James Stewart - Biography and Filmography

JAMES STEWART

Nationality: American. Born: James Maitland Stewart in Indiana, Pennsylvania, 20 May 1908. Education: Attended Model School; Mercersburg Academy; Princeton University, New Jersey, B.S. in architecture 1932. Military Service: U.S. Air Force, 1942–45: colonel (remained in the reserves: brigadier general, 1959). Family:Married Gloria Hatrick McLean, 1949 (died 1994), twins: Kelly and Judy. Career: 1932—joined Joshua Logan’s University Players in West Falmouth, Massachusetts: Broadway debut in the company’s production of Carrie Nation; 1935—in short Important News, then in feature Murder Man; contract with MGM; 1947—on Broadway in Harvey (reprised in film version, 1951, and on stage later in his career); 1971 72—actor in TV series The Jimmy Stewart Show, and in series Hawkins, 1973–74; 1986—in TV mini-series North and South II; The James Stewart Museum was opened in Indiana, Pennsylvania, in 1995. Awards: Best Actor, New York Film Critics, for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, 1939; Best Actor Academy Award, for The Philadelphia Story, 1940; Best Actor, New York Film Critics, and Best Actor, Venice Festival, for Anatomy of a Murder, 1959; Best Actor, Berlin Festival, for Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation, 1962; Life Achievement Award, American Film Institute, 1980; Special Academy Award, for ‘‘his 50 years of meaningful performances, for his high ideals, both on and off the screen, with the respect and affection of his colleagues,’’ 1984. Died: 2 July 1997, in Beverly Hills, California, of pulmonic blood clot)

James Stewart has come a long way since his boyhood days in Pennsylvania. Starting out as an amateur magician and accordionist, he made his acting debut in a Boy Scout play and later performed in shows for the Princeton Triangle Club. He was graduated from Princeton in 1932 with a degree in architecture, but eventually joined the University Players at Falmouth, Massachusetts. It was here he befriended future stars Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. Years later Sullavan would prove to be instrumental to Stewart’s career by insisting that he be given parts in her films. In the years since his motion picture debut, James Stewart has earned a place in the hearts of moviegoing audiences as one of Hollywood’s best-loved actors. His laconic style and boyish manner seem the embodiment of an uncomplicated honesty that also marked the career of his longtime friend, Henry Fonda (Stewart and Fonda were roommates in New York while working in the theater and also when they first arrived in Hollywood in 1935). Both men came to exemplify a uniquely American style of acting that takes simplicity and directness as its foundation.

Stewart’s early screen appearances often found him playing rapidly forgettable callow youths. It was director Frank Capra who first recognized his special blend of bashful humor and underlying strength, and put it to use in several films that cast Stewart as the personification of American idealism. Capra’s populist comedies, including You Can’t Take It with You, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and It’s a Wonderful Life, conveyed the director’s belief in the fundamental decency of the common man, and Stewart’s skill at combining warmth, humor, and pathos in his performances made him the perfect Capra hero. George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story demonstrated his flair for sophisticated comedy alongside Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

Stewart received critical acclaim for It’s a Wonderful Life, perhaps the quintessential Capra film, in which he gives a moving performances a man on the verge of suicide whose faith in humanity is restored by a visit from a guardian angel. This movie has since become a holiday staple—being broadcast on television numerous times during the Christmas season. Stewart’s air of earnest innocence lent itself naturally to stories of whimsical appeal, as his portrayal of Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey confirmed. As the gentle alcoholic who believes himself befriended by an invisible six-foot white rabbit, Stewart displays an easy and engaging charm.

Stewart’s work in a number of Westerns, including several with director Anthony Mann, drew on his image as a man of honor and with an unswerving sense of duty. Again, Stewart’s deliberate manner and tall, lean form made him an effective presence in this uniquely American film genre. John Ford used Stewart’s image to examine the truth behind the Western myth in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in which Stewart’s character wins fame for an act that his friend, John Wayne, has performed.

Alfred Hitchcock also played on Stewart’s familiar persona in four films that reveal a very different side to the actor’s talents. In Rope he is cast as an intellectual gamesman whose musings on the ‘‘perfect crime’’ lead two young friends to commit a murder. Rear Window stars Stewart as a photographer ready to risk his fiancée’s safety to satisfy his own voyeuristic curiosity, while in The Man Who Knew Too Much he is the desperate father of a kidnapped son. Vertigo, one of Hitchcock’s finest films, features the actor as an emotionally tormented man obsessed with recreating the image of the woman he has lost. In all four films, there is an underlying edge to Stewart’s characters, from his mildly paternalistic treatment of his wife in The Man Who Knew Too Much to his overtly disturbed behavior in Vertigo. The clash of these qualities with the image of Stewart we have come to expect makes his work for Hitchcock among his most challenging.

Stewart’s long career was certainly one of Hollywood’s most rewarding, and the actor’s occasional interviews and television appearances only strengthened the warm regard in which he was held. With the continuing popularity of many of his best films, he remains a much-loved and much-admired figure in American cinema.

Selected Filmography

The Shootist (1976)

The Cheyenne Social Club (1970)

Firecreek (1968)

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Shenandoah (1965)

Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

How the West Was Won (1962)

Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

Two Rode Together (1961)

The Mountain Road (1960)