James Stewart

Stewart played darker, more morally ambiguous characters in movies directed by Anthony Mann, including Winchester '73 (1950), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), and The Naked Spur (1953), and by Alfred Hitchcock in Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo (1958).

Stewart also starred in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), and The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) as well as the Western films How the West Was Won (1962), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964).

[27] The company's directors included Joshua Logan, Bretaigne Windust, and Charles Leatherbee,[28] and amongst its other actors were married couple Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan, who became Stewart's close friends.

[62] For his next film, the romantic drama Seventh Heaven (1937), Stewart was loaned to 20th Century-Fox to play a Parisian sewer worker in a remake of Frank Borzage's silent classic released a decade earlier.

[63] Stewart's next film, The Last Gangster (1937) starring Edward G. Robinson, was also a failure,[52] but it was followed by a critically acclaimed performance in Navy Blue and Gold (1937) as a football player at the United States Naval Academy.

[72] It was a critical and commercial success, and showed Stewart's talent for performing in romantic comedies;[73] The New York Herald called him "one of the most knowing and engaging young actors appearing on the screen at present".

[96] Stewart's final film to be released in 1940 was George Cukor's romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, in which he played an intrusive, fast-talking reporter sent to cover the wedding of a socialite (Katharine Hepburn) with the help of her ex-husband (Cary Grant).

[120][b] He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions as deputy commander of the 2nd Bombardment Wing,[122] the French Croix de Guerre with palm, and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters.

[146] Andrew Sarris stated that Stewart's performance was underappreciated by critics of the time, who could not see "the force and fury" of it, and considered his proposal scene with Donna Reed, "one of the most sublimely histrionic expressions of passion".

[180] Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that "so darling is the acting of James Stewart [...] and all the rest that a virtually brand-new experience is still in store for even those who saw the play",[181] while Variety called him "perfect" in the role.

[182] John McCarten of the New Yorker stated that although he "doesn't bring his part to the battered authority of Frank Fay...he nevertheless succeeds in making plausible the notion that Harvey, the rabbit, would accept him as a pal.

[c] Stewart portrayed a photographer, loosely based on Robert Capa,[198][199] who projects his fantasies and fears onto the people he observes out his apartment window while on hiatus due to a broken leg and comes to believe that he has witnessed a murder.

[201] Although most of the initial acclaim for Rear Window was directed towards Hitchcock,[202] critic Vincent Canby later described Stewart's performance in it as "grand" and stated that "[his] longtime star status in Hollywood has always obscured recognition of his talent.

[214][215] Although Vertigo has later become considered one of Hitchcock's key works and was ranked the greatest film ever made by the Sight & Sound critics' poll in 2012,[216] it was met with unenthusiastic reviews and poor box-office receipts upon its release.

[236] A classic psychological Western,[237] the picture was shot in black-and-white film noir style at Ford's insistence,[238] with Stewart as an East Coast attorney who goes against his non-violent principles when he is forced to confront a psychopathic outlaw (Lee Marvin) in a small frontier town.

[235] Stewart filmed two television movies in the 1980s: Mr. Krueger's Christmas (1980), produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which allowed him to fulfill a lifelong dream to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir,[269] and Right of Way (1983), an HBO drama that co-starred Bette Davis.

[310][311] Both Stewart's and Fonda's children later noted that their fathers' 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.

[318][319][e] In addition to his film career, Stewart had diversified investments, including real estate, oil wells, the charter-plane company Southwest Airways, and membership on major corporate boards; he became a multimillionaire.

[324] A highly proficient pilot, he entered a cross-country race with Leland Hayward in 1937[324] and was one of the early investors in Thunderbird Field, a pilot-training school built and operated by Southwest Airways in Glendale, Arizona.

He served as the national vice-chairman of entertainment for the American Red Cross's fund-raising campaign for wounded soldiers in Vietnam, as well as contributed donations for improvements and restorations to Indiana, his hometown in Pennsylvania.

[337] 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 Lyndon B. Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968.

"[344] In 1989, Stewart founded 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.

[351] More than 3,000 mourners attended his memorial service, including June Allyson, Carol Burnett, Bob Hope, Lew Wasserman, Nancy Reagan, Esther Williams, and Robert Stack.

[379] According to film scholar Amy Lawrence, the main elements of Stewart's persona, "a propensity for physical and spiritual suffering, lingering fears of inadequacy", were established by Frank Capra in the 1930s and were enhanced through his later work with Hitchcock and Mann.

[380] John Belton explained that "James Stewart evolves from the naive, small-town, populist hero of Frank Capra's 1930s comedies to the bitter, anxiety-ridden, vengeance-obsessed cowboy in Anthony Mann's 1950s Westerns and the disturbed voyeur and sexual fetishist in Alfred Hitchcock's 1950s suspense thrillers.

[426][144] According to film scholar Tim Palmer, "Stewart's legacy rests on his roles as the nervous idealist standing trial for, and gaining stature from, the sincerity of his beliefs, while his emotive convictions are put to the test.

[429] According to film scholar Murray Pomerance, "the other Jimmy Stewart ... was a different type altogether, a repressed and neurotic man buried beneath an apparently calm facade, but ready at any moment to explode with vengeful anxiety and anger, or else with deeply twisted and constrained passions that could never match up with cheery personality of the alter ego.

"[430] Bingham has described him as having "two coequal personas; the earnest idealist, the nostalgic figure of the homespun boy next door; and the risk-taking actor who probably performed in films for more canonical auteurs than any other American star".

[434] According to Bingham, Stewart marked "the transition between the studio period...and the era of free-lance actors, independent production, and powerful talent agents that made possible the "new kind of star" of the late 1960s".

[447] The L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library at Brigham Young University houses his personal papers and movie memorabilia including letters, scrapbooks, recordings of early radio programs, and two of his accordions.

The Stewart family in 1918
Stewart (right) outside his family's hardware store, 1930
With Joshua Logan (c.), 1930
Stewart in Yellow Jack , in which he starred on Broadway in 1934 and which garnered him critical praise.
Stewart and Wendy Barrie in Speed (1936)
Stewart and Jean Arthur in Frank Capra's You Can't Take It with You (1938)
James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Stewart in Frank Capra 's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Margaret Sullavan and Stewart in their third collaboration, The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Katharine Hepburn and Stewart in The Philadelphia Story (1940), for which he won his only Academy Award for Best Actor
Lieutenant James Stewart in Winning Your Wings (1942)
A military officer pinning an award to Stewart's decorated military jacket, among other uniformed soldiers
Colonel Stewart receiving the Croix de Guerre with Palm in 1944
Travers stands behind a seated Stewart putting his hand on Stewart's shoulder
Stewart as George Bailey and Travers as Clarence Odbody in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Although only a moderate success at the time of its release, the film has later come to define Stewart's legacy.
Stewart with Farley Granger and John Dall in Rope (1948), his first collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock. He was criticized for being miscast in the role of a cynical professor.
Stewart with Shelley Winters in Winchester '73 , his first project with Anthony Mann. In the 1950s, Stewart redefined his career as a star of Western films.
Stewart in Harvey (1950), the only film for which he received both an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe nomination
Stewart with co-star Grace Kelly in Rear Window (1954), which allowed him to explore new depths of his screen persona
Stewart's last collaboration with Hitchcock was Vertigo (1958), in which he co-starred with Kim Novak .
A Black and white closeup image of Stewart with an intense facial expression
Stewart in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), which garnered him his final Academy Award nomination
A sepia-toned headshot of a silver-haired Stewart in a suit
Stewart in a publicity still for the mystery series Hawkins (1973), which ran for one season.
Stewart and Sullavan sitting close and looking into each other's eyes
Margaret Sullavan and Stewart in The Shopworn Angel (1938), their second film collaboration.
James Stewart and Gloria Hatrick McLean walking out of Brentwood Presbyterian Church after their wedding ceremony, 1949
Stewart with his wife Gloria and their children in 1954
Stewart in the 1930s
Brigadier General James Stewart, circa 1968
An elderly Stewart standing in a tuxedo on a stage, holding a microphone
Speaking at The Kennedy Center on Inauguration Day, 1981, in Washington D.C.
A flat, bronze grave marker surrounded by grass and decorated with flowers and small American flags
Stewart's grave
Sample from The Man From Laramie trailer (1955) showcasing Stewart's recognizable drawl
Lana Turner and Stewart in Ziegfeld Girl (1941)
Stewart as news photographer Jeffries in Rear Window (1954)
Janet Leigh and Stewart in Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur (1953)
1931 portrait
Rosalind Russell and Stewart at CBS Radio in 1937
Stewart's statue at his hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania