motion Picture Unit
The First Motion Picture Unit was the first unit of the United States Military to be made up entirely of motion picture personnel. It was also the title of a 1943 documentary about the unit.-Organization:...
shot scenes of Lieutenant Stewart in his pilot's flight suit and recorded his voice for narration. The short film, Winning Your Wings
Winning Your Wings
Winning Your Wings is a 1942 Allied propaganda film of World War II produced by the US Army Air Force First Motion Picture Unit, starring Jimmy Stewart. It was aimed at young men who were thinking about joining the Air Force....
, appeared nationwide beginning in late May and was very successful, resulting in 150,000 new recruits.
Stewart was concerned that his expertise and celebrity status would relegate him to instructor duties "behind the lines." His fears were confirmed when he was stationed for six months at Kirtland Air Force Base
Kirtland Air Force Base
Kirtland Air Force Base is a United States Air Force base located in the southeast quadrant of the Albuquerque, New Mexico urban area, adjacent to the Albuquerque International Sunport. The base was named for the early Army aviator Col. Roy C. Kirtland...
in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Albuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 545,852 as of the 2010 Census and ranks as the 32nd-largest city in the U.S. As...
, to train bombardiers. He was transferred to Hobbs AAF
Hobbs Army Airfield
Hobbs Army Air Field was an airfield used during World War II by the United States Army Air Force Air Training Command as part of the Western Flight Training Center.-History:On 18 December 1941, eleven days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Maj...
to become an instructor pilot for the four-engine B-17 Flying Fortress, where he trained B-17 pilots for nine months at Gowen Field in Boise, Idaho
Boise, Idaho
Boise is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Idaho, as well as the county seat of Ada County. Located on the Boise River, it anchors the Boise City-Nampa metropolitan area and is the largest city between Salt Lake City, Utah and Portland, Oregon.As of the 2010 Census Bureau,...
.
Still, the war was moving on. For the 36-year-old Stewart, combat duty seemed far away and unreachable and he had no clear plans for the future. But then a rumor that Stewart would be taken off flying status and assigned to making training films or selling bonds called for his immediate and decisive action, because what he dreaded most was the hope-shattering spectre of a dead end." Stewart appealed to his commander, a pre-war aviator, who understood the situation and reassigned him to a unit going overseas.
Sioux Gateway Airport
-History:The construction of Sioux City Army Air Base began in March 1942, about three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Opened on 5 July 1942, it became a major training center during World War II for crew members of B-24 Liberators and B-17 Flying Fortresses...
, Iowa, first as operations officer of the 703d Bombardment Squadron
703d Bombardment Squadron
The 703d Bombardment Squadron is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last was assigned to the 452d Bombardment Group, stationed at Fresno Air Base, California. It was inactivated on 27 June 1949.-History:...
and then as its commander, at the rank of captain. In December, the 445th Bombardment Group flew its B-24 Liberator bombers to RAF Tibenham
RAF Tibenham
RAF Tibenham is a former World War II Royal Air Force Station and airfield in England. It is located about south-southwest of Norwich, N of Diss in Norfolk...
, Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and immediately began combat operations. While flying missions over Germany, Stewart was promoted to major. In March 1944, he was transferred as group operations officer to the 453rd Bombardment Group
453rd Bombardment Group
The 453d Operations Group is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was to the 43d Air Refueling Wing, stationed at Souda Bay, Greece...
, a new B-24 unit that had been experiencing difficulties. As a means to inspire his new group, Stewart flew as command pilot in the lead B-24 on numerous missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. These missions went uncounted at Stewart's orders. His "official" total is listed as 20 and is limited to those with the 445th. In 1944, he twice received the Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Cross (United States)
The Distinguished Flying Cross is a medal awarded to any officer or enlisted member of the United States armed forces who distinguishes himself or herself in support of operations by "heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight, subsequent to November 11, 1918." The...
for actions in combat and was awarded the Croix de Guerre
Croix de guerre
The Croix de guerre is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was awarded during World War I, again in World War II, and in other conflicts...
. He also received the Air Medal
Air Medal
The Air Medal is a military decoration of the United States. The award was created in 1942, and is awarded for meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight.-Criteria:...
with three oak leaf cluster
Oak leaf cluster
An oak leaf cluster is a common device which is placed on U.S. Army and Air Force awards and decorations to denote those who have received more than one bestowal of a particular decoration. The number of oak leaf clusters typically indicates the number of subsequent awards of the decoration...
s. In July 1944, after flying 20 combat missions, Stewart was made Chief of Staff
Chief of Staff
The title, chief of staff, identifies the leader of a complex organization, institution, or body of persons and it also may identify a Principal Staff Officer , who is the coordinator of the supporting staff or a primary aide to an important individual, such as a president.In general, a chief of...
of the 2nd Combat Bombardment Wing
2d Bomb Wing
The 2d Bomb Wing is a United States Air Force unit assigned to the Air Force Global Strike Command and Eighth Air Force. It is stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. The wing is also the host unit at Barksdale...
of the Eighth Air Force
Eighth Air Force
The Eighth Air Force is a numbered air force of the United States Air Force Global Strike Command . It is headquartered at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana....
, and though he was no longer required or expected to fly missions, he continued to do so. Before the war ended, he was promoted to colonel, one of the few Americans to rise from private to colonel in four years.
At the beginning of June 1945, Stewart was the presiding officer of the court-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
of a pilot and navigator who were charged with dereliction of duty when they accidentally bombed the Swiss city of Zurich the previous March—the first instance of U.S. personnel being tried for an attack on a neutral country. The Court acquitted the accused.
Air Force Reserve Command
The Air Force Reserve Command is a major command of the U.S. Air Force with its headquarters at Robins AFB, Georgia.It stood up as a major command of the Air Force on 17 February 1997....
after the war, achieving the rank of Brigadier General
Brigadier general (United States)
A brigadier general in the United States Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps, is a one-star general officer, with the pay grade of O-7. Brigadier general ranks above a colonel and below major general. Brigadier general is equivalent to the rank of rear admiral in the other uniformed...
on July 23, 1959. Stewart did not often talk of his wartime service, perhaps due to his desire to be seen as a regular soldier doing his duty instead of as a celebrity. He did appear on the TV series The World At War to discuss the October 14, 1943, bombing mission to Schweinfurt
Schweinfurt
Schweinfurt is a city in the Lower Franconia region of Bavaria in Germany on the right bank of the canalized Main, which is here spanned by several bridges, 27 km northeast of Würzburg.- History :...
, which was the center of the German ball-bearing industry. This mission is known in USAF history as Black Thursday
Second Raid on Schweinfurt
The second Schweinfurt raid bombed World War II ball bearing factories to reduce production of these vital parts for all manner of war machines. Named Black Thursday because the loss of aircrewmen was the highest for any USAAF mission...
due to the high casualties it sustained; 60 aircraft were lost out of 291 B-17s dispatched unescorted to Schweinfurt. The available escort aircraft lacked the range to accompany them. Upon his request, he was identified only as "James Stewart, Squadron Commander" in the documentary.
After the war, Stewart served as Air Force Reserve commander of Dobbins Air Reserve Base
Dobbins Air Reserve Base
Dobbins Air Reserve Base or Dobbins ARB is a United States air reserve base located in Marietta, Georgia, a suburb about northwest of Atlanta. It was named in honor of Captain Charles M. Dobbins, a World War II C-47 pilot who died near Sicily...
in the early 1950s. In 1966, Brigadier General James Stewart flew as a non-duty observer in a B-52
B-52 Stratofortress
The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress is a long-range, subsonic, jet-powered strategic bomber operated by the United States Air Force since the 1950s. The B-52 was designed and built by Boeing, who have continued to provide maintainence and upgrades to the aircraft in service...
on a bombing mission during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. At the time of his B-52 flight, he refused the release of any publicity regarding his participation, as he did not want it treated as a stunt, but as part of his job as an officer in the Air Force Reserve. After 27 years of service, Stewart retired from the Air Force on May 31, 1968. After his retirement, he was promoted to Major General
Major General
Major general or major-general is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. A major general is a high-ranking officer, normally subordinate to the rank of lieutenant general and senior to the ranks of brigadier and brigadier general...
by President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
.
Post-war success
Leland Hayward
Leland Hayward was a Hollywood and Broadway agent and theatrical producer. He produced the original Broadway stage productions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and The Sound of Music.-Early years:...
, and considered going into the aviation industry if his re-started film career did not prosper. Upon Stewart's return to Hollywood in fall 1945, he decided not to renew his MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. is an American media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of films and television programs. MGM was founded in 1924 when the entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer...
contract. He signed with an MCA
Music Corporation of America
MCA, Inc. was an American talent agency. Initially starting in the music business, they would next become a dominant force in the film business, and later expanded into the television business...
talent agency. His former agent Leland Hayward got out of the talent business in 1944 after selling his A-list of stars, including Stewart, to MCA. The move made Stewart one of the first independently contracted actors, and gave him more freedom to choose roles. Stewart was able to work without limits on director and studio availability for the remainder of his career.
For his first film in five years, Stewart appeared in his third and final Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
production, It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
. Capra paid RKO for the rights to the story and formed his own production company, Liberty Films
Liberty Films
Liberty Films was an independent motion picture production company founded in California by Frank Capra and Samuel J. Briskin in April 1945. It produced only two films, It's a Wonderful Life , originally released by RKO Radio Pictures, and the film version of the hit play State of the Union ,...
. The female lead went to Donna Reed
Donna Reed
Donna Reed was an American film and television actress.With appearances in over 40 films, Reed received the 1953 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the tramp Lorene in the war drama From Here to Eternity. She is also noted for her role in the perennial Christmas...
, after Capra's perennial first choice, Jean Arthur
Jean Arthur
Jean Arthur was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. She remains arguably the epitome of the female screwball comedy actress. As James Harvey wrote in his recounting of the era, "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur...
, was unavailable, and after turn-downs from Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....
, Olivia de Havilland
Olivia de Havilland
Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...
, Ann Dvorak
Ann Dvorak
Ann Dvorak was an American film actress.Asked how to pronounce her adopted surname, she told The Literary Digest: "My name is properly pronounced vor'shack. The D remains silent...
and Martha Scott
Martha Scott
Martha Ellen Scott was an American actress best known for her roles as mother of the lead character in numerous films and television shows.-Early life:...
. Stewart appeared as George Bailey
George Bailey (fictional character)
George Bailey is a fictional character and the main protagonist in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. He is played by James Stewart. He is loosely based on George Pratt, a character in Philip Van Doren Stern's The Greatest Gift....
, an upstanding small-town man who becomes increasingly frustrated by his ordinary existence and financial troubles. Driven to suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
on Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...
, he is led to reassess his life by Clarence Odbody
Clarence Odbody
Clarence Odbody is a fictional character in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life. He is portrayed by Henry Travers.-In the story:...
AS2, an "angel, second class", played by Henry Travers
Henry Travers
Henry Travers was an English actor. His most memorable role was that of the angel, Clarence, in the 1946 motion picture It's A Wonderful Life.-Early life:...
.
Although the film was nominated for five Academy Awards
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
, including Stewart's third Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
nomination, it received mixed reviews and only disappointingly moderate success at the box office, possibly due to its dark nature. However, in the decades since the film's release, it grew to define Stewart's film persona and is widely considered as a sentimental Christmas film classic and, according to the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
, one of the best movies
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
The first of the AFI 100 Years… series of cinematic milestones, AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies is a list of the 100 best American movies, as determined by the American Film Institute from a poll of more than 1,500 artists and leaders in the film industry who chose from a list of 400 nominated movies...
ever made. The movie had actually fallen into public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
for years and was rebroadcast often by television stations during this period as a result, establishing a huge audience familiarity.
In the aftermath of the film, Capra's production company went into bankruptcy, while Stewart started to have doubts about his ability to act after his military hiatus. His father kept insisting he come home and marry a local girl. Meanwhile in Hollywood, his generation of actors were fading and a new wave of actors would soon remake the town, including Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
, Montgomery Clift
Montgomery Clift
Edward Montgomery Clift was an American film and stage actor. The New York Times’ obituary noted his portrayal of "moody, sensitive young men"....
, and James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
.
Magic Town
Magic Town is a comedy film directed by William A. Wellman, starring James Stewart and Jane Wyman. It is one of the first films about the then-new science of public opinion polling...
(1947) and the completion of Rope
Rope (film)
Rope is a 1948 American thriller film based on the play Rope by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Sidney Bernstein and Hitchcock as the first of their Transatlantic Pictures productions...
(1948) and Call Northside 777
Call Northside 777
Call Northside 777 is a documentary-style film noir directed by Henry Hathaway. It is based on the true story of a Chicago reporter who proved that a man, who had been in prison for murder, was wrongly convicted 11 years before....
(1948), Stewart had two flops with On Our Merry Way
On Our Merry Way
On Our Merry Way is an American comedy film, produced by Benedict Bogeaus and Burgess Meredith, and released by United Artists. At the time of its release, King Vidor and Leslie Fenton were credited with its direction, although the DVD lists John Huston and George Stevens, who assisted with one of...
(1948), a comedic musical ensemble in which Stewart and Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
played two musicians named "Slim" and "Lank," and You Gotta Stay Happy
You Gotta Stay Happy
You Gotta Stay Happy is a 1948 Universal-International romantic-comedy starring James Stewart, Joan Fontaine and Eddie Albert.-Plot:Marvin Payne is a World War II army air force veteran trying to make it on a shoe-string with a startup air-freight business...
(1949), for which the posters depicted Stewart being kissed on one cheek by top-billed Joan Fontaine
Joan Fontaine
Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland , known professionally as Joan Fontaine, is a British American actress. She and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland are two of the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s....
and on the other by a chimpanzee
Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
. In the documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
James Stewart: A Wonderful Life (1987), hosted by Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years . Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1985 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987...
, Stewart said that he went back to Westerns
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
in 1950 in part because a string of films that were flops.
Stewart decided to return to the stage for the Mary Chase
Mary Coyle Chase
Mary Coyle Chase was an American journalist, playwright and screenwriter, known primarily for writing the Broadway play Harvey, later adapted for film starring James Stewart...
-penned comedy, Harvey
Harvey (play)
Harvey is a 1944 play by American playwright Mary Chase. Produced by Brock Pemberton and directed by Antoinette Perry, the play premiered on 1 November 1944 at the 48th Street Theatre on Broadway where it was staged for 1,775 performances before closing on January 15, 1949. The original production...
, which had opened to nearly universal praise in November 1944. Elwood P. Dowd, the protagonist and Stewart's character, is a wealthy eccentric living with his sister and his niece, and whose best friend is an invisible rabbit as large as a man. Dowd's eccentricity, especially the friendship with the rabbit, is ruining the niece's hopes of finding a husband. While trying to have Dowd committed to a sanatorium
Sanatorium
A sanatorium is a medical facility for long-term illness, most typically associated with treatment of tuberculosis before antibiotics...
, his sister is committed herself while the play follows Dowd on an ordinary day in his not-so-ordinary life. Stewart took over the role from Frank Fay
Frank Fay (American actor)
Frank Fay was an American film and stage actor, emcee, comedian, best known as an actor for having played "Elwood P. Dowd" in the play Harvey by the American playwright Mary Coyle Chase on Broadway...
and gained an increased Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
following in the unconventional play. The play, which ran for nearly three years with Stewart as its star, was successfully adapted into a 1950
1950 in film
The year 1950 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 15 - Walt Disney Studios' animated film Cinderella debuts.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:*Ambush...
film
Harvey (film)
Harvey is a 1950 film based on Mary Chase's play of the same name, directed by Henry Koster, and starring James Stewart and Josephine Hull. The story is about a man whose best friend is a pooka named Harvey—in the form of a six-foot, three-and-one-half-inch tall invisible rabbit.-Plot:Elwood P...
, directed by Henry Koster
Henry Koster
Henry Koster was born Hermann Kosterlitz in Berlin, Germany. He became a film director and later moved to Hollywood. Koster's father, a salesman, left home when Henry was a young man...
, with Stewart as Dowd and Josephine Hull
Josephine Hull
Josephine Hull was an Academy Award winning American actress who also was a director of plays. She had a successful 50-year career on stage while taking some of her better known roles to film...
as his sister, Veta. Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
was the first choice for the movie but he declined. Stewart received his fourth Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
nomination for his performance in the film.
After Harvey, the comedic adventure film Malaya
Malaya (film)
Malaya is a 1949 war film set in colonial Malaya during World War II, starring Spencer Tracy and James Stewart. The movie was directed by Richard Thorpe.-Plot:...
(1949) with Spencer Tracy
Spencer Tracy
Spencer Bonaventure Tracy was an American theatrical and film actor, who appeared in 75 films from 1930 to 1967. Tracy was one of the major stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, ranking among the top ten box office draws for almost every year from 1938 to 1951...
and the conventional but highly successful biographical film The Stratton Story
The Stratton Story
The Stratton Story is a 1949 film directed by Sam Wood which tells the true story of Monty Stratton, a Major League Baseball pitcher who pitched for the Chicago White Sox from 1934-1938...
in 1949
1949 in film
The year 1949 in film involved some significant events.-Top grossing films :- Awards :Academy Awards:*Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff, starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello...
, Stewart's first pairing with "on-screen wife" June Allyson
June Allyson
June Allyson was an American film and television actress, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a major MGM contract star. Allyson won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss . From 1959–1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own CBS anthology...
, his career took another turn. During the 1950s, he expanded into the western and suspense
Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...
genres, thanks largely to collaborations with directors Anthony Mann
Anthony Mann
Anthony Mann was an American actor and film director, most notably of film noirs and Westerns. As a director, he often collaborated with the cinematographer John Alton and with James Stewart in his Westerns.-Biography:...
and Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
.
Other notable performances by Stewart during this time include the critically acclaimed 1950
1950 in film
The year 1950 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 15 - Walt Disney Studios' animated film Cinderella debuts.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:*Ambush...
Delmer Daves
Delmer Daves
Delmer Daves was an American screenwriter, director, and producer.-Life and career:Born in San Francisco, Delmer Daves first pursued a career as a lawyer...
western Broken Arrow
Broken Arrow (1950 film)
Broken Arrow is a western Technicolor film released in 1950. It was directed by Delmer Daves and starred James Stewart and Jeff Chandler. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, and won a Golden Globe award for Best Film Promoting International Understanding. It made history as the first...
, which featured Stewart as an ex-soldier and Indian agent making peace with the Apache
Apache
Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...
; a troubled clown in the 1952
1952 in film
The year 1952 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 10 - Cecil B. DeMille's circus epic, The Greatest Show on Earth, premieres at Radio City Music Hall in New York City....
Best Picture
Academy Award for Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to artists working in the motion picture industry. The Best Picture category is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible not only...
The Greatest Show on Earth
The Greatest Show on Earth
The Greatest Show on Earth is a 1952 drama film set in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The film was produced, directed, and narrated by Cecil B. DeMille, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture...
; and Stewart's role as Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Augustus Lindbergh was an American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist.Lindbergh, a 25-year-old U.S...
in Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
's 1957
1957 in film
The year 1957 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* October 21 - The movie Jailhouse Rock, starring Elvis Presley, opens.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue-Awards:...
film The Spirit of St. Louis
The Spirit of St. Louis (film)
The Spirit of St. Louis is a 1957 biographical film directed by Billy Wilder and starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh. The screenplay was adapted by Charles Lederer, Wendell Mayes, and Billy Wilder from Lindbergh's 1953 autobiographical account of his historic flight, which won the Pulitzer...
. He also starred in the western radio show The Six Shooter
The Six Shooter
The Six Shooter was a weekly old-time radio program in the United States. It was created by Frank Burt, who also wrote many of the episodes, and lasted only one season of 39 episodes on NBC . Through March 21, 1954 it was broadcast Sundays at 8 p.m...
for its one-season run from 1953 to 1954. During this time Stewart wore the same cowboy hat
Cowboy hat
The cowboy hat is a high-crowned, wide-brimmed hat best known as the defining piece of attire for the North American cowboy. Today it is worn by many people, and is particularly associated with ranch workers in the western and southern United States, western Canada and northern Mexico, with...
and rode the same horse, named "Pie", in most of his Westerns.
Collaborations with Hitchcock and Mann
James Stewart's collaborations with director Anthony MannAnthony Mann
Anthony Mann was an American actor and film director, most notably of film noirs and Westerns. As a director, he often collaborated with the cinematographer John Alton and with James Stewart in his Westerns.-Biography:...
increased Stewart's popularity and sent his career into the realm of the western. Stewart's first appearance in a film directed by Mann came with the 1950
1950 in film
The year 1950 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 15 - Walt Disney Studios' animated film Cinderella debuts.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:*Ambush...
western, Winchester '73. In choosing Mann (after first choice Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
declined), Stewart cemented a powerful partnership. The film, which became a massive box office hit upon its release, set the pattern for their future collaborations. In it, Stewart is a tough, revengeful sharpshooter, the winner of a prized rifle which is stolen and then passes through many hands, until the showdown between Stewart and his brother (Stephen McNally
Stephen McNally
Stephen McNally was an American actor remembered mostly for his appearances in many westerns and action films. He was an attorney in the late 1930s before pursuing a career in acting.-Career:...
).
Bend of the River
Bend of the River is a 1952 American Western film directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart in their second collaboration. The film is based on the novel Bend of the Snake by Bill Gulick.-Plot:...
(1952
1952 in film
The year 1952 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 10 - Cecil B. DeMille's circus epic, The Greatest Show on Earth, premieres at Radio City Music Hall in New York City....
), The Naked Spur
The Naked Spur
The Naked Spur is a 1953 American western movie directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart in their third collaboration. The screenplay was written by Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay - a rare honor for a Western. The...
(1953
1953 in film
The year 1953 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*September 16 — The Robe debuts as the first anamorphic, widescreen CinemaScope film.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:A...
), The Far Country
The Far Country
The Far Country is a 1954 American western movie directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart in their fourth western collaboration...
(1954
1954 in film
The year 1954 in film involved some significant events and memorable ones.-Events:*May 12 - The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx divorces wife Marion Benda...
) and The Man from Laramie
The Man from Laramie
The Man from Laramie is an American Technicolor Western film directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart in the fifth and final of their Western collaborations, and their seventh collaboration overall. It was adapted from a story of the same title by Thomas T...
(1955
1955 in film
The year 1955 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* November 3 - The musical Guys and Dolls, starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, debuts.* June 27 - The last ever Republic serial, King of the Carnival, is released....
), were perennial favorites among young audiences entranced by the American West. Frequently, the films featured Stewart as a troubled cowboy seeking redemption, while facing corrupt cattlemen, ranchers and outlaws—a man who knows violence first hand and struggles to control it. The Stewart-Mann collaborations laid the foundation for many of the westerns of the 1950s and remain popular today for their grittier, more realistic depiction of the classic movie genre. Audiences saw Stewart's screen persona evolve into a more mature, more ambiguous, and edgier presence.
Stewart and Mann also collaborated on other films outside the western genre. 1954
1954 in film
The year 1954 in film involved some significant events and memorable ones.-Events:*May 12 - The Marx Brothers' Zeppo Marx divorces wife Marion Benda...
's The Glenn Miller Story
The Glenn Miller Story
The Glenn Miller Story is a 1954 American film directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart in their first non-western collaboration.-Plot:...
was critically acclaimed, garnering Stewart a BAFTA Award nomination, and (together with The Spirit of St. Louis) cemented the popularity of Stewart's portrayals of 'American heroes'. Thunder Bay
Thunder Bay (film)
Thunder Bay is a 1953 American adventure film directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart in their second non-western collaboration.- Plot :...
, released the same year, transplanted the plot arc of their western collaborations to a more contemporary setting, with Stewart as a Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
oil driller facing corruption. Strategic Air Command
Strategic Air Command (film)
Strategic Air Command is a 1955 American film starring James Stewart and June Allyson, and directed by Anthony Mann. Released by Paramount Pictures, it was the first of four films that depicted the role of the Strategic Air Command in the Cold War era....
, released in 1955
1955 in film
The year 1955 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* November 3 - The musical Guys and Dolls, starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra, debuts.* June 27 - The last ever Republic serial, King of the Carnival, is released....
, allowed Stewart to use his experiences in the United States Air Force on film.
Stewart's starring role in Winchester '73 was also a turning point in Hollywood. Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
, who wanted Stewart to appear in both that film and Harvey, balked at his $200,000 asking price. Stewart's agent, Lew Wasserman
Lew Wasserman
Lewis Robert "Lew" Wasserman was an American talent agent and studio executive, sometimes credited with creating and later taking apart the studio system in a career spanning more than six decades...
, brokered an alternate deal, in which Stewart would appear in both films for no pay, in exchange for a percentage of the profits and cast and director approval.
This wasn't the first such deal at Universal; Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...
also had a profit participation contract, but they were no longer top-flight moneymakers by 1950. Stewart ended up earning about $600,000 for Winchester '73 alone. Hollywood's other stars quickly capitalized on this new way of doing business, which further undermined the decaying "studio system
Studio system
The studio system was a means of film production and distribution dominant in Hollywood from the early 1920s through the early 1960s. The term studio system refers to the practice of large motion picture studios producing movies primarily on their own filmmaking lots with creative personnel under...
".
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
. Like Mann, Hitchcock uncovered new depths to Stewart's acting, showing a protagonist confronting his fears and his repressed desires. Stewart's first movie with Hitchcock was the technologically innovative 1948
1948 in film
The year 1948 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* Laurence Olivier's Hamlet becomes the first British film to win the American Academy Award for Best Picture.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :...
film Rope
Rope (film)
Rope is a 1948 American thriller film based on the play Rope by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Sidney Bernstein and Hitchcock as the first of their Transatlantic Pictures productions...
, shot in long "real time" takes.
Rear Window
Rear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...
, one of Hitchcock's masterpieces. Stewart portrays photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries, loosely based on Life
Life (magazine)
Life generally refers to three American magazines:*A humor and general interest magazine published from 1883 to 1936. Time founder Henry Luce bought the magazine in 1936 solely so that he could acquire the rights to its name....
photographer Robert Capa
Robert Capa
Robert Capa was a Hungarian combat photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War...
, who projects his fantasies and fears onto the people he observes out his apartment window while on hiatus due to a broken leg. Jeffries gets into more than he can handle, however, when he believes he has witnessed a salesman (Raymond Burr
Raymond Burr
Raymond William Stacey Burr was a Canadian actor, primarily known for his title roles in the television dramas Perry Mason and Ironside. His early acting career included roles on Broadway, radio, television and in film, usually as the villain...
) commit a murder, and when his glamorous girlfriend (Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly
Grace Patricia Kelly was an American actress who, in April 1956, married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, to become Princess consort of Monaco, styled as Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, and commonly referred to as Princess Grace.After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of...
), at first disdainful of his voyeurism and skeptical about any crime, eventually is drawn in and tries to help solve the mystery. Limited by his wheelchair, Stewart is masterfully led by Hitchcock to react to what his character sees with mostly facial responses. It was a landmark year for Stewart, becoming the highest grossing actor of 1954 and the most popular Hollywood star in the world, displacing John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
. Hitchcock and Stewart formed a corporation, Patron Inc., to produce the film, which later became the subject of a Supreme Court case Stewart v. Abend
Stewart v. Abend
Stewart v. Abend, 495 U.S. 207 , was an important United States Supreme Court decision which held that a copyright owner has the exclusive right to permit the creation and exploitation of derivative works, regardless of potentially conflicting agreements by prior copyright holders.-Facts:Cornell...
(1990).
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 film)
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a British suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring Peter Lorre, and released by Gaumont British. It was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock's British period....
production, The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 film)
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring James Stewart and Doris Day. The film is a remake in widescreen VistaVision and Technicolor of Hitchcock's 1934 film of the same name....
(1956), with co-star Doris Day
Doris Day
Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...
, Stewart starred, with Kim Novak
Kim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
, in what many consider Hitchcock's most personal film, Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
(1958). The movie starred Stewart as John "Scottie" Ferguson, a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia
Acrophobia
Acrophobia is an extreme or irrational fear of heights. It belongs to a category of specific phobias, called space and motion discomfort that share both similar etiology and options for treatment.Most people experience a degree of natural fear when exposed to heights, especially if there is little...
, who develops an obsession with a woman he is shadowing. Scottie's obsession inevitably leads to the destruction of everything he once had and believed in. Though the film is widely considered a classic today, Vertigo met with negative reviews and poor box office receipts upon its release, and marked the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock. Stewart was also disappointed. The director blamed the film's failure on Stewart looking too old to still attract audiences, and cast Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
as Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest
North by Northwest
North by Northwest is a 1959 American thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason, and featuring Leo G. Carroll and Martin Landau...
(1959), a role Stewart had very much wanted (Grant was actually four years older than Stewart). Today, Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
is ranked second only to Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
in the 2002 Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...
critics poll for the greatest films ever made.
Career in the 1960s and 1970s
In 1960, James Stewart was awarded the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best ActorNew York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor
The New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor is one of the awards given by the New York Film Critics Circle to honor the finest achievements in filmmaking....
and received his fifth and final Academy Award for Best Actor
Academy Award for Best Actor
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actor who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry...
nomination, for his role in the 1959
1959 in film
The year 1959 in film involved some significant events, with Ben-Hur winning a record 11 Academy Awards.-Events:* The Three Stooges make their 190th and last short film, Sappy Bull Fighters....
Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...
film Anatomy of a Murder
Anatomy of a Murder
Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 American courtroom crime drama film. It was directed by Otto Preminger and adapted by Wendell Mayes from the best-selling novel of the same name written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver...
. The early courtroom drama starred Stewart as Paul Biegler, the lawyer of a hot-tempered soldier (played by Ben Gazzara
Ben Gazzara
-Early life:Gazzara was born Biagio Anthony Gazzara in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina and Antonio Gazzara, who was a laborer and carpenter. Gazzara grew up on New York's tough Lower East Side. He actually lived on E. 29th Street and participated in the drama program at...
) who claims temporary insanity after murdering a tavern owner who raped his wife. The film featured a career-making performance by George C. Scott
George C. Scott
George Campbell Scott was an American stage and film actor, director and producer. He was best known for his stage work, as well as his portrayal of General George S. Patton in the film Patton, and as General Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick's Dr...
as the prosecutor. The film was sexually frank for its time (some thought it sordid), and its provocative promotional campaign helped gain it box office success, though Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur (1959 film)
Ben-Hur is a 1959 American epic film directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston in the title role, the third film adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay was written by Karl Tunberg, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. The score was composed by...
outgrossed all movies by a huge margin and swept the Academy Awards that year. Stewart's nomination was one of seven for the film (Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
was the winner), and saw his transition into the final decades of his career.
On January 1, 1960, Stewart received the devastating news of the death of Margaret Sullavan (her death was later identified as apparent suicide; the county coroner, however, officially ruled the death an accident). As a friend, mentor, and focus of his early romantic urges, she had a unique influence on Stewart's life. On April 17, 1961, longtime friend Gary Cooper was too ill to attend the 33rd Academy Awards ceremony
33rd Academy Awards
The 33rd Academy Awards, honoring the best in film for 1960, were held on April 17, 1961 at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California...
, so Stewart accepted the honorary Oscar on his behalf. Stewart's emotional speech hinted that something was seriously wrong, and the next day newspapers ran the headline, "Gary Cooper has cancer." One month later, on May 13, 1961, six days after his 60th birthday, Cooper died.
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
films, his first work with the acclaimed director. The first, Two Rode Together
Two Rode Together
Two Rode Together is a western film directed by John Ford, and starring James Stewart, Richard Widmark, and Shirley Jones. The supporting cast includes Linda Cristal, Andy Devine, and John McIntire...
, paired him with Richard Widmark
Richard Widmark
Richard Weedt Widmark was an American film, stage and television actor.He was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film, Kiss of Death...
in a Western with thematic echoes of Ford's The Searchers
The Searchers (film)
The Searchers is a 1956 American Western film directed by John Ford, based on the 1954 novel by Alan Le May, and set during the Texas–Indian Wars...
. The next, 1962
1962 in film
The year 1962 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May - The Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards are officially founded by the Taiwanese government....
's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart and John Wayne. The black-and-white film was released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a short story written by Dorothy M...
(with John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
), is a classic "psychological" western, with Stewart featured as an Eastern attorney who goes against his non-violent principles when he is forced to confront a psychopathic outlaw (played by Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin was an American film actor. Known for his gravelly voice, white hair and 6' 2" stature, Marvin at first did supporting roles, mostly villains, soldiers and other hardboiled characters, but after winning an Academy Award for Best Actor for his dual roles in Cat Ballou , he landed more...
) in a small frontier town. At story's end, Stewart's character—now a rising political figure—faces a difficult ethical choice as he attempts to reconcile his actions with his personal integrity. The film's billing is unusual in that Stewart was given top billing over Wayne in the trailers and on the posters but Wayne had top billing in the film itself, a system later repeated by Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
and Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman
Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....
in All the President's Men
All the President's Men (film)
All the President's Men is a 1976 Academy Award-winning political thriller film based on the 1974 non-fiction book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two journalists investigating the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post...
. The film garnered mixed reviews but was an instant hit at the box office, and is now ranked as one of Ford's foremost classics.
How the West Was Won (film)
How the West Was Won is a 1962 American epic Western film. The picture was one of the last "old-fashioned" epic films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to enjoy great success. It follows four generations of a family as they move ever westward, from western New York state to the Pacific Ocean...
(which Ford co-directed, though without directing Stewart's scenes) and Cheyenne Autumn
Cheyenne Autumn
Cheyenne Autumn is a 1964 western starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. Regarded as an epic film it tells the story of a factual event, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878-9, although it is told in 'Hollywood style' using a great degree of artistic license...
were western epics released in 1962 and 1964
1964 in film
The year 1964 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* January 29 - The film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is released....
respectively. While the Cinerama
Cinerama
Cinerama is the trademarked name for a widescreen process which works by simultaneously projecting images from three synchronized 35 mm projectors onto a huge, deeply-curved screen, subtending 146° of arc. It is also the trademarked name for the corporation which was formed to market it...
production How the West Was Won went on to win three Oscars
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
and reaped massive box office figures, Cheyenne Autumn
Cheyenne Autumn
Cheyenne Autumn is a 1964 western starring Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. Regarded as an epic film it tells the story of a factual event, the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878-9, although it is told in 'Hollywood style' using a great degree of artistic license...
, in which a white-suited Stewart played Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American gambler, investor, and law enforcement officer who served in several Western frontier towns. He was also at different times a farmer, teamster, bouncer, saloon-keeper, miner and boxing referee. However, he was never a drover or cowboy. He is most well known...
in a long semi-comedic sequence in the middle of the movie, failed domestically and was quickly forgotten. It was Ford's final Western and Stewart's last feature film with Ford. Stewart's entertaining middle sequence is not directly connected with the rest of the film and was often excised in later theatrical exhibition prints and some television broadcasts.
Having played his last romantic lead in 1958
1958 in film
The year 1958 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* February 16- "In the Money" by William Beaudine is released on this date. It would be the last installment of The Bowery Boys series which began back in 1946....
's Bell, Book and Candle
Bell, Book and Candle
Bell, Book and Candle is a romantic comedy directed by Richard Quine based on the hit Broadway play by John Van Druten. It starred James Stewart and Kim Novak in their second on-screen pairing . The film, adapted by Daniel Taradash, was Stewart's last film as a romantic lead...
, and silver-haired (although not all was his—he wore a partial hairpiece starting with It's a Wonderful Life and in every film thereafter), Stewart transitioned into more family-related films in the 1960s when he signed a multi-movie deal with 20th Century Fox. These included the successful Henry Koster
Henry Koster
Henry Koster was born Hermann Kosterlitz in Berlin, Germany. He became a film director and later moved to Hollywood. Koster's father, a salesman, left home when Henry was a young man...
outing Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation is a 1962 American comedy film directed by Henry Koster and starring James Stewart and Maureen O'Hara. The film is based on a novel by Edward Streeter and features a popular singer of the time, Fabian.- Plot :Mr...
(1962
1962 in film
The year 1962 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*May - The Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards are officially founded by the Taiwanese government....
), and the less memorable films Take Her, She's Mine
Take Her, She's Mine
Take Her, She's Mine is a 1963 comedy film starring James Stewart and Sandra Dee. The film was written by Henry Ephron, Phoebe Ephron, and Nunnally Johnson, with Dee's character based on the then 22-year-old Nora Ephron, and directed by Henry Koster...
(1963
1963 in film
The year 1963 in film involved some significant events.-Events:* June 12 - Cleopatra starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton premieres at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City....
) and Dear Brigitte
Dear Brigitte
Dear Brigitte is a 1965 American family-comedy starring James Stewart and directed by Henry Koster.-Plot:Stewart stars as an American college professor with a genius son, the precocious Erasmus . After using his skills for gambling at the horse track, Erasmus becomes infatuated with model and...
(1965
1965 in film
The year 1965 in film involved some significant events, with The Sound of Music topping the U.S. box office.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:...
), which featured French model Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot is a French former fashion model, actress, singer and animal rights activist. She was one of the best-known sex-symbols of the 1960s.In her early life, Bardot was an aspiring ballet dancer...
as the object of Stewart's son's mash notes. The Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
period film Shenandoah
Shenandoah (film)
Shenandoah is a 1965 American Civil War film starring James Stewart, Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, Patrick Wayne, and Katharine Ross. The picture was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. Though set during the American Civil War, the film's strong antiwar and humanitarian themes resonated with audiences...
(1965) and the western family film The Rare Breed
The Rare Breed
The Rare Breed is a 1966 American western film starring James Stewart, Maureen O'Hara, Brian Keith, Juliet Mills and Ben Johnson and directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. Loosely based on the life of rancher William Burgess, the film follows Martha Price's quest to fulfill her deceased husband's dream...
fared better at the box office; the Civil War movie, with strong antiwar and humanitarian themes, was a smash hit in the South.
As an aviator, Stewart was particularly interested in aviation films and had pushed to appear in several in the 1950s; most notably Strategic Air Command and The Spirit of St. Louis. He continued in this vein in the 1960s, most notably in a role as a hard-bitten pilot in The Flight of the Phoenix
The Flight of the Phoenix (1965 film)
The Flight of the Phoenix is a 1965 American film produced and directed by Robert Aldrich and based on the 1964 novel The Flight of the Phoenix by Elleston Trevor...
(1965). Subbing for Stewart, famed stunt pilot and air racer Paul Mantz
Paul Mantz
Albert Paul Mantz was a noted air racing pilot, movie stunt pilot and consultant from the late 1930s until his death in the mid-1960s. He gained fame on two stages: Hollywood and in air races.-Early years:...
was killed when he crashed the "Tallmantz Phoenix P-1
Tallmantz Phoenix P-1
-Bibliography:* Dwiggins, Don. Hollywood Pilot: The Biography of Paul Mantz. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1967.* Dwiggins, Don. "Paul Mantz: Kingpin of the Hollywood Air Force." Air Classics Vol. 11, no. 10, October, 1975....
", the specially made, single-engine movie model, in an abortive "touch-and-go". Stewart also narrated the film X-15
X-15 (film)
X-15 is a 1961 dramatic aviation film that presents a fictionalized account of the X-15 research rocket plane program, the test pilots who flew the aircraft and the associated NASA community that supported the program. X-15 starred David McLean, Charles Bronson, Mary Tyler Moore , Kenneth Tobey and...
in 1961. In 1964, he and several other military aviators, including Curtis LeMay
Curtis LeMay
Curtis Emerson LeMay was a general in the United States Air Force and the vice presidential running mate of American Independent Party candidate George Wallace in 1968....
, Paul Tibbets
Paul Tibbets
Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. was a brigadier general in the United States Air Force, best known for being the pilot of the Enola Gay, the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb in the history of warfare. The bomb, code-named Little Boy, was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima...
, and Bruce Sundlun
Bruce Sundlun
Bruce Sundlun was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as 71st Governor of Rhode Island from 1991 to 1995. He was Rhode Island's second Jewish governor, and the only Jewish governor in the United States during his two terms...
were founding directors of the board of Tibbets' Executive Jet Aviation Corporation
NetJets
NetJets, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, offers fractional ownership and rental of private business jets.-History:NetJets Inc., formerly Executive Jet Aviation, was founded in 1964 as one of the first private business jet charter and aircraft management companies...
.
After a progression of lesser western films in the late '60s and early '70s, James Stewart transitioned from cinema to television. In the 1950s he had made guest appearances on the Jack Benny
Jack Benny
Jack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
Program (Benny was his real life neighbor and good friend). Stewart first starred in the NBC comedy The Jimmy Stewart Show
The Jimmy Stewart Show
The Jimmy Stewart Show is an American sitcom starring James Stewart as a professor at a small town university called Josiah Kesser College. Twenty-four episodes of the show were broadcast in the 1971–1972 season on the NBC network's Sunday night schedule , under the sponsorship of Procter &...
, on which he played a college professor. He followed it with the CBS mystery
Mystery fiction
Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...
Hawkins
Hawkins (TV series)
Hawkins is a television series which aired for one season on CBS between 1973 and 1974. The mystery, created by Robert Hamner and David Karp, starred James Stewart as rural-bred lawyer Billy Jim Hawkins, who investigated the cases he was involved in...
, in which he played a small town lawyer investigating his cases. The series garnered Stewart a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Dramatic TV Series, but failed to gain a wide audience and was cancelled after one season. (Andy Griffith
Andy Griffith
Andy Samuel Griffith is an American actor, director, producer, Grammy Award-winning Southern-gospel singer, and writer. He gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's epic film A Face in the Crowd before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead...
fared much better later in Matlock, based on a similar formula.) During this time, Stewart periodically appeared on Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years . Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1985 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987...
's The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under the Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night....
, sharing poems he had written at different times in his life. His poems were later compiled into a short collection titled Jimmy Stewart and His Poems (1989).
Stewart returned to films after an absence of five years with a major supporting role in John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
's final film, The Shootist
The Shootist
The Shootist is a 1976 Western starring John Wayne in his final film role. It was based on the 1975 novel of the same name by Glendon Swarthout. Scott Hale and Miles Hood Swarthout wrote the screenplay...
(1976) where Stewart played a doctor giving Wayne's gunfighter a terminal cancer diagnosis. At one point, both Wayne and Stewart were flubbing their lines repeatedly and Stewart turned to director Don Siegel
Don Siegel
Donald Siegel was an influential American film director and producer. His name variously appeared in the credits of his films as both Don Siegel and Donald Siegel.-Early life:...
and said, "You'd better get two better actors". Stewart also appeared in supporting roles in Airport '77
Airport '77
Airport '77 is a 1977 disaster film and second sequel in the Airport franchise.The film stars a number of veteran actors, including Jack Lemmon, James Stewart, Joseph Cotten, Christopher Lee and Olivia de Havilland. Like its predecessors, Airport '77 was a box office hit earning US$30 million and...
, the 1978 remake
The Big Sleep (1978 film)
The Big Sleep was the second film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Michael Winner and stars Robert Mitchum in his second feature film portrayal of the detective Philip Marlowe. The cast includes Sarah Miles, Candy Clark, Joan Collins, and...
of The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep (1946 film)
The Big Sleep is a 1946 film noir directed by Howard Hawks, the first film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The movie stars Humphrey Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe and Lauren Bacall as the female lead in a film about the "process of a criminal investigation, not its...
with Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
as Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...
's Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...
, and The Magic of Lassie
The Magic of Lassie
The Magic of Lassie is a 1978 Wrather Corporation film. It features James Stewart in one of only two musical film roles that he played . Mickey Rooney and Alice Faye also make cameo appearances in the film...
(1978). The latter film received poor reviews and flopped at the box office. Some critics expressed their dismay at seeing the 70-year-old veteran singing as the grandfather. Stewart responded it was the only script he had been offered without any sex, profanity or graphic violence.
Later career and death
Following the failure of The Magic of LassieThe Magic of Lassie
The Magic of Lassie is a 1978 Wrather Corporation film. It features James Stewart in one of only two musical film roles that he played . Mickey Rooney and Alice Faye also make cameo appearances in the film...
, Stewart went into semi-retirement from acting. He donated his papers, films, and other records to Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University is a private university located in Provo, Utah. It is owned and operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , and is the United States' largest religious university and third-largest private university.Approximately 98% of the university's 34,000 students...
's Harold B. Lee Library
Harold B. Lee Library
The Harold B. Lee Library , located in Provo, Utah, is the main academic library of Brigham Young University, the largest religious and second-largest private university in the United States. The library has approximately of shelving for the more than 6 million items in its various collections, as...
in 1983. Stewart had diversified investments including real estate, oil wells, a charter-plane company and membership on major corporate boards, and he became a multimillionaire. In the 1980s and 1990s, he did voiceovers for commercials for Campbell's Soups
Campbell Soup Company
Campbell Soup Company , also known as Campbell's, is an American producer of canned soups and related products. Campbell's products are sold in 120 countries around the world. It is headquartered in Camden, New Jersey...
.
Stewart's best friend Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
died in 1982 and his long-time friend Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly
Grace Patricia Kelly was an American actress who, in April 1956, married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, to become Princess consort of Monaco, styled as Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, and commonly referred to as Princess Grace.After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of...
, his favorite female co-star, was killed in a car crash shortly afterwards. A few months later, Stewart starred with Bette Davis
Bette Davis
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional...
in Right of Way
Right of Way
Right of Way is a 1983 television film drama starring Bette Davis and James Stewart, and directed by George Schaefer.The TV movie stars film veterans Davis and Stewart as an elderly long-married couple who must decide how to deal with the situation of one of them being diagnosed with a terminal...
, the first made-for-cable movie. He filmed several television movie
Television movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
s in the 1980s, including Mr. Krueger's Christmas
Mr. Krueger's Christmas
Mr. Krueger's Christmas is a 1980 made-for-television film starring Jimmy Stewart, and directed by Kieth Merrill.It was created by Brigham Young University for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and features the Mormon Tabernacle Choir....
, which allowed him to fulfill a lifelong dream to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
Mormon Tabernacle Choir
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, sometimes colloquially referred to as MoTab, is a Grammy and Emmy Award winning, 360-member, all-volunteer choir. The choir is part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . However, the choir is completely self-funded, traveling and producing albums to...
. He made frequent visits to the Reagan White House and traveled on the lecture circuit. The re-release of his Hitchcock films gained Stewart renewed recognition. Rear Window
Rear Window
Rear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...
and Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
were particularly praised by film critics, which helped bring these pictures to the attention of younger movie-goers. He was presented an Academy Honorary Award
Academy Honorary Award
The Academy Honorary Award, instituted in 1948 for the 21st Academy Awards , is given by the discretion of the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to celebrate motion picture achievements that are not covered by existing Academy Awards, although prior winners of...
by his friend Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
in 1985, "for his 50 years of memorable performances, for his high ideals both on and off the screen, with respect and affection of his colleagues."
Stewart became a real life "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" in 1988, when he made an impassioned plea in Congressional hearings, along with colleagues Burt Lancaster
Burt Lancaster
Burton Stephen "Burt" Lancaster was an American film actor noted for his athletic physique and distinctive smile...
, Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was an American actress of film, stage, and television. In a career that spanned 62 years as a leading lady, she was best known for playing strong-willed, sophisticated women in both dramas and comedies...
, Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers
Ginger Rogers was an American actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in film, and on stage, radio, and television throughout much of the 20th century....
, and film director Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, against Ted Turner
Ted Turner
Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television...
's decision to 'colorize
Film colorization
Film colorization is any process that adds color to black-and-white, sepia or monochrome moving-picture images. It may be done as a special effect, or to modernize black-and-white films, or to restore color films...
' classic black and white films, including It's a Wonderful Life. Stewart stated, "the coloring of black-and-white films is wrong. It's morally and artistically wrong and these profiteers should leave our film industry alone".
In 1989, Stewart joined Peter F. Paul
Peter F. Paul
Peter F. Paul is a former lawyer and entrepreneur who was convicted for conspiracy and drug dealing, and later for securities fraud in connection with his business dealings with Spider-Man creator Stan Lee...
in founding the American Spirit Foundation
American Spirit Foundation
The American Spirit Foundation was founded in 1989 by actor James Stewart and entrepreneur/felon Peter F. Paul. The foundation was established to draw on the resources of America's entertainment industry to develop public education programs in the U.S., and support of democracy movements in the...
to apply entertainment industry resources to developing innovative approaches to public education and to assist the emerging democracy movements in the former Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
countries. Paul arranged for Stewart, through the offices of President Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
, to send a special print of It's a Wonderful Life, translated by Lomonosov Moscow State University, to Russia as the first American program ever to be broadcast on Russian television. On January 5, 1992, coinciding with the first day of the existence of the democratic Commonwealth of Independent States
Commonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union....
and Russia, and the first free Russian Orthodox
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
Christmas Day, Russian TV Channel 2 broadcast It's a Wonderful Life to 200 million Russians who celebrated an American holiday tradition with the American people for the first time in Russian history.
In association with politicians and celebrities such as President Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
, Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, California Governor George Deukmejian
George Deukmejian
Courken George Deukmejian, Jr. born June 6, 1928) is an Armenian American politician from California who as a Republican served as the 35th Governor of California and as California Attorney General .-Early life:...
, Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
and Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
, Stewart worked from 1987 to 1993 on projects that enhanced the public appreciation and understanding of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
In 1991, James Stewart voiced the character of Sheriff Wylie Burp in the movie An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West is a 1991 American animated film produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblimation animation studio and released by Universal Pictures. It is the sequel to An American Tail, and the fourth installment in terms of the series' fictional chronology...
, which was his last film role.
Shortly before his 80th birthday, he was asked how he wanted to be remembered. "As someone who 'believed in hard work and love of country, love of family and love of community.'"
Stewart died from a pulmonary embolism
Pulmonary embolism
Pulmonary embolism is a blockage of the main artery of the lung or one of its branches by a substance that has travelled from elsewhere in the body through the bloodstream . Usually this is due to embolism of a thrombus from the deep veins in the legs, a process termed venous thromboembolism...
on July 2, 1997, at his home in Beverly Hills. His death came one day after fellow screen legend and The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep (1978 film)
The Big Sleep was the second film version of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel of the same name. The film was directed by Michael Winner and stars Robert Mitchum in his second feature film portrayal of the detective Philip Marlowe. The cast includes Sarah Miles, Candy Clark, Joan Collins, and...
co-star Robert Mitchum
Robert Mitchum
Robert Charles Durman Mitchum was an American film actor, author, composer and singer and is #23 on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest male American screen legends of all time...
had died. Stewart is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery
Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
Forest Lawn Memorial Park is a privately owned cemetery in Glendale, California. It is the original location of Forest Lawn, a chain of cemeteries in Southern California. The land was formerly part of Providencia Ranch.-History:...
in Glendale
Glendale, California
Glendale is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population is 191,719, down from 194,973 at the 2000 census. making it the third largest city in Los Angeles County and the 22nd largest city in the state of California...
, California.
"America lost a national treasure today," President Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
said on the day Stewart died. "Jimmy Stewart was a great actor, a gentleman and a patriot."
Personal life
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford , born Lucille Fay LeSueur, was an American actress in film, television and theatre....
, Stewart's co-star in the early period, praised him as an "endearing perfectionist" with "a droll sense of humor and a shy way of watching you to see if you react to that humor."
When Henry Fonda moved to Hollywood in 1934, he was again a roommate with Stewart in an apartment in Brentwood and the two gained a reputation as playboys. Once married, both men's children noted that their favorite activity when not working seemed to be quietly sharing time together while building and painting model airplanes
Model aircraft
Model aircraft are flying or non-flying models of existing or imaginary aircraft using a variety of materials including plastic, diecast metal, polystyrene, balsa wood, foam and fibreglass...
, a hobby they had taken up in New York, years earlier.
After World War II, Stewart settled down, at age 41, marrying former model Gloria Hatrick McLean (1918–1994) on August 9, 1949. As Stewart loved to recount in self-mockery, "I, I, I pitched the big question to her last night and to my surprise she, she, she said yes!".
Stewart adopted her two sons, Michael and Ronald, and with Gloria he had twin daughters, Judy and Kelly, on May 7, 1951. The couple remained married until her death from lung cancer on February 16, 1994. Ronald McLean was killed in action on June 8, 1969, at the age of 24, while serving as a Marine Corps Lieutenant in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
. Kelly Stewart is an anthropologist at the University of California, Davis
University of California, Davis
The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...
.
Yeti
The Yeti or Abominable Snowman is an ape-like cryptid said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal, and Tibet. The names Yeti and Meh-Teh are commonly used by the people indigenous to the region, and are part of their history and mythology...
, the so-called Pangboche Hand
Pangboche Hand
The Pangboche Hand is an artifact stolen from a Buddhist monastery in Pangboche, Nepal. Supporters contend that the hand is from a Yeti, a scientifically unrecognized animal purported to live in the Himalayan mountains...
, by hiding them in his luggage (specifically, in his wife's underwear) when he flew from India to London, as a favor to Tom Slick
Tom Slick
Thomas Baker "Tom" Slick, Jr. was a San Antonio, Texas based inventor, businessman, adventurer, and heir to an oil business. Slick's father, Thomas Baker Slick, Sr., a.k.a. "The King of the Wildcatters", had made a fortune during the Texas oil boom of the 1920s.-Career:During the 1950s, Slick was...
.
James Stewart was active in philanthropic affairs over the years. His signature charity event, "The Jimmy Stewart Relay Marathon Race", held each year since 1982, has raised millions of dollars for the Child and Family Development Center at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
.
Stewart was a lifelong supporter of Scouting
Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...
. He was a Second Class Scout when he was a youth, an adult Scout leader, and a recipient of the prestigious Silver Buffalo Award
Silver Buffalo Award
The Silver Buffalo Award is the national-level distinguished service award of the Boy Scouts of America. It is presented for noteworthy and extraordinary service to youth on a national basis, either as part of, or independent of the Scouting program...
from the Boy Scouts of America
Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America is one of the largest youth organizations in the United States, with over 4.5 million youth members in its age-related divisions...
(BSA). In later years, he made advertisements for BSA, which led to him sometimes incorrectly being identified as an Eagle Scout
Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America)
Eagle Scout is the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program of the Boy Scouts of America . A Scout who attains this rank is called an Eagle Scout or Eagle. Since its introduction in 1911, the Eagle Scout rank has been earned by more than 2 million young men...
. (Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1939 American drama film starring Jean Arthur and James Stewart about one man's effect on American politics. It was directed by Frank Capra and written by Sidney Buchman, based on Lewis R. Foster's unpublished story. Mr...
, was also the leader of the "Boy Rangers", a fictional organization patterned after cub scouts.) An award for Boy Scouts, "The James M. Stewart Good Citizenship Award" has been presented since May 17, 2003.
One of Stewart's lesser-known talents was his homespun poetry. He once read a poem that he had written about his dog, entitled "Beau
Beau (poem)
"Beau", also known as "I’ll Never Forget a Dog Named Beau", is a poem written by American film and stage actor James Stewart. A humorous tribute to Stewart's deceased pet dog, the poem was first recited on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in 1981, and later published in the 1989 collection Jimmy...
," while on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under the Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night....
. By the end of this reading, Carson's eyes were welling with tears. This was later parodied on a late 1980s episode of the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
, with Dana Carvey
Dana Carvey
Dana Thomas Carvey is an American actor and stand-up comedian, best known for his work as a cast member on Saturday Night Live and for playing the role of Garth in the Wayne's World movies.-Early life:...
as Stewart reciting the poem on Weekend Update
Weekend Update
Weekend Update is a Saturday Night Live sketch that comments on and parodies current events. It is the show's longest running recurring sketch, having been on since the show's first broadcast, and is typically presented in the middle of the show immediately after the first musical performance...
and bringing anchor Dennis Miller
Dennis Miller
Dennis Miller is an American stand-up comedian, political commentator, actor, sports commentator, and television and radio personality. He is known for his critical assessments laced with pop culture references...
to tears.
In addition to poetry, Stewart talked during Tonight Show appearances about his avid gardening. Stewart purchased the house next door to his own home at 918 North Roxbury Drive, razed the house, and installed his garden in the lot.
Politics
Stewart was a staunch supporter of the Republican PartyRepublican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
and actively campaigned for Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
. He was a "hawk" on the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. Following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy , also referred to by his initials RFK, was an American politician, a Democratic senator from New York, and a noted civil rights activist. An icon of modern American liberalism and member of the Kennedy family, he was a younger brother of President John F...
in 1968, Stewart, Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston
Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...
, Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K...
and Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...
issued a statement calling for support of President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
's Gun Control Act of 1968
Gun Control Act of 1968
The Gun Control Act of 1968 , by president Lyndon Johnson, is a federal law in the United States that broadly regulates the firearms industry and firearms owners...
.
One of his best friends was fellow actor Henry Fonda
Henry Fonda
Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor.Fonda made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins...
, despite the fact that the two men had very different political ideologies. A political argument in 1947 resulted in a fist fight between them, but the two apparently maintained their friendship by never discussing politics again. There is a brief reference to their political differences in character in their movie The Cheyenne Social Club
The Cheyenne Social Club
The Cheyenne Social Club is a 1970 Western comedy film written by James Lee Barrett and directed and produced by Gene Kelly, starring James Stewart, Henry Fonda, and Shirley Jones....
. In the last years of his life, he donated to the campaign of Bob Dole
Bob Dole
Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole is an American attorney and politician. Dole represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1996, was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential running mate in the 1976 presidential election, and was Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and in 1995 and 1996...
in the 1996 presidential election and to Democratic Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
governor Bob Graham
Bob Graham
Daniel Robert "Bob" Graham is an American politician. He was the 38th Governor of Florida from 1979 to 1987 and a United States Senator from that state from 1987 to 2005...
in his successful run for the Senate.
Filmography
1935 in film
-Events:*Judy Garland signs a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer .*Seven year old Shirley Temple wins a special Academy Award.*The Bantu Educational Kinema Experiment started in order to educate the Bantu peoples.-Top grossing films:-Academy Awards:...
through his final theatrical project in 1991
1991 in film
The year 1991 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*April 28 - Bonnie Raitt marries actor Michael O'Keefe in New York* Terminator 2: Judgment Day, became one of the landmarks for science fiction action films with its groundbreaking visual effects from Industrial Light & Magic.*November...
, he appeared in 92 films, television programs and shorts. Through the course of this illustrious career, he appeared in many landmark and critically acclaimed films, including such classics as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1939 American drama film starring Jean Arthur and James Stewart about one man's effect on American politics. It was directed by Frank Capra and written by Sidney Buchman, based on Lewis R. Foster's unpublished story. Mr...
, Rear Window
Rear Window
Rear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...
, The Spirit of St. Louis
The Spirit of St. Louis (film)
The Spirit of St. Louis is a 1957 biographical film directed by Billy Wilder and starring James Stewart as Charles Lindbergh. The screenplay was adapted by Charles Lederer, Wendell Mayes, and Billy Wilder from Lindbergh's 1953 autobiographical account of his historic flight, which won the Pulitzer...
, Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart and John Wayne. The black-and-white film was released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a short story written by Dorothy M...
. His roles in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1939 American drama film starring Jean Arthur and James Stewart about one man's effect on American politics. It was directed by Frank Capra and written by Sidney Buchman, based on Lewis R. Foster's unpublished story. Mr...
, The Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
, Harvey
Harvey (film)
Harvey is a 1950 film based on Mary Chase's play of the same name, directed by Henry Koster, and starring James Stewart and Josephine Hull. The story is about a man whose best friend is a pooka named Harvey—in the form of a six-foot, three-and-one-half-inch tall invisible rabbit.-Plot:Elwood P...
, and Anatomy of a Murder
Anatomy of a Murder
Anatomy of a Murder is a 1959 American courtroom crime drama film. It was directed by Otto Preminger and adapted by Wendell Mayes from the best-selling novel of the same name written by Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker under the pen name Robert Traver...
earned him Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
nominations (he won for Philadelphia Story). Stewart's career defied the boundaries of genre and trend, and he made his mark in screwball comedies
Screwball comedy film
The screwball comedy is a principally American genre of comedy film that became popular during the Great Depression, originating in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1940s. It is characterized by fast-paced repartee, farcical situations, escapist themes, and plot lines involving...
, suspense thrillers, westerns, biographies
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
and family films.
Broadway stage performances
- Carry Nation (October–November 1932)
- Goodbye Again (December 1932 – July 1933)
- Spring in Autumn (October–November 1933)
- All Good Americans (December 1933 – January 1934)
- Yellow JackYellow jackThe yellow jack, Carangoides bartholomaei , is a species of offshore marine fish in the jack family, Carangidae. It is one of only two representatives of its genus present in the Atlantic Ocean, inhabiting waters off the east coast of the Americas from Massachusetts in the north to Brazil in the...
(May 1934) - Divided By Three (October 1934)
- Page Miss Glory (November 1934 – March 1935)
- A Journey By Night (April 1935)
- HarveyHarvey (play)Harvey is a 1944 play by American playwright Mary Chase. Produced by Brock Pemberton and directed by Antoinette Perry, the play premiered on 1 November 1944 at the 48th Street Theatre on Broadway where it was staged for 1,775 performances before closing on January 15, 1949. The original production...
(July–August 1947, July–August 1948, replacing vacationing Frank FayFrank Fay (American actor)Frank Fay was an American film and stage actor, emcee, comedian, best known as an actor for having played "Elwood P. Dowd" in the play Harvey by the American playwright Mary Coyle Chase on Broadway...
) - HarveyHarvey (play)Harvey is a 1944 play by American playwright Mary Chase. Produced by Brock Pemberton and directed by Antoinette Perry, the play premiered on 1 November 1944 at the 48th Street Theatre on Broadway where it was staged for 1,775 performances before closing on January 15, 1949. The original production...
(revival, February–May 1970)
Legacy
Throughout his seven decades in Hollywood, Stewart cultivated a versatile career and recognized screen image in such classics as Mr. Smith Goes to WashingtonMr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1939 American drama film starring Jean Arthur and James Stewart about one man's effect on American politics. It was directed by Frank Capra and written by Sidney Buchman, based on Lewis R. Foster's unpublished story. Mr...
, The Philadelphia Story, Harvey
Harvey (film)
Harvey is a 1950 film based on Mary Chase's play of the same name, directed by Henry Koster, and starring James Stewart and Josephine Hull. The story is about a man whose best friend is a pooka named Harvey—in the form of a six-foot, three-and-one-half-inch tall invisible rabbit.-Plot:Elwood P...
, It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life
It's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
, Shenandoah
Shenandoah (film)
Shenandoah is a 1965 American Civil War film starring James Stewart, Doug McClure, Glenn Corbett, Patrick Wayne, and Katharine Ross. The picture was directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. Though set during the American Civil War, the film's strong antiwar and humanitarian themes resonated with audiences...
, Rear Window
Rear Window
Rear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...
, Rope
Rope (film)
Rope is a 1948 American thriller film based on the play Rope by Patrick Hamilton and adapted by Hume Cronyn and Arthur Laurents, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and produced by Sidney Bernstein and Hitchcock as the first of their Transatlantic Pictures productions...
, The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956 film)
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring James Stewart and Doris Day. The film is a remake in widescreen VistaVision and Technicolor of Hitchcock's 1934 film of the same name....
, The Shop Around the Corner
The Shop Around the Corner
-External links:* Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism, Issue 1, 2010...
, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a 1962 American Western film directed by John Ford and starring James Stewart and John Wayne. The black-and-white film was released by Paramount Pictures. The screenplay by James Warner Bellah and Willis Goldbeck was adapted from a short story written by Dorothy M...
and Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
. He is the most represented leading actor on the AFI's 100 Years…100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) and AFI's 10 Top 10
AFI's 10 Top 10
AFI's 10 Top 10 honors the ten greatest American films in ten classic film genres. Presented by the American Film Institute , the lists were unveiled on a television special broadcast by CBS on June 17, 2008....
lists. He is also the most represented leading actor on the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time list presented by Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
. As of 2007, ten of his films have been inducted into the United States National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
.
Stewart left his mark on a wide range of film genres, including westerns, suspense thrillers
Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...
, family films, biographies and screwball comedies
Screwball Comedy
Screwball Comedy is an album by the Japanese band Soul Flower Union. The album found the band going into a simpler, harder-rocking direction, after several heavily world-music influenced albums.-Track listing:...
. He worked for a number of renowned directors later in his career, most notably Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
, Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
, Frank Capra
Frank Capra
Frank Russell Capra was a Sicilian-born American film director. He emigrated to the U.S. when he was six, and eventually became a creative force behind major award-winning films during the 1930s and 1940s...
, George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
, and Anthony Mann
Anthony Mann
Anthony Mann was an American actor and film director, most notably of film noirs and Westerns. As a director, he often collaborated with the cinematographer John Alton and with James Stewart in his Westerns.-Biography:...
. He won many of the industry's highest honors and earned Lifetime Achievement awards from every major film organization. He died at age 89, leaving behind a legacy of classic performances, and is considered one of the finest actors of the "Golden Age of Hollywood
Classical Hollywood cinema
Classical Hollywood cinema or the classical Hollywood narrative, are terms used in film history which designates both a visual and sound style for making motion pictures and a mode of production used in the American film industry between roughly the 1910s and the early 1960s.Classical style is...
". He was named the third Greatest Male Star of All Time
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars
Part of the AFI 100 Years... series, AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars is a list of the top 50 greatest screen legends of American cinema, 25 male and 25 female...
by the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
.
Honors and tributes
James Stewart was presented various kinds of film industry awards, military and civilian medals, honorary degrees, memorials and tributes over the years for his contribution to performing arts, humanitarianism, and military service.External links
- Feaster, Felicia. http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=31202&mainArticleId=161069James Stewart Profile at Turner Classic MoviesTurner Classic MoviesTurner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
] - Kronenberg, Harold. Flying with Jimmy Stewart
- Obituary: "James Stewart, the Hesitant Hero, Dies at 89," The New York Times (July 3, 1997)
- http://edition.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/9707/02/stewart.obit.7p/Obituary: "Hollywood legend Jimmy Stewart dead at 89," CNNCNNCable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, (July 2, 1997)] - News: http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/97/q2/0402stwt.html"Princeton to Honor Famed Alumnus Jimmy Stewart '32 With Tribute and Theater Dedication," Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
(1997)] - Centennial Tribute to James Stewart
- The Jimmy Stewart Museum
- http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=1670Brig. Gen. James M. Stewart at the National Museum of the United States Air ForceNational Museum of the United States Air ForceThe National Museum of the United States Air Force is the official museum of the United States Air Force located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base northeast of Dayton, Ohio. The NMUSAF is the world's largest and oldest military aviation museum with more than 360 aircraft and missiles on display...
] - A Kennedy Center Honors: James Stewart
- Entertainment Weekly's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time – Entertainment Weekly
- Interview at the National Film Theatre in 1972 – British Film Institute
- Mr. Stewart Goes to Vietnam, article from Vietnam magazine about Stewart's B-52 mission in 1966
- http://www.tcf.ua.edu/Classes/Jbutler/T577/Students/jimmy.htmlImages: Stewart Pictures. Telecommunication & Film Department, University of AlabamaUniversity of AlabamaThe University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....
] - Images: "Col. James M. Stewart stands with his father outside of the family's hardware store," Life Magazine (1945)
- A Wonderful Life: Jimmy Stewart, Actor and B-24 Bomber Pilot
- James Stewart in the 1910 US Census, 1920 US Census, 1930 US Census, and the Social Security Death Index.