James Maitland Stewart

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Jimmy Stewart (1908-1997) was one of Hollywood's most respected and admired stars during his long movie career. He won an Academy Award in 1940 and was considered by many critics to be one of the great leading men from Hollywood's studio era.

In the 81 films made throughout his nearly 50 year career, Jimmy Stewart often played a man of modest means, striving to overcome his situation to reach his dreams. He is probably best remembered for his role in the 1946 sentimental, holiday favorite, It's a Wonderful Life, in which he plays the embittered idealist, a decent, small-town citizen, George Bailey.

Growing Up Prosperous and Responsible

James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Alexander Maitland and Elizabeth Ruth Jackson Stewart. He had two younger sisters. According to James Lacayo of People, Stewart's mother "had attended college, which was unusual for a woman of her generation, " and his father was a "Princeton graduate who had returned home to run the prosperous family hardware store founded in 1853." The Stewarts of Indiana were regarded as a prosperous family by middle America standards and were considered strict parents who, according to James Ansen of Newsweek raised their children "in an ethos of service" and sent their sons to Princeton University.

Stewart was a lanky boy-he would grow to six foot three and a half inches tall-and he enjoyed playing the accordion and putting on plays he wrote himself. He attended high school at Mercersburg Academy, a boarding school in Pennsylvania. He played football and was a member of the glee club and the Dramatics Club. He spent his summer vacations working.

In keeping with family tradition, Stewart entered Princeton University in New Jersey in 1928, where he became a member of the Princeton Triangle Club and appeared in their musicals. Although he studied architecture, even before he earned his degree in 1932, Stewart knew he was more interested in acting. After graduation, he headed for the University Players, a theater group in Falmouth, Massachusetts, where he met another soon-to-be-great-film-star, Henry Fonda. They would become lifelong friends even though they had differing views on many subjects. Lacayo noted that Stewart and Fonda "stayed close by agreeing never to discuss politics."

Stewart first stepped on a Broadway stage in October 1932, in the unsuccessful Carry Nation. Two months later he had two lines as the chauffeur in Goodbye Again. But in 1934, Stewart landed a sizeable role in the story of Walter Reed's battle against yellow fever in Yellow Jack, playing the role of Sergeant O'Hara. He received positive reviews for this role, but the play did not do well.

After five more stage appearances, Stewart took a train to Hollywood, where he roomed with Fonda who had settled there earlier. An MGM talent scout, Billy Grady, had seen his work and got the studio to cast him in Murder Man in 1935. Stewart later said he was awful, but over the next five years he made 24 movies, including Frank Capra's 1938 film You Can't Take It With You, which won the Academy Awards for best picture and best director. He then portrayed the idealistic young senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) for which Stewart won the New York Film Critics best actor award and an Academy Award nomination. In 1940, he was in The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and won the best actor Academy Award for his performance. His Academy Award was sent home to Indiana to be displayed in the family hardware store.

A Pilot in World War II

Stewart's career was taking off when World War II gave him a new role as a pilot. Having some flying experience, he joined the United States Army and was assigned to the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1941. According to Lacayo, "Stewart was rejected on his first physical for being 10 pounds under-weight, an embarrassment that made headlines around the country…. Just days after winning the Oscar, Stewart took his second physical. This time he made it, but barely." After some time as an instructor, he was sent to Europe as commander of a bomber squadron in November of 1943. Ansen of Newsweek noted, "His war record was distinguished-he flew some 25 missions and returned a highly decorated colonel-but when studios wanted to exploit his real-life heroism in postwar fly boy epics, he refused to play along." He was awarded the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross and reached the rank of brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve in 1959.

His first movie after the war was It's a Wonderful Life in 1946. Although the movie was not a success at the box office, it has since become a holiday classic. Audiences still enjoyed Stewart and related to the depressed, down-on-his-luck George Bailey. Lacayo noted that Stewart's "speaking voice seemed to spring from an ideal American center, both geographic and spiritual, a place of small towns and unhurried people." According to those who knew him, these qualities on screen were part of the real person. From then until his last two films, a television movie with Bette Davis (1983) called Right of Way and an animation film entitled An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991), Stewart's popularity never waned.

A Wonderful Career and Life

In 1949, then Hollywood's most eligible bachelor, Stewart, age 41, married Gloria Hatrick McLean. In a town where marriage and divorce are not considered front page news, the Stewarts managed one of Hollywood's most durable and happy unions. The family included four children, sons Ronald and Michael from his wife's first marriage, and twin girls Judy and Kelly, born in 1951. (Ronald was later killed in battle during the Vietnam War.)

As Stewart aged, he kept many of the screen mannerisms of his youth, but they were displayed in a more mature, confident demeanor that audiences responded to. His long and varied career includes some audience and critic favorites: Call Northside 777 (1948); Harvey (1950), in which he plays a drunk whose friend happens to be a giant, invisible rabbit (Stewart returned once to Broadway for this role in 1947); bandleader Glenn Miller in The Glenn Miller Story (1953); pilot Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis (1957); the Alfred Hitchcock thriller Vertigo (1958); and a number of well-received Westerns, including Winchester '73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Man From Laramie (1955), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). Some critics did not know how to react to an unshaven Stewart playing a rough and tumble cowboy, but the audiences didn't mind. For his 1959 role as the defense attorney in Anatomy of a Murder, Stewart won the New York Film Critics awards as well as honors from the Venice Film Festival.

When Stewart played the quiet, confident American hero, audiences felt he was pretty much playing himself. In 1955, he was a baseball player recalled to the air force in Strategic Air Command, opposite June Allyson with whom he played in a number of films. Stewart often liked to work with the same actors or directors. He was also considered to be a good businessman. According to Lacayo, in the 1950s, "he became one of Hollywood's first free agents, moving studio to studio … and negotiating contracts that often gave him what was then an usual deal: a percentage of the film's box office receipts instead of a salary." These deals made Stewart a rich man.

In his later years, Stewart worked steadily into the 1970s, even trying his luck with two television series. He never quite lost the boyish charm that had caught the eye of a movie agent back in the 1920s. Graying and still soft spoken, he was always a welcome guest on television late night shows where he delighted audiences with Hollywood stories and sometimes bad poetry. Taking his anecdotes a step further, he had a best selling book, Jimmy Stewart and His Poems, which was published in 1989. He also received an Honorary Academy Award in 1985 for, as the Academy noted, "his 50 years of meaningful performances, for his high ideals, both on and off the screen, with the respect and affection of his colleagues."

After a 45 year marriage, Gloria Stewart passed away in 1994. In 1995, Stewart was honored when "The Jimmy Stewart Museum" opened in his hometown. Yet, Stewart was said to be distraught after the loss of his wife. Former co-star Shirley Jones commented to People "Gloria's death was a shock he never got over." Stewart died on July 2, 1997, at his home in Beverly Hills, California. As Ansen of Newsweek reflected, "It's nice to remember a world when a movie star was also a gentleman." Added Terry Lawson of the Detroit Free Press, Stewart's "shy stutter, every-guy charm, and extraordinary range of classic film roles made him one of the most loved and admired of all American actors."

Further Reading

International Directory of Film and Film Makers: Actors and Actresses, St. James Press, 1997.

Detroit Free Press, July 3, 1997.

Entertainment Weekly, July 14, 1997.

London Times, July 4, 1997.

New York Times, July 23, 1997.

Newsweek, July 14, 1997.

People, July 21, 1997.

"James Stewart, " Internet Movie Database,http://us.imdb.com (May 13, 1998).

The Jimmy Stewart Museum: Homepage,http://www.jimmy.org (May 13, 1998).

Stewart, Jimmy (James Maitland Stewart), 1908-97, American actor, b. Indiana, Pa. He began his film career in 1935 and soon gained popularity for his lanky good looks, slow drawl and shy, homespun charm, evident in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). In later years, he brought these qualities to bear on more determined, heroic characters. He won an Academy Award for The Philadelphia Story (1940). His signature role is that of George Bailey, a small towner brought to an understanding of his own importance on Christmas Eve in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). His other films include Destry Rides Again (1939), Broken Arrow (1950), Harvey (1950), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), The Flight of the Phoenix (1966), and The Shootist (1976). During World War II, he served as a bomber pilot and rose to the rank of colonel, eventually becoming a brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He also starred in two television series and published a book of humorous poetry (1989).

A twentieth-century American film actor, known for his gangly figure and halting, even stammering style of speech. Stewart appeared in a great variety of movies, including Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Harvey, Anatomy of a Murder, and several of the films of Alfred Hitchcock. He won an Academy Award for his part in The Philadelphia Story in 1940.

Quotes:

"Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners."

"If I had my career over again? Maybe I'd say to myself, speed it up a little."

Biography

James Stewart was the movies' quintessential Everyman, a uniquely all-American performer who parlayed his easygoing persona into one of the most successful and enduring careers in film history. On paper, he was anything but the typical Hollywood star: Gawky and tentative, with a pronounced stammer and a folksy "aw-shucks" charm, he lacked the dashing sophistication and swashbuckling heroism endemic among the other major actors of the era. Yet it's precisely the absence of affectation which made Stewart so popular; while so many other great stars seemed remote and larger than life, he never lost touch with his humanity, projecting an uncommon sense of goodness and decency which made him immensely likable and endearing to successive generations of moviegoers.

Born May 20, 1908, in Indiana, PA, Stewart began performing magic as a child. While studying civil engineering at Princeton University, he befriended Joshua Logan, who then headed a summer stock company, and appeared in several of his productions. After graduation, Stewart joined Logan's University Players, a troupe whose membership also included Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. He and Fonda traveled to New York City in 1932, where they began winning small roles in Broadway productions including Carrie Nation, Yellow Jack, and Page Miss Glory. On the recommendation of Hedda Hopper, MGM scheduled a screen test, and soon Stewart was signed to a long-term contract. He first appeared onscreen in a bit role in the 1935 Spencer Tracy vehicle The Murder Man, followed by another small performance the next year in Rose Marie.

Stewart's first prominent role came courtesy of Sullavan, who requested he play her husband in the 1936 melodrama Next Time We Love. Speed, one of six other films he made that same year, was his first lead role. His next major performance cast him as Eleanor Powell's paramour in the musical Born to Dance, after which he accepted a supporting turn in After the Thin Man. For 1938's classic You Can't Take It With You, Stewart teamed for the first time with Frank Capra, the director who guided him during many of his most memorable performances. They reunited a year later for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's breakthrough picture; a hugely popular modern morality play set against the backdrop of the Washington political system, it cemented the all-American persona which made him so adored by fans, earning a New York Film Critics' Best Actor award as well as his first Oscar nomination.

Stewart then embarked on a string of commercial and critical successes which elevated him to the status of superstar; the first was the idiosyncratic 1939 Western Destry Rides Again, followed by the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner. After The Mortal Storm, he starred opposite Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in George Cukor's sublime The Philadelphia Story, a performance which earned him the Best Actor Oscar. However, Stewart soon entered duty in World War II, serving as a bomber pilot and flying 20 missions over Germany. He was highly decorated for his courage, and did not fully retire from the service until 1968, by which time he was an Air Force Brigadier General, the highest-ranking entertainer in the U.S. military.

Stewart's combat experiences left him a changed man; where during the prewar era he often played shy, tentative characters, he returned to films with a new intensity. While remaining as genial and likable as ever, he began to explore new, more complex facets of his acting abilities, accepting roles in darker and more thought-provoking films. The first was Capra's 1946 perennial It's a Wonderful Life, which cast Stewart as a suicidal banker who learns the true value of life. Through years of TV reruns, the film became a staple of Christmastime viewing, and remains arguably Stewart's best-known and most-beloved performance. However, it was not a hit upon its original theatrical release, nor was the follow-up Magic Town -- audiences clearly wanted the escapist fare of Hollywood's prewar era, not the more pensive material so many other actors and filmmakers as well as Stewart wanted to explore in the wake of battle.

The 1948 thriller Call Northside 777 was a concession to audience demands, and fans responded by making the film a considerable hit. Regardless, Stewart next teamed for the first time with Alfred Hitchcock in Rope, accepting a supporting role in a tale based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. His next few pictures failed to generate much notice, but in 1950, Stewart starred in a pair of Westerns, Anthony Mann's Winchester 73 and Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow. Both were hugely successful, and after completing an Oscar-nominated turn as a drunk in the comedy Harvey and appearing in Cecil B. De Mille's Academy Award-winning The Greatest Show on Earth, he made another Western, 1952's Bend of the River, the first in a decade of many similar genre pieces.

Stewart spent the 1950s primarily in the employ of Universal, cutting one of the first percentage-basis contracts in Hollywood -- a major breakthrough soon to be followed by virtually every other motion-picture star. He often worked with director Mann, who guided him to hits including The Naked Spur, Thunder Bay, The Man From Laramie, and The Far Country. For Hitchcock, Stewart starred in 1954's masterful Rear Window, appearing against type as a crippled photographer obsessively peeking in on the lives of his neighbors. More than perhaps any other director, Hitchcock challenged the very assumptions of the Stewart persona by casting him in roles which questioned his character's morality, even his sanity. They reunited twice more, in 1956's The Man Who Knew Too Much and 1958's brilliant Vertigo, and together both director and star rose to the occasion by delivering some of the best work of their respective careers.

Apart from Mann and Hitchcock, Stewart also worked with the likes of Billy Wilder (1957's Charles Lindbergh biopic The Spirit of St. Louis) and Otto Preminger (1959's provocative courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder, which earned him yet another Best Actor bid). Under John Ford, Stewart starred in 1961's Two Rode Together and the following year's excellent The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The 1962 comedy Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation was also a hit, and Stewart spent the remainder of the decade alternating between Westerns and family comedies. By the early '70s, he announced his semi-retirement from movies, but still occasionally resurfaced in pictures like the 1976 John Wayne vehicle The Shootist and 1978's The Big Sleep. By the 1980s, Stewart's acting had become even more limited, and he spent much of his final years writing poetry; he died July 2, 1997. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

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