James Stewart

Jimmy Stewart as he was commonly known was the quintessential everyman in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Lacking the suavity of Cary Grant of the sexy appeal of Clark Gable, Stewart made his career playing the common man hero who rises above adversity. Born in Indiana Pennsylvania Stewart began appearing in films in 1934 but it was his 1939 role as Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington that brought him stardom and a nomination for the best acting Academy Award playing a junior senator who takes on graft and party politics in Washington.

He was able to play both serious scenes as in Mr. Smith as well as the more lighthearted and comedic roles, like his turn as the sheriff without a gun in Destry Rides Again with Marlene Dietrich. For his 1940 role as Mike Connors in The Philadelphia Story Stewart won a Best Actor Oscar. Two interesting things about that: 1. Philadelphia is spelled wrong on his Oscar, 2. He sent it to his father who displayed it in the window of his hardware store on Philadelphia Ave in Indiana Pennsylvania for the next 25 years.

James Stewart was one of the first Hollywood actors to enlist in the military. He joined the Air Force shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He rose to the ranks of Colonel during the war and was later named a brigadier general of the Air Force Reserve. This makes Stewart the highest ranking actor in military history. Stewart always supported American involvement in global conflicts through then end of his life even though he lost his son in Vietnam.

It his turn as George Bailey in another Frank Capra film It’s a Wonderful Life that Stewart will be remembered every Christmas. In it he plays a man driven to the edge by unfortunate circumstances that are beyond his control. In the classic holiday movie an angel named Clarence shows him what the world would be like if he had been a part of it. Unlike any of today’s ‘where would things be if things were different’ George’s lack of being in the world not only changes the town of Bedford Falls dramatically, but changes the fates and lives of hundreds of others out in the world. This heartwarming story of faith and hope has a happy ending that warms even the coldest of hearts every Christmas season.

In the 50’s and 60’s Stewart moved into playing a number of weathered gunslingers in Westerns such as The Naked Spur, Broken Arrow, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence but it was also during the 50s that he performed some of his most interesting and influential roles. In 1950’s Harvey Stewart played lovable crackpot Elwood P. Dowd whose companion was a 6 foot plus invisible rabbit, reprising a role that he has played on Broadway. He said that this was one of his favorite roles and the one that people commented on most frequently when he met them in public. He also began a collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in a twist on his everyman persona casting Stewart alternatively as a voyeur in 1954’s Rear Window, a necrophiliac in 1958’s Vertigo, and a professor who inspires his pupils to murder in Rope.

In the 70s he forayed into television briefly hosting his own television show and reprising his role as Elwood P Dowd in a television remake of the film classic. In the 90’s he voice the character of Wylie Burp in the animation film An American Tail: Fievel Goes West in a classic coup of casting that combines his incomparable and unmistakable voice with a Western character that is a throwback to the washed up and ginned out sheriffs of the Western’s heyday.

Stewart died in 1997 in Los Angeles leaving behind him an impressive resume with a number of common man characters that stretched the fabric of humanity and pushed the limits of both common decency and normality.