Broken Arrow (1950) James Stewart, Jeff Chandler, Debra Paget. Western
Tom Jeffords tries to make
peace between settlers and
Apaches.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042286/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
James Maitland Stewart was born on 20 May
1908 in
Indiana, Pennsylvania, where his father owned a hardware store. He was educated at a local prep school,
Mercersburg Academy, where he was a keen athlete (football and track), musician (singing and accordion playing), and sometime actor. In 1929 he won a place at
Princeton, where he studied architecture with some success and became further involved with the performing arts as a musician and actor with the
University Players.
After graduation, engagements with the University Players took him around the northeastern
United States, including a run on
Broadway in 1932. But work dried up as the
Great Depression deepened, and it wasn't until 1934, when he followed his friend
Henry Fonda to
Hollywood, that things began to pick up.
After his first screen appearance in
Art Trouble (1934), he worked for a time for
MGM as a contract player and slowly began making a name for himself in increasingly high-profile roles throughout the rest of the
1930s. His famous collaborations with
Frank Capra, in
You Can't
Take It with You (
1938),
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (
1939), and, after
World War II,
It's a Wonderful Life (1946) helped to launch his career as a star and to establish his screen persona as the likable everyman.
Having learned to fly in 1935, he was drafted into the
U.S. Army in
1940 as a private (after twice failing the medical for being underweight). During the course of World War II he rose to the rank of colonel, first as an instructor at home in the United States, and later on combat missions in
Europe. He remained involved with the
U.S. Air Force Reserve after the war and retired in
1959 as a brigadier general.
Stewart's acting career took off properly after the war. During the course of his long professional life he had roles in some of Hollywood's best remembered films, starring in a string of
Westerns (bringing his "everyman" qualities to movies like
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)), biopics (
The Stratton Story (1949),
The Glenn Miller Story (1954), and
The Spirit of
St. Louis (
1957), for instance) thrillers (most notably his frequent collaborations with
Alfred Hitchcock) and even some screwball comedies .
He continued to work into the
1990s and died at the age of 89 in
1997.