James Stewart
Forest Lawn Glendale
During his 60-year
film career, Jimmy Stewart appeared in more than 100 films, from light comedies
and drama, to Westerns and action-adventure, even musicals, and became one of
the most popular, even beloved performers among his fans and within the
entertainment industry. With his gangly good looks, thoughtful drawl and
overriding sense of small-town decency, Stewart could bring depth and complexity
to any role, even though, as most film critics point out, he wasn't really
playing a character; he was just being himself.
Born in Indiana, PA, Stewart attended Princeton University,
receiving a degree in architecture in 1932, but he was still not sure what
he would do with the rest of his life. He joined a theatrical club at the
university, and decided to pursue an acting career rather than accept a
scholarship for a master's degree in architecture. Stewart went to New York
City, and appeared in several plays, on and off Broadway. He made his film
debut and was paid $50 for his role in a comedy short titled "Art Trouble"
(1934), starring Shemp Howard, better known as one of the Three Stooges. His
first role in a feature-length film was playing a newspaper reporter, ironically
named Shorty, in "The Murder Man" (1935), starring Spencer Tracy.
Stewart appeared in more than two dozen films over the next
four years, playing a wide range of characters, from a murder suspect in
"After the Thin Man" (1936), to singing and dancing with Eleanor Powell in
"Born to Dance" (1936). Stewart also appeared in "Wife vs. Secretary" (1936),
Stewart became a major film star with his performance as a
naively heroic young senator, Jefferson Smith, in Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes
to Washington" (1939), for which Stewart received the first of five nominations
for the Academy Award as Best Actor. The same year, Stewart appeared in his
first Western, playing the gun-shy marshal who tamed a town -- and Marlene
Dietrich -- in "Destry Rides Again" (1939). For his performance in "The
Philadelphia Story" (1940), co-starring with Cary Grant and Katharine
Hepburn, Stewart was again nominated for an Academy Award. When he won
the Best Actor statuette, he sent the Oscar back home to Indiana, PA, to display
in the window of his father's hardware store, where it remained for many years.
Stewart was the first Hollywood star to enlist in the military for
World War II, joining nearly a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was
initially refused entry into the U.S. Air Force because he weighed five pounds
less than the 148-pound minimum requirement, but Stewart convinced the recruiting
officer to ignore the weight requirement. Stewart's war record included 25 combat
missions in Europe as a command pilot. He rose to the rank of colonel -- the
highest-ranking actor in military history -- and earned the Air Medal, the Distinguished
Flying Cross, the Croix de Guerre and seven battle stars. In 1959, while serving
in the Air Force Reserves, he became a brigadier general, and the Indiana County
Airport in his hometown was re-named the Jimmy Stewart Airport. He retired from
the Reserves in 1968.
When Stewart was first sent to Europe to fly bombing missions, his
father gave him a letter in which he wrote, "Jim, I'm banking on the enclosed copy
of the 91st Psalm. The thing that takes the place of fear and worry is the promise
of these words. I am staking my faith in these words. I feel sure that God will lead
you through this mad experience. God bless you and keep you. I love you more than
I can tell you. Dad." Stewart carried the letter with him for the rest of his life,
and the words from the Psalm that his father gave him are written on his grave marker:
"For He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways."
When he returned from the war in 1945, Stewart discovered that many
studios wanted to hire him, but they wanted him for war films, to capitalize on his
war record and reputation, which Stewart did not want to do. Instead, he went to work
for Capra on "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946), the classic holiday film about a man
Stewart continued to play a wide range of characters, including the
suspicious teacher in Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" (1948); the crusading reporter who
frees an innocent man in "Call Northside 777" (1948); Monty Stratton, the Chicago White
Sox pitcher who returned to the mound after losing a leg, in "The Stratton Story" (1949);
a circus clown wanted for murder in "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1952); a cold-blooded
bounty hunter in "The Naked Spur" (1953); a voyeuristic photographer-turned-sleuth in
Hitchcock's "Rear Window" (1954); the beloved Big Band leader in "The Glenn Miller Story"
(1954); Stewart's boyhood hero, Charles Lindbergh, in "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957);
the obsessive romantic in Hitchcock's "Vertigo" (1958); a cynical marshal in "Two Rode
Together" (1961); and a lawyer trying to bring civilization to a lawless Western town
in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962). Stewart also received Academy Award
nominations for his performances as the eccentric tippler Elwood P. Dowd in "Harvey"
(1950), and the easygoing but slick defense attorney in "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959).
In 1971, Stewart played a college professor in the television series,
"The Jimmy Stewart Show," which lasted one season. In 1973, he returned to television
in another short-lived series, "Hawkins," playing a shrewd country lawyer. In 1980,
the American Film Institute awarded Stewart its eighth Life Achievement Award and,
in 1984, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded him a Lifetime Achievement
Award, "for his fifty years of memorable performances, and for his high ideals both on
and off the screen." The following year, Stewart received the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.
When Stewart died in 1997, President Bill Clinton said, "America lost
a national treasure. Jimmy Stewart was a great actor, a gentleman and a patriot." In
1998, the American Film Institute released its list of "100 Greatest American Movies,"
in commemoration of the first 100 years of American cinema. The list contains five films
starring Stewart -- "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "The Philadelphia Story," "It's a
Wonderful Life," "Rear Window" and "Vertigo."
Stewart typically portrayed the soft-spoken, slow-speaking guy next
door, a common man of honor and dignity, just trying to do the right thing, often in the
face of overwhelming opposition. So it seems appropriate that, when so many of the
celebrities at Forest Lawn-Glendale are hidden in inaccessible mausoleums or padlocked
gardens, Stewart's grave is out in the middle of an open lawn, close to the main
entrance, in an easy location for fans and friends to pay their respects.
Buried next to Stewart is his wife, Gloria Hatrick Stewart (1918 - 1994).
Her grave marker contains the inscription, "In our most loving memories, she will
always be with us. She made life better." In an industry where people change
spouses as often as they change hair-styles, the Stewarts were married for nearly
45 years -- one of the most enduring marriages in the history of Hollywood.
Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, PA.
He died on July 2, 1997, in Los Angeles, CA.
1908 - 1997
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