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Family Life is a magazine published by, and primarily for, the Old Order Amish. The publisher is Pathway Publishers of Aylmer, Ontario, Canada. Unlike some Amish publications, Family Life is printed entirely in English rather than Pennsylvania Dutch or German.

The magazine was founded in 1968 and is published monthly. It contains articles, poetry, recipes, and drawings submitted by readers. It also has several regular columns on subjects such as health, nature, and religion. Like its primary readership, Family Life magazine stresses simplicity, basic Christian doctrine, and an agricultural lifestyle.

Exact circulation figures are unavailable. The magazine does have some non-Amish readership, including Mennonites. It is used as a reference by some scholars, sociologists, and anthropologists who study the Amish. In addition to Family Life, Pathway produces two companion publications-Blackboard Bulletin, concerning schooling and education, and Young Companion, focusing on youth issues.

References[link]

• Amish Publications

Ken Loach
Born	Kenneth Loach (1936-06-17) 17 June 1936 (age 76) Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, UK
Alma mater	St Peter's College, Oxford
Years active	1962–present

Kenneth "Ken" Loach (born 17 June 1936) is a Palme D'Or winning English film and television director.

He is known for his naturalistic, social realist directing style and for his socialist beliefs, which are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as homelessness (Cathy Come Home) and labour rights (Riff-Raff).

Life and career[link]

Loach was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the son of Vivien (née Hamlin) and John Loach.^[1] He attended King Edward VI Grammar School and following two years in the Royal Air Force read law at St Peter's College, Oxford. There he performed in the now well-established comedy group, the Oxford Revue. He initially worked as an actor in repertory theatre, but in the early 1960s moved into television direction and was credited in this role on early episodes of Z-Cars in 1964.

In 1966, Loach made the influential docudrama Cathy Come Home portraying working class people affected by homelessness and unemployment, and presenting a powerful and influential critique of the workings of the Social Services. Soon afterwards with Poor Cow (1967) he started directing films for the cinema, and in 1969 made Kes, the story of a troubled boy and his kestrel, based on the novel A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines. The British Film Institute named it No 7 in its list of best British films of the twentieth century, published in 1999.^[2]

During the 1970s and '80s, Loach's films were less successful, often suffering from poor distribution, lack of interest and political censorship. His film The Save the Children Fund Film (1971) was commissioned by the charity, who subsequently disliked it so much they attempted to have the negative destroyed. In fact, it was only screened publicly for the first time on 1 September 2011, at the BFI Southbank.^[3]

In 1982, Loach and Central Independent Television were commissioned by Channel 4 to make Questions of Leadership, a documentary series on the response of the British trade union movement to the challenge posed by the policies of the Thatcher government, which also gave members an opportunity to call their own leaders to account. The programmes were not broadcast by Channel 4, a decision Loach claimed was politically motivated. In 2004, for the first time, the real reason for this censorship was revealed, in Anthony Hayward's book Which Side Are You On? Ken Loach and His Films.^[4] It emerged that the media tycoon Robert Maxwell had put pressure on Central's board, of which he had become a director, to withdraw Questions of Leadership at the time he was buying the Daily Mirror newspaper and needed the co-operation of union leaders, especially Frank Chapple of the electricians.

Which Side Are You On? (1985), about the songs and poems of the UK miners' strike, was commissioned by ITV's The South Bank Show, but also banned. The film was eventually transmitted on Channel 4, but only after it won a major prize at the Berlin International Film Festival. Crucially, it was only shown towards the end of the miners' strike and not in the middle of the strike when it was originally scheduled.

The late 1980s and 1990s saw the production of a series of critically acclaimed and popular films such as Hidden Agenda, one of the rare films dealing with the political troubles in Northern Ireland, Carla's Song set partially in Nicaragua, and Land and Freedom examining the Republican resistance in the Spanish Civil War. "Land and Freedom" contains a quintessentially Loach sequence of a 20 minute political discussion amongst villagers trying to decide whether or not a village's smallholdings should be collectivized. During this period he was also awarded prizes at the Cannes Film Festival on three occasions. He directed the Courtroom Drama reconstructions in the docu-film McLibel, concerning the longest libel trial in English history, which became a promotional disaster for the fast food chain. Interspersed with overtly political films were smaller dramas such as Raining Stones a working class drama concerning an unemployed man's efforts to buy a communion dress for his young daughter.

On 28 May 2006, Loach won the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival for his film The Wind That Shakes the Barley,^[5] a film about the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish Civil War during the 1920s. In characteristic fashion this sweeping political-historical drama was followed by It's a Free World a story of one woman's attempt to establish an illegal placement service for migrant workers in London. Throughout the 2000s Loach continued to intersperse wider political dramas such as Bread and Roses (which focused on the Los Angeles janitors strike) and Route Irish, set in the Iraq occupation, with smaller examinations of personal relationships. Ae Fond Kiss explored an inter-racial love affair, Sweet Sixteen a teenager's relationship with his mother, and My Name is Joe an alcoholic's struggle to stay sober. His most commercially successful recent film is 2009's Looking for Eric, featuring a depressed postman's conversations with the ex-Manchester United football star, Eric Cantona (played by Cantona himself). A measure of Loach's difficulties gaining broad release for his work is the fact that this film ended up making only £12,000 profit.^[6] The film received critical acclaim and won the Magritte Award for Best Co-Production.

In 2011 he released Route Irish, an examination of private contractors working in the Iraqi occupation. A thematic consistency throughout his films, whether they examine broad political situations, or smaller intimate dramas, is his focus on personal relationships. The sweeping political dramas (Land and Freedom, Bread and Roses, The Wind that Shakes the Barley) examine wider political forces in the context of relationships between family members (Bread and Roses, The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Carla's Song), comrades in struggle (Land and Freedom) or close friends (Route Irish). In a 2011 interview for the Financial Times, Loach explains how "The politics are embedded into the characters and the narrative, which is a more sophisticated way of doing it".^[7]

Loach lives with his wife, Lesley, in Bath, where he is a supporter of and shareholder in Bath City F.C. A short film concerning Bath FC is part of the DVD issue of "Looking for Eric". His son Jim Loach has also become a television and film director.

The Angel's Share centres around a young Scottish troublemaker who is given one final opportunity to stay out of jail. Newcomer Paul Brannigan, 24, from Glasgow, plays the lead role.^[8] The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival^[9][10] where Loach won the Jury Prize.^[11]

Film style[link]

Ken Loach at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

Loach's film work is characterised by a particular view of realism; he strives in every area of filmmaking to emphasise genuine interplay between actors, to the point where some scenes in his films appear unscripted. All scenes are carefully scripted, around which some improvisation can occur. The final script and the final film are actually very close. Loach values having a strong, creative partnership with scriptwriters, most recently with Paul Laverty, who has written nine feature films for Loach (including The Wind That Shakes The Barley and Sweet Sixteen), and previously with Jim Allen (Land & Freedom) and Barry Hines (Kes).

In May 2010, Loach told Tom Lamont in an interview about the three films that have influenced him most: Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948), Milos Forman's Loves of a Blonde (1965) and Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers (1966). De Sica's film had a particularly profound effect on Loach. He noted "It made me realise that cinema could be about ordinary people and their dilemmas. It wasn't a film about stars, or riches or absurd adventures."^[12]

Rather than employing method actors, he prefers unknown talent who have had some of the life experience of the characters they portray. Loach's film work has been described as naturalistic; he emphasises the genuine interplay between actors, and foregoes over-dependence on special effects. He succeeds in creating a spontaneous, realistic atmosphere in scenes and many actors, from Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall to Robert Carlyle (Carla's Song and Riff-Raff) and Peter Mullan (My Name Is Joe) have praised the performances he coaxes from actors and how he treats them.

In Bread and Roses, a film about immigrant cleaners in LA, many of the extras were Latino immigrant cleaners. Some were also trade union and grassroots activists. Some knew from their own experience the dangers of crossing the border into the US. Adrien Brody, the main actor, spent time with activists to understand his role better. Pilar Padilla, a Mexican actress and protagonist of the film, had to learn English in a crash course to play the part.

Loach makes great efforts to help the actors express themselves naturally and honestly. He believes that shooting in order, from first scene to last, helps the actors to find a response to their circumstances. Many actors in his films are often not given the full script at the beginning of a shoot, but rather they experience the story just as a fictional character might do. He will often give actors their scenes a couple of days in advance so they can learn their lines, but they still won't know what comes after that. If a scene involves shock or surprise for a character, the actor might not know what is about to happen. In Kes the boy actor, discovering the dead bird at the end, believed Loach had killed the bird, which he had become fond of during the filming (the crew used a dead bird found elsewhere). In the scene where Mr Gryce is searching the schoolboys, the small first year holding everybody else's cigarettes was under the impression that he was to give the headmaster a note and leave the office. Subsequently, when he is searched and found to be "a right little cigarette factory", he is caned alongside the other boys; hence, his look of shock and tears of pain are real. In Raining Stones one of the actresses visited at her house by a loan shark had no idea that he was going to force her to take off her wedding ring and give it to him as part payment. In Carla's Song, the bus driver, played by Robert Carlyle, knew nothing of Carla's attempted suicide until he discovered her in the bath. In Looking For Eric, the main actor Steve Evets discovered that football icon Eric Cantona was in the film only when he turned around to face him in a scene, with the camera rolling.

Loach opposes censorship in cinema and was outraged at the "18" certificate given to Sweet Sixteen. Loach said,

Political activities[link]

Throughout his career Loach's films have been shelved for political reasons. In a 2011 interview with the Guardian newspaper he said "It makes you angry, not on your own behalf, but on behalf of the people whose voices weren't allowed to be heard. When you had trade unions, ordinary people, rank and file, never been on television, never been interviewed, and they're not allowed to be heard, that's scandalous. And you see it over and over again. I mean, we heard very little from the kids in the riots. You hear some people being inarticulate in a hood, but very few people were actually allowed to speak".^[13] In the same interview his focus on working people's lives is explained thus: "I think the underlying factors regarding the riots are plain for anyone with eyes to see … It seems to me any economic structure that could give young people a future has been destroyed. Traditionally young people would be drawn into the world of work, and into groups of adults who would send the boys for a lefthanded screwdriver, or a pot of elbow grease, and so they'd be sent up in that way, but they would also learn about responsibilities, and learn a trade, and be defined by their skills. Well, they destroyed that. Thatcher destroyed that. She consciously destroyed the workforces in places like the railways, for example, and the mines, and the steelworks … so that transition from adolescence to adulthood was destroyed, consciously, and knowingly." He argues that working people's struggles are inherently dramatic: "They live life very vividly, and the stakes are very high if you don't have a lot of money to cushion your life. Also, because they're the front line of what we came to call the class war. Either through being workers without work, or through being exploited where they were working. And I guess for a political reason, because we felt, and I still think, that if there is to be change, it will come from below. It won't come from people who have a lot to lose, it will come from people who will have everything to gain."^[14] This explains how Loach regards politics and drama as intertwined, rather than existing in separate spheres.

A member of the Labour Party from the early 1960s, Loach left in the mid-1990s.^[15] In November 2004, he was elected to the national council of the Respect Coalition^[15] He stood for election to the European Parliament on a Respect mandate. He supports the Socialist Resistance organisation. Also, he supports the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of the State of Israel, backed by many intellectuals in Palestinian civil society, including writers, filmmakers, students, trade unions and human rights groups. PACBI is in turn part of a wider global international movement: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), that opposes actions by the Israeli State.^[16]

In 2007, Loach was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter initiated by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism and the South West Asian, North African Bay Area Queers (SWANABAQ) and calling on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival "to honour calls for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions, by discontinuing Israeli consulate sponsorship of the LGBT film festival and not co-sponsoring events with the Israeli consulate."^[17][18] Loach also joined "54 international figures in the literary and cultural fields" in signing a letter that stated, in part, "celebrating 'Israel at 60' is tantamount to dancing on Palestinian graves to the haunting tune of lingering dispossession and multi-faceted injustice". The letter was published in the International Herald Tribune on 8 May 2008."^[19]

Responding to a report, which he described as "a red herring", on the growth of antisemitism since the beginning of the Gaza War, he has said: "If there has been a rise I am not surprised. In fact, it is perfectly understandable because Israel feeds feelings of anti-Semitism." He added "no-one can condone violence".^[20]

In May 2009, organisers of the Edinburgh International Film Festival returned a £300 grant from the Israeli Embassy after speaking with Ken Loach. The director was supporting a boycott of the festival called for by the PACBI campaign. In response, former Channel 4 chief executive Sir Jeremy Isaacs describing Loach's intervention as an act of censorship, he said: "They must not allow someone who has no real position, no rock to stand on, to interfere with their programming." Later, a spokesman for the EIFF said that although it had returned £300 to the Israeli Embassy, the festival itself would fund Israeli filmmaker Tali Shalom-Ezer's travel to Edinburgh out of its own budget.^[21][22][23] In an open letter to Ms Shalom Ezer, Ken Loach wrote "From the beginning, Israel and its supporters have attacked their critics as anti-semites or racists. It is a tactic to undermine rational debate. To be crystal clear: as a film maker you will receive a warm welcome in Edinburgh. You are not censored or rejected. The opposition was to the Festival’s taking money from the Israeli state".^[24] To his critics, he added later: "The boycott, as anyone who takes the trouble to investigate knows, is aimed at the Israeli state."^[25] Loach said he had a "respectful and reasoned" conversation with event organisers, saying they should not be accepting funds from Israel.^[25]

In June 2009, Loach, Paul Laverty (writer) and Rebecca O'Brien (producer) pulled their film Looking For Eric from the Melbourne International Film Festival, where the Israeli Embassy is a sponsor, after the festival declined the withdraw their sponsorship.^[26] The festival's chief executive, Richard Moore, compared Loach's tactics to blackmail, stating that "we will not participate in a boycott against the State of Israel, just as we would not contemplate boycotting films from China or other nations involved in difficult long-standing historical disputes.” Australian lawmaker Michael Danby also criticised Loach’s tactics stating that “Israelis and Australians have always had a lot in common, including contempt for the irritating British penchant for claiming cultural superiority. Melbourne is a very different place to Londonistan.”^[27]

Loach, Laverty and O'Brien subsequently wrote that: "We feel duty bound to take advice from those living at the sharp end inside the occupied territories. We would also encourage other filmmakers and actors invited to festivals to check for Israeli state backing before attending, and if so, to respect the boycott. Israeli filmmakers are not the target. State involvement is. In the grand scale of things it is a tiny contribution to a growing movement, but the example of South Africa should give us heart".^[28]

Loach has also expressed strong support for Chechen independence from Russia.^[29]

Loach is a Patron of several charities, including Doorway, a homeless charity in Nuneaton,^[30] and Developing Health and Independence (DHI) in Bath.^[31]

Together with John Pilger and Jemima Khan, Ken Loach was among the six people in court willing to offer surety for Julian Assange when he was arrested in London on 7 December 2010.^[32] In a recent interview with ShortList magazine he said "It’s clear that he’s being set up. Clearly the Yanks want to get him back and either imprison him for a long time, or worse. We need a bit of solidarity with someone who has just told us things that we were entitled to know."

Loach is supporting the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in the London Assembly election, 2012^[33] He wrote a letter to The Observer in 2012 condemning the Globe theatre for allowing an Israeli theatre company to perform there.^[34]

Honours[link]

Loach turned down an OBE in 1977. In a Radio Times interview, published in March 2001, he said:

Loach has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Bath, the University of Birmingham, Staffordshire University, and Keele University.^[36] Oxford University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in June 2005. He is also an honorary fellow of his alma mater, St Peter's College, Oxford.^[37] In May 2006, he was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship at the BAFTA TV Awards.

He received the 2003 Praemium Imperiale (lit. "World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu") in the category Film/Theatre.

Filmography[link]

Television[link]

• Catherine ("Teletale", 1964)
• Z-Cars (series, 1964)
• Diary of a Young Man (1964)
• Tap on the Shoulder (Play for Today, 1965)
• Wear a Very Big Hat (Play for Today, 1965)
• Three Clear Sundays (Play for Today, 1965)
• Up the Junction (Play for Today, 1965)
• The End of Arthur's Marriage (Play for Today, 1965)
• The Coming Out Party (Play for Today, 1965)
• Cathy Come Home (Play for Today, 1966)
• In Two Minds (Play for Today, 1967)
• The Golden Vision (Play for Today, 1968)
• The Big Flame (Play for Today, 1969)
• The Rank and the File (Play for Today, 1971)
• After a Lifetime ("Sunday Night Theatre", 1971)
• A Misfortune ("Full House", 1973)
• Days of Hope (mini-series, 1975)
• The Price of Coal (1977)
• The Gamekeeper (1980)
• Auditions (1980)
• A Question of Leadership (1981)
• The Red and the Blue: Impressions of Two Political Conferences - Autumn 1982 (1983)
• Questions of Leadership (1983/4, untransmitted)
• Which Side Are You On? (1985)
• End of the Battle... Not the End of the War ("Diverse Reports", 1985)
• Time to Go ("Split Screen", 1989)
• The View From the Woodpile (1989)
• The Arthur Legend ("Dispatches", 1991)
• The Flickering Flame (1996)
• Another City: A Week in the Life of Bath's Football Club (1998)

Cinema[link]

• Poor Cow (1967)
• Kes (1969) (as Kenneth Loach)
• The Save the Children Fund Film (1971)
• Family Life (1971)
• Black Jack (1979)
• Looks and Smiles (1981) (as Kenneth Loach)
• Fatherland (1986)
• Hidden Agenda (1990). Cannes Special Jury Prize.
• Riff-Raff (1991). European Film Award Best Picture
• Raining Stones (1993). Cannes Special Jury Prize.
• Ladybird Ladybird (1994)
• Land and Freedom (1995). FIPRESCI International Critics Prize; Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Film Festival; European Film Award Best Picture
• A Contemporary Case for Common Ownership (1995)
• Carla's Song (1996)
• The Flickering Flame (1997)
• My Name Is Joe (1998)
• Bread and Roses (2000)
• The Navigators (2001)
• Sweet Sixteen (2002)
• 11'09"01 September 11 (segment "United Kingdom") (2002)
• Ae Fond Kiss... (2004)
• Tickets (2005), along with Ermanno Olmi and Abbas Kiarostami
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) Palme d'Or, Cannes
• It's a Free World... (2007) Screenplay Osella at 64th Venice Film Festival
• Looking for Eric (2009)
• Route Irish (2010)
• The Angels' Share (2012)

See also[link]

• Kitchen sink realism

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ken Loach

• Ken Loach - Production Company and DVD box set
• Ken Loach at the Internet Movie Database
• Ken Loach at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Ken Loach at MUBI
• Ken Loach Filmography
• Extensive Ken Loach Biography and Filmography
• Interview with Loach about My Name is Joe
• Interview with Loach from 1998
• Posters and Stills Gallery from the BFI
• Interview: Ken Loach about Media, Culture and the Prospects for a New Liberatory Project, Democracy & Nature, Vol. 5, No.1 (March 1999). [Ken Loach was interviewed by Theodoros Papadopoulos in December 1998].
• Interview with Ken Loach, interview about Route Irish in the Oxonian Review

James Stewart
Studio publicity photo for Call Northside 777 (1948)
Born	James Maitland Stewart (1908-05-20)May 20, 1908 Indiana, Pennsylvania
Died	July 2, 1997(1997-07-02) (aged 89) Beverly Hills, California
Cause of death	Heart Attack
Resting place	Forest Lawn, Glendale, California
Residence	Beverly Hills, California
Nationality	American
Other names	Jimmy Stewart
Education	Mercersburg Academy
Alma mater	Princeton University (1932)
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1932–1991
Employer	MGM
Home town	Indiana, Pennsylvania
Spouse	Gloria Hatrick McLean (1949–1994; her death)
Children	4 children (including two adopted stepchildren)
Awards	Lifetime Achievement Award
Military career
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Army Air Forces United States Air Force Reserve
Years of service	1941–1968
Rank	Brigadier General
Unit	445th Bombardment Group 453rd Bombardment Group Eighth Air Force Strategic Air Command
Commands held	703rd Bombardment Squadron Dobbins Air Force Base
Battles/wars	World War II Vietnam War
Awards	Distinguished Service Medal Distinguished Flying Cross (2) Air Medal (4) Army Commendation Medal Armed Forces Reserve Medal Presidential Medal of Freedom French Croix de Guerre with Palm

James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American film and stage actor, known for his distinctive voice and 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.

Early life and career[link]

James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Ruth (née Jackson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store.^[1] Stewart's parents were of Scottish descent and Presbyterians.^[2][3] His maternal ancestors served in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the American Civil War.^[4] 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.^[5]

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 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.^[6] He made his first appearance onstage at Mercersburg, as Buquet in the play The Wolves.^[7]

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;^[6] but he gradually became attracted to the school's drama and music clubs, including the Princeton Triangle Club.^[8] 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. The troupe had previously included Henry Fonda, who married Margaret Sullavan on Christmas Day 1931, while the players were in Baltimore, Maryland for an 18-week winter season.^[9] Sullavan, who had rejoined the 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.^[10] Stewart and Fonda became great friends over the summer of 1932 when they shared an apartment with Joshua Logan and Myron McCormick.^[11] 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."^[12]

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."^[13] 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.^[14]

Stewart made four features with Margaret Sullavan, the second of which was The Shopworn Angel (1938)

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). 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.

On the romantic front, he found himself dating newly divorced Ginger Rogers.^[15] 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. 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.^[16] 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.

Pre-war success[link]

In 1938, Stewart had a brief, tumultuous 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. 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."^[18]

Frank Capra's comedy You Can't Take It With You (1938) was one of the films that brought Stewart widespread attention.

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. Stewart's father was still trying to talk him into leaving Hollywood and its sinful ways and to return to his home town to lead a decent life. Stewart took a secret trip to Europe to take a break and returned home in 1939 just as Germany invaded Poland.^[18]

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.^[19] 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."^[20] Between movies, Stewart began a radio career and became a distinctive voice on the Lux Radio Theater's The Screen Guild Theater and other shows. So well-known had his slow drawl become that comedians began impersonating him.^[21]

Stewart won his only Academy Award for Best Actor for 1940's The Philadelphia Story. He is seen here with co-star Katharine Hepburn.

In 1940, Stewart and 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 but 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.^[22] 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, literally hunted down by their own friends.

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."^[23] 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.^[24]

Military service[link]

The Stewart and Jackson families had deep military roots as both grandfathers had fought in the Civil War, 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 came, he too was eager to serve. Members of his family had previously been in the infantry, but Stewart chose to become a military flier.^[25]

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.^[6] Nearly two years before the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Stewart had accumulated over 400 hours of flying time.^[26]

Considered a highly proficient pilot, he even entered a cross-country race as a co-pilot in 1939.^[27] 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.^[28]

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,^{[29][N 1]} 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.^[30]

Stewart enlisted as a private^[6][31] 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.^[31]

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."^[32] 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.^[33]

Stewart was concerned that his expertise and celebrity status would relegate him to instructor duties "behind the lines."^[34] 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 Army Airfield 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, Boise, Idaho.^[31] For 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."^[35] Stewart appealed to his commander, a pre-war aviator, who understood the situation and reassigned him to a unit going overseas.^{[citation needed]}

Alongside acting, Stewart was an accomplished member of the United States Air Force, and rose to the rank of Brigadier General in 1959. Picture taken c. 1960

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 1943, 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 clusters. 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.^[6][31]

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 for having 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 defendants.^[36]

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.^[37] Stewart rarely spoke about his wartime service. 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 because of 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. At his request, he was identified only as "James Stewart, Squadron Commander" in the documentary.^[38]

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.^[39] He was promoted to Major General by President Ronald Reagan.^[40]

Post-war success[link]

After the war, Stewart took time off to reassess his career.^[41] 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.^[42] 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.^[43]

As George Bailey, with Guardian angel Clarence, in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Stewart was Oscar-nominated for the performance, and the film is widely considered a Christmas classic

For his first film in five years, Stewart appeared in his third and final Frank Capra production, It's a Wonderful Life.^{[44][N 2]} 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.^[45] 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,^[46] an "angel, second class", played by Henry Travers. 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.^[47] 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. 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."^[48] 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.^[49] 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.^[50]

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 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.

He returned to the stage to star in Mary Coyle Chase's Harvey, which had opened to nearly universal praise in November 1944,^[51] as Elwood P. Dowd, a wealthy eccentric living with his sister and 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.^[51] 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 but he declined.^[52] 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.^[53] During the 1950s, he expanded into the western and suspense genres, thanks to collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Mann.

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.^[54][55]

Collaborations with Hitchcock and Mann[link]

Stewart's collaborations with director Anthony Mann 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.^[56] 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).^[56]

Stewart made eight films for director Anthony Mann. Five of them were Westerns, including The Naked Spur (1953), in which Stewart is seen here.

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.^[57]

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. His 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.^[58] Stewart ended up earning about $600,000 for Winchester '73 alone.^[58] Hollywood's other stars quickly capitalized on this new way of doing business, which further undermined the decaying "studio system".^[59]

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.^[60]

Rear Window (1954) was one of four films Stewart made with Alfred Hitchcock. Stewart became the highest-grossing star of 1954 as a result.

The two collaborated for the second of four times on the 1954 hit Rear Window, widely considered 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 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.^[61] 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 Doris Day, Stewart starred, with Kim Novak, in what many consider Hitchcock's most personal film, Vertigo (1958).^[62] 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.^[63] The director reportedly 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.^{[citation needed]}

Career in the 1960s and 1970s[link]

In 1960, Stewart was awarded the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor 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 quite explicit for its time, and it was a box office success.^[64] 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 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).^[65] 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.

How the West Was Won (1962), shot in three-projector Cinerama, was one of Stewart's key roles in the 1960s.

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, shot in black and white film noir style featuring powerful use of shadows in the climactic sequence, with Stewart 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. The film garnered mixed reviews but was an instant hit at the box office.

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. One of only a handful of movies filmed in true Cinerama, shot with three cameras and exhibited with three simultaneous projectors in theatres, How the West Was Won went on to win three Oscars and reap 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. The historical drama 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 Bell, Book and Candle (1958), 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.^{[citation needed]}

Later in life, Stewart ventured into television. He played the lead in the CBS mystery series Hawkins in 1973, and was Golden Globe nominated for the role.

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.^[66] 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.^[67]

After a progression of lesser western films in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Stewart transitioned from cinema to television. In the 1950s he had made guest appearances on the Jack Benny Program. Stewart first starred in the NBC comedy The Jimmy Stewart Show, on which he played a college professor, and was the only time in his career in which he was formally billed in the credits as "Jimmy" instead of "James". He followed it with the CBS mystery Hawkins, in which he played a small town lawyer investigating cases. The series garnered Stewart a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Dramatic TV Series, but failed to gain a wide audience, possibly because it rotated with Shaft, another high-quality series but with a starkly conflicting demographic, and was cancelled after one season. 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, Jimmy Stewart and His Poems (1989).^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

Last years and later career[link]

Speaking at The Kennedy Center on Inauguration Day, 1981, in Washington D.C.

Following the failure of The Magic of Lassie, 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.^[68] 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/90s, he did voiceover work for commercials for Campbell's Soups.^[48]

Stewart's longtime friend Henry Fonda died in 1982, and former co-star and friend Grace Kelly, was killed in a car crash shortly afterwards. A few months later, Stewart starred with Bette Davis in Right of Way. He filmed several television movies in the 1980s, including Mr. Krueger's Christmas, which allowed him to fulfill a lifelong dream to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.^[69] 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 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."^{[citation needed]}

In 1988 Stewart made an impassioned plea in Congressional hearings, along with, among many others, 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".^[70]

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.^[71]

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.^[71]

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.'"^[48]

Death[link]

Jimmy Stewart's grave

In April 1993 he underwent heart surgery and had a pacemaker installed. On January 31, 1997, Stewart tripped over a plant in his bedroom and was rushed to a hospital for stitches to close a bloody gash in his forehead. There it was discovered that he had skin cancer which appeared to be untreatable. He was sent home.^[72]

On July 2, 1997, an embolism lodged in his lungs. The clot caused a heart attack that killed him instantly. He was 89 years old.^[73] His death came one day after the death of two-time co-star Robert Mitchum (The Big Sleep, Cape Fear). James Stewart is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, alongside his wife, Gloria, who had died from lung cancer on February 16, 1994. President Bill Clinton commented on Stewart's death, saying: "America lost a national treasure today. Jimmy Stewart was a great actor, a gentleman and a patriot."^[48]

Personal life[link]

Stewart was almost universally described by his collaborators as a kind, soft-spoken man and a true professional.^[74] 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."^[48]

Stewart was married to wife Gloria from 1949 to her death in 1994.

When Henry Fonda moved to Hollywood in 1934, he was again a roommate with Stewart in an apartment in Brentwood^[75] and the two gained reputations as playboys.^[76] Both men's children later 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.^[77]

After World War II, Stewart settled down, at age 41, marrying former model Gloria Hatrick McLean (March 10, 1918 – February 16, 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!"^[78] 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, aged 75. Ronald McLean was killed in action on June 8, 1969, at the age of 24, while serving as a Marine Corps Lieutenant in Vietnam.^[79][80] Daughter Kelly Stewart is an anthropologist.^[81]

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.^[6] 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.^[82] An award for Boy Scouts, "The James M. Stewart Good Citizenship Award" has been presented since May 17, 2003.^[83]

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.^[84] 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. He was also an avid gardener. 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.^{[citation needed]}

Politics[link]

Stewart was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party^[85] and actively campaigned for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. He was a hawk on the Vietnam War, and maintained that his adopted son, Ronald, did not die in vain.^{[citation needed]}

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 Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968.^[86]

One of his best friends was fellow actor Henry Fonda, despite the fact that the two had very different political ideologies. A political argument in 1947 resulted in a fist fight between them, but they maintained their friendship by never discussing politics again.^{[87][N 3]} There is a brief reference to their political differences in character in their movie The Cheyenne Social Club.^[88] 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.^[85]

In Frank Borzage's The Mortal Storm

Filmography[link]

From the beginning of Stewart's film career in 1935, through his final theatrical project in 1991, he appeared in 92 films, television programs and shorts. Five of his movies were included on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Rear Window and Vertigo. 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 — with one win for The Philadelphia Story.

Broadway performances[link]

• 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 Jack (May 1934)
• Divided By Three (October 1934)
• Page Miss Glory (November 1934 – March 1935)
• A Journey By Night (April 1935)
• Harvey (July – August 1947, July – August 1948, replacing vacationing Frank Fay, who created the role on Broadway)
• Harvey (revival, February – May 1970)

Legacy[link]

Stewart's star on The Hollywood Walk of Fame

Throughout his seven decades in Hollywood, Stewart cultivated a versatile career and recognized screen image in such classics as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Mortal Storm, 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 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 many renowned directors during his career, most notably Frank Capra, George Cukor, Henry Hathaway, Cecil B. DeMille, Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Borzage, George Stevens, Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Billy Wilder, Don Siegel, and Anthony Mann. He won many of the industry's highest honors and earned Lifetime Achievement awards from every major film organization.^{[citation needed]} He was named the third Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.

Honors and tributes[link]

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.

See also[link]

United States Air Force portal

• List of film collaborations

References[link]

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (May 2012)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: James Stewart

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jimmy Stewart

• James Stewart at the Internet Broadway Database
• James Stewart at the Internet Movie Database
• Jimmy Stewart at the TCM Movie Database
• The American Spirit Foundation
• Feaster, Felicia. James Stewart Profile at Turner Classic Movies
• Kronenberg, Harold. "Flying with Jimmy Stewart"
• Obituary: "James Stewart, the Hesitant Hero, Dies at 89," The New York Times (July 3, 1997)
• Obituary: "Hollywood legend Jimmy Stewart dead at 89", CNN, (July 2, 1997)
• "Princeton to Honor Famed Alumnus Jimmy Stewart '32 With Tribute and Theater Dedication", Princeton University (1997)
• Centennial Tribute to James Stewart
• The Jimmy Stewart Museum
• Brig. Gen. James M. Stewart at the National Museum of the United States Air Force
• A Kennedy Center Honors: James Stewart
• Entertainment Weekly's 100 Greatest Movies of All Time
• 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
• Images: Stewart Pictures. Telecommunication & Film Department, University of Alabama
• 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.