Background

James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Ruth (née Jackson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, owner of a hardware store. Stewart was mainly of Scottish ancestry. He was descended from veterans of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the American Civil War.

The eldest of three children (he had two younger sisters, Virginia Wilson Stewart and Mary Kelly Stewart), young Jimmy was expected to one day inherit his father's store and continue a business that had been in the family for three generations. His mother was an excellent pianist, but his father discouraged Stewart's request for music lessons. When his father once accepted a gift of an accordion from a guest, Stewart quickly learned to play the instrument, which became a fixture offstage during his acting career. As the family grew, music continued to be an important part of family life.

Education

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 (competing as a high jumper under Scots-American coach Jimmy Curran in the latter), 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 his hometown 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 made his first appearance onstage 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. It was a dream greatly enhanced by the legendary 1927 flight of Charles Lindbergh, whose progress 19-year-old Stewart, then stricken with scarlet fever, was avidly following from home, foreshadowing his starring movie role as Lindbergh 30 years later.

However, 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. His acting and accordion talents at Princeton led him to be invited to the University Players, an intercollegiate summer stock company in West Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. 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.

Career

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.

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. 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."

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. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

Achievements

• 

  Jimmy Stewart 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. He is 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. As part of their 100 Years Series, Stewart was named the third-greatest screen legend actor in American film history by the AFI in 1999.
  
  Stewart was awarded the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross for his military service.
  
  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. 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."
  
  In 1995, Stewart was honored when "The Jimmy Stewart Museum" opened in his hometown. The Indiana County–Jimmy Stewart Airport was named in his honor.

Works

More photos

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  • Bend of The River 1952
  • It's a Wonderful World 1939
  • You Can't Take It with You 1938
  • James Stewart Western Collection 2012
  • Shenandoah 1965
  • The Rare Breed 1966
  • Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation 1962
  • The Shop Around the Corner 1940
  • The Cheyenne Social Club 1970
  • The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956
  • Anatomy of a Murder 1959
  • Harvey 1972
  • The Flight of the Phoenix 1965
  • Firecreek 1968
  • The Stratton Story 1949
  • Navy Blue and Gold 1937
  • The Naked Spur 1953
  • Destry Rides Again 1939
  • No Highway in the Sky 1951
  • The Spirit of St. Louis 1957
  • Born to Dance 1936
  • Ziegfeld Girl 1941

Religion

James Stewart was raised as a Presbyterian.

Politics

Stewart was a staunch Republican and actively campaigned for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. He was a hawk on the Vietnam War, and maintained that his stepson, Ronald, did not die in vain. Stewart actively supported Reagan's bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976.

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 Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968.

One of his best friends was fellow actor Henry Fonda, despite the fact that the pair had very different political ideologies. A political argument in 1947 resulted in a fistfight, but they maintained their friendship by never discussing politics again.

In the last years of his life, he donated to the campaign of Bob Dole for the 1996 presidential election and to Democratic Florida governor Bob Graham in his successful run for the Senate.

Views

Stewart was active in philanthropy 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.

He was a lifelong supporter of Scouting, having been 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 the BSA, which led to his being sometimes incorrectly identified as an Eagle Scout. An award for Boy Scouts, "The James M. Stewart Good Citizenship Award" has been presented since May 17, 2003.

Quotations: "I think one day you'll find that you're the hero you've been looking for."

"I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little looking out for the other fella too."

"Having friends around for a pleasant evening is one of life's most cherished joys as far as I am concerned. But when those with me are fellow believers, how much greater that joy is, for we know that it's rekindled, one day in eternity."

"Fear is an insidious and deadly thing. It can warp judgment, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes. Worse, it's contagious."

"You have to develop a style that suits you and pursue it, not just develop a bag of tricks. Always be yourself."

"The true Christian reaction to suffering and sorrow is not the attitude of self-pity, fatalism or resentment; it is the spirit which takes life's difficulties as a God given opportunity, and regards its troubles as a sacred trust, and wears the thorns as a crown."

"The great thing about the movies ... is-you're giving people little ... tiny pieces of time ... that they never forget."

"I have my own rules and adhere to them. The rule is simple but inflexible. A James Stewart picture must have two vital ingredients. It will be clean and it will involve the triumph of the underdog over the bully."

"It is the spectators, the people who are outside, looking at the tragedy, from whose ranks the skeptics come; it is not those who are actually in the arena and who know suffering from the inside. Indeed, the fact is that it is the world's greatest sufferers who have produced the most shining examples of unconquerable faith."

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

"You must be oh-so smart, or oh-so pleasant. For years I was smart. I recommend pleasant...and you may quote me."

"It may sound corny, but what's wrong with wanting to fight for your country. Why are people reluctant to use the word patriotism?"

"Learn from the masters, learn from your contemporaries. Always try to update yourself."

Membership

Stewart was a member of the choir club, glee club, and John Marshall Literary Society. He was also one of the 12 founders and a charter member of the Air Force Association in October 1945.

Stewart was a Life Member of the Sons of the Revolution in the State of California. In 1989, Stewart founded the American Spirit Foundation.

• Life Member

  Sons of the Revolution , California

• Air Force Association

  October, 1945

Personality

Stewart was almost universally described by his collaborators as a kind, soft-spoken man and a true professional. 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." 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." Joan Crawford praised the actor 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." As an actor he had a marvelous sense of timing and of his own persona.

Stewart was good at playing musical instruments, especially, the accordion. One of Stewart's lesser-known talents was his homespun poetry. Once, while on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, he read a poem entitled "Beau" that he had written about his dog. By the end of this reading, Carson's eyes were welling with tears. He published a book of poetry titled ‘Jimmy Stewart and His Poems’ in 1989.

Stewart was also an avid gardener. Stewart purchased the house next door to his Beverly Hills home, had it razed, and installed his garden on the lot.

Physical Characteristics: During his later years he suffered from many ailments like skin cancer, heart disease and dementia.

Connections

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.)

Father:

Alexander Maitland Stewart

(1872-1961)

Mother:

Elizabeth Ruth Stewart

(née Jackson; March 16, 1875 – August 2, 1953)

Spouse:

Gloria Hatrick McLean

(March 10, 1918 – February 16, 1994)

Gloria Hatrick McLean was an American actress and model.

Daughter:

Kelly Stewart-Harcourt

(b. May 7, 1951)

Son:

Ronald Stewart

(1944 - June 8, 1969, Vietnam)

Daughter:

Judy Stewart-Merrill

(b. May 7, 1951)

Son:

Michael Stewart James Stewart

(b.1947)

Sister:

Mary Stewart

Sister:

Virginia Stewart

Friend:

Henry Jaynes Fonda

(May 16, 1905 – August 12, 1982)

Henry Jaynes Fonda was an American film and stage actor with a career spanning five decades.

References

• James Stewart: Behind the Scenes of a Wonderful Life
  1997
• Jimmy Stewart: A Biography
  2006
• Jimmy Stewart: A Wonderful Life
  1994
• Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe
  2016
• James Stewart: A Biography
  1996