James Stewart

Actor

• Born: May 20, 1908
• Birthplace: Indiana, Pennsylvania
• Died: July 2, 1997
• Place of death: Beverly Hills, California

American actor

Stewart was one of the most successful and enduring actors in the history of American motion pictures. His most famous role was in the holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life, from 1947.

Area of achievement Film

Early Life

James Stewart was born in the small town of Indiana, Pennsylvania. His father, Alex, owned a hardware store where Stewart worked as a young man. His mother, Elizabeth, was a homemaker and church organist. Stewart’s only contact with the theater in his youth was the plays he staged in the family basement with his two younger sisters, Mary and Virginia. As a child, he attended Indiana’s Model School, then Mercersburg Academy. On graduation from high school, he went to his father’s alma mater, Princeton University, to study architecture.

While at Princeton, Stewart met future theatrical writer-producer Josh Logan, who encouraged him to appear in university main-stage productions. Shortly after graduation in 1932, Stewart accepted Logan’s invitation to join him at a local theatrical group, the University Players, and played a number of small roles in summer stock productions. At the end of the summer, Princeton University offered Stewart a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in architecture. Instead, he traveled to New York with the University Players to appear in the Broadway opening of Carry Nation, a play loosely based on the life of the outspoken nineteenth century temperance leader. Though the play closed shortly after it opened, Stewart never returned to Princeton University.

Life’s Work

Stewart stayed in New York after Carry Nation closed. He spent the next two years looking for stage work to help pay rent for the small apartment he shared with fellow struggling actors Josh Logan and Henry Fonda. Stewart’s first successful stage appearance was as Sergeant O’Hara, a soldier volunteer for Walter Reed’s malaria experiments, in Yellow Jack. Though Yellow Jack was also short-lived, Stewart received good critical reviews. He also received favorable notice from critics for his performance in Divided by Three. It was during the run of Divided by Three that a talent scout for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), the largest and most prestigious film studio in California, spotted Stewart’s performance and arranged for a series of screen tests. Stewart signed a contract with MGM for $350 per week and moved to California.

In June of 1935, Stewart arrived in Hollywood and once again shared rent with Fonda and a series of other newly arrived actors. Over the next few years, Stewart appeared in a wide variety of roles while MGM tried to find a character type that would succeed with film audiences. He played a fugitive on the run in Rose Marie (1936), Jean Harlow’s boyfriend in Wife vs. Secretary (1936), a murderer in After the Thin Man (1936), a sewer worker in Seventh Heaven (1937), a botany professor in Vivacious Lady (1938), and even sang a couple songs in Born to Dance (1936). He was also paired with former University Player Margaret Sullivan in a series of popular romantic comedies, including The Shopworn Angel (1938), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and The Mortal Storm (1940). During this time, Stewart was also a frequent voice on radio, performing shortened versions of popular films and plays.

Stewart’s screen personality the sweet, small-town, dependable good guy developed during the late 1930’s. He made his mark with film critics in 1938 when he played Tony Vanderhoff in the screen adaptation of George Kaufman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play You Can’t Take It with You. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Stewart’s characterization of Tony charmed film audiences. In 1939, Stewart was paired with boisterous Marlene Dietrich as a sheriff in a comedy Western Destry Rides Again, which showed off Stewart’s comedic flair. He received critical acclaim for holding his own against Dietrich’s enormous screen presence.

In 1939, Stewart was cast as Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, directed by Frank Capra. His performance as young and idealistic Jefferson Smith cemented Stewart’s good-guy image. In the film, Smith is a small-town boy elected to serve in the United States Congress who is unjustly accused of criminal activity. Smith discovers corruption and loses his political innocence while sponsoring a bill to establish a boys’ camp. The film was popular with audiences and critics alike, and Stewart received his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.

In 1940, Stewart appeared in The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Hepburn played Tracy Lord, a rich divorcé on the eve of her second marriage who has difficulty deciding among her fiancé, her former husband, and Mike Conner, a visiting reporter played by Stewart. The Philadelphia Story was a huge box-office success, and Stewart received the 1940 Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance.

As Stewart’s acting career reached new heights, his life took an unexpected turn. When conflicts that precipitated World War II erupted in Europe, Stewart enlisted in the U.S. Army. Initially turned down for service because he was underweight, Stewart went on a high-calorie diet and reported for duty on March 22, 1941. Already a licensed pilot, he was assigned to the Army Air Corps. Stewart received his wings and commission as a second lieutenant within weeks of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II. He received heavy-bomber instruction at Kirkland Field in New Mexico and trained as a B-17 commander at Hobbs Air Force Base. In 1943, Captain Stewart was transferred to Boise, Idaho, where he trained young bomber pilots. He also appeared on recruiting tours, traveled on bond drives to raise funds for the war effort, and made instructional films for the Army, a project he would continue for the next four decades.

In 1943, Stewart was transferred to Tibenham, England, to command the 703d Squadron of the 445th Bombardment Group of B-24 Liberators. He led nearly twenty bombing missions against the Germans in a total of eighteen hundred flying hours and was promoted to the rank of major. For his wartime service, Stewart was awarded the Air Medal, an Oak Leaf Cluster for leadership, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the French Croix de Guerre. Early in 1944, Colonel Stewart became operations officer for the 453d Bombardment Group before returning to the United States in August of 1945. After the war ended, Stewart remained in the Air Force Reserve and eventually achieved the rank of brigadier general.

Stewart returned to Hollywood after the war unsure of the status of his acting career. In 1946, he quickly accepted an invitation from director Frank Capra to star in a small black-and-white film for Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO). At the time of its release, the film received some critical favor but only mediocre audience response, yet years later, Stewart proclaimed It’s a Wonderful Life (1947) to be his favorite motion picture. Stewart played George Bailey, a small-town man who longs for adventure but is seemingly stuck in an uneventful life. Matters degenerate, and George contemplates suicide before an angel named Clarence shows George what his family and friends would be like if he had never been born.

In the summer of 1948, Stewart met Gloria Hatrick at a dinner party given by Gary Cooper. Hatrick was a recently divorced mother of two small boys. Stewart and Hatrick were married on August 9, 1949, at the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, ending the career of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelor and beginning a long, successful marriage. In addition to Hatrick’s two boys, the Stewarts had twin girls in 1951.

After the release of It’s a Wonderful Life, Stewart tried to find his place in postwar American film by playing a variety of characters through the late 1940’s. He was a newspaper reporter in Call Northside 777 (1948), a public relations man in Magic Town (1947), and a detective in Rope (1948), which teamed him with director Alfred Hitchcock for the first time.

Stewart was the summer Broadway replacement for Frank Fay, who played the part of Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey twice during the later 1940’s. Stewart enjoyed the role and successfully campaigned to play Dowd in the 1950 film version. Harvey marked the beginning of the most successful decade of Stewart’s life. Dowd is a quiet, tipsy man who spends his day with his best friend, an invisible rabbit named Harvey. Stewart received another Oscar nomination for the role and for years to come was associated with the harmless eccentric and his rabbit friend.

Stewart appeared in a number of Westerns during the 1950’s and 1960’s. The sweet, small-town man became a hardened cowboy, and audiences loved it. Stewart appeared in Winchester ’73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Far Country (1955), and The Man from Laramie (1955). Stewart teamed with director John Ford for The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and played Wyatt Earp in Cheyenne Autumn (1964). For every Western, Stewart insisted on working with his favorite horse, Pie, whom he credited with making him look like a real cowboy. In 1965, he played a stoic Virginia farmer determined to keep his six sons out of the Civil War in the popular film Shenandoah. The film was the number-one box-office draw for the year. He also portrayed a number of real-life heroes: He appeared as popular band leader Glenn Miller in The Glenn Miller Story (1954); baseball player Monty Stratton, who lost his leg in a hunting accident, in The Stratton Story (1949); and Charles A. Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis (1957).

In 1954, Stewart and Hitchcock made the hugely successful film Rear Window. Stewart played a photojournalist who breaks his leg. Housebound and bored, he takes interest in the lives of the neighbors he watches through his rear window. Convinced that one neighbor has murdered his wife, he involves his nurse (who is also his girlfriend), played by Grace Kelly, in the intrigue. He teamed with Hitchcock again for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), in which Stewart played Dr. Ben McKenna, a vacationer in North Africa who finds himself thrust into murderous events over which he has little control. He played a former police officer plagued by a fear of heights in Vertigo (1958) and received another Oscar nomination for the role of a small-town lawyer in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), directed by Otto Preminger.

Stewart appeared in fewer films during the 1970’s and 1980’s but starred in the television detective series Hawkins. He made frequent appearances at award ceremonies in his honor. He received an honorary Academy Award, was inducted into the American Film Institute, and was honored by the Kennedy Center. As a frequent guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, Stewart sometimes read poems he had written. They were so popular with audiences that he published a book of his poetry called Jimmy Stewart and His Poems (1989). Stewart’s last film role was the voice of Wylie Burp in the animated An American Tail 2: Fievel Goes West (1991). Stewart’s wife, Gloria, died of cancer in 1994, and Stewart remained reclusive until his death in 1997 at the age of eighty-nine.

Significance

Stewart, one of the most beloved actors of the twentieth century, gained extra notoriety through theater revivals and videotapes. It’s a Wonderful Life was rediscovered in the 1970’s and became a traditional Christmas favorite. Stewart’s portrayal of small-town good guy George Bailey is perhaps his most memorable performance and creates a new legion of Stewart fans each year.

Bibliography

Bingham, Dennis. Acting Male: Masculinities in the Films of James Stewart, Jack Nicholson, and Clint Eastwood. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Bingham studies different acting styles and male portrayals among three leading actors.

Coe, Jonathan. Jimmy Stewart: A Wonderful Life. New York: Arcade, 1994. Coe focuses this work on Stewart’s film and stage career.

Dewey, Donald. James Stewart: A Biography. Atlanta: Turner, 1996. This book studies Stewart’s life from his small-town upbringing to his life as an actor, father, and Army Air Corps pilot.

Eliot, Marc. Jimmy Stewart: A Biography. New York: Harmony Books, 2006. An exhaustive and generally admiring account of Stewart’s life and career based on newly conducted archival research.

Fonda, Henry, with Howard Teichmann. Fonda: My Life. New York: New American Library, 1981. This book, written by Stewart’s best friend, gives special insight into Stewart’s personal life.

Munn, Michael. Jimmy Stewart: The Truth Behind the Legend. London: Robson, 2005. Munn seeks to debunk Stewart’s image by citing the less pleasant aspects of his character. He maintains that Stewart was a “secret agent” for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as part of an effort to crack organized crime in Hollywood and was manipulated into “flushing out” alleged Communists from the film industry.

Pickard, Roy. Jimmy Stewart: A Life in Film. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. Pickard focuses on Stewart’s film work with a good chronology of film and television appearances.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century

1901-1940: 1934-1935: Hitchcock Becomes Synonymous with Suspense.

1941-1970: 1946-1962: Westerns Dominate Postwar American Film; December 20, 1946: Capra Releases It’s a Wonderful Life; September 3, 1949: The Third Man Premieres.