- published: 01 Dec 2012
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James Maitland "Jimmy" Stewart (May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was an American actor, known for his distinctive drawl and down-to-earth persona. He starred in many films that are considered to be classics, and is known for portraying an American middle-class man struggling with a crisis.
Stewart was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition for The Philadelphia Story (1940) and receiving one Lifetime Achievement award. Stewart was named the third greatest male screen legend of the Golden Age Hollywood by the American Film Institute. He was a major Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 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.
Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the son of Elizabeth Ruth Jackson (1875–1953) and Alexander Maitland Stewart (1871–1961), who owned a hardware store. He had Irish and Scottish ancestry, and was raised as a Presbyterian. 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 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. When his father accepted a gift of an accordion from a guest, young 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.
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Amy Lee Grant (born November 25, 1960) is an American singer-songwriter, musician, author, media personality and actress. She is known for performing contemporary Christian music (CCM) and for a successful crossover to pop music in the 1980s and 1990s. She has been referred to as "The Queen of Christian Pop".As of 2009, Grant had sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.
Grant is a great-granddaughter of Nashville philanthropist A. M. Burton (founder of Life and Casualty Insurance Company, eponym of Nashville's Life & Casualty Tower, WLAC Radio, and WLAC-TV) and Lillie Burton. Grant has acknowledged the influence of the Burtons on her development as a musician, starting with their common membership in Nashville's Ashwood Church of Christ.
Grant made her debut as a teenager, and gained fame in Christian music during the 1980s with such hits as "Father's Eyes", "El Shaddai", and "Angels". In the mid-1980s, she began broadening her audience and soon became one of the first CCM artists to cross over into mainstream pop on the heels of her successful albums Unguarded and Lead Me On. In 1986, she scored her first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 song in a duet with Peter Cetera, "The Next Time I Fall". In 1991, she released the blockbuster album Heart in Motion which became her best-selling album to date, topping the Billboard Christian album chart for 32 weeks, selling five million copies in the U.S., and producing her second No. 1 pop single "Baby Baby".