James Stewart

The hardware store was supposed to be his. Alexander Stewart ran J. M. Stewart and Company in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and expected his only son to finish at Princeton and come home to it, as the family had always done. Stewart majored in architecture instead. His thesis, a design for an airport terminal, won him a graduate scholarship, and he turned it down to spend the summer with a stock company on Cape Cod. Among the actors there were Margaret Sullavan and Henry Fonda, who became his closest friend and, in New York, his broke roommate. Broadway came in 1932, a seven-year MGM contract in 1935, and years of casting as a lanky bumpkin who could not finish a sentence.

Eighty films from 1935 to 1991. Capra made him the national conscience in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and the Academy gave him Best Actor the next year for The Philadelphia Story, a lighter part he thought was payment for the last one. He handed that Oscar to his father, who displayed it in the hardware store beside the family military medals. It's a Wonderful Life lost money in 1946. In 1950 his agent Lew Wasserman traded his fee on Winchester '73 for a share of the profits, Stewart cleared about 600,000 dollars, and the studio contract began coming apart.

He was the first major American star to enlist. The Army rejected him in November 1940 for weighing too little, he got in that February, and he reported as a private at 32. He flew B-24 Liberators out of East Anglia — about 20 combat missions over Germany, by the count usually given — commanded the 703d Bombardment Squadron, and came home a full colonel with the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Croix de Guerre. Private to colonel in four years. Then came Anthony Mann's westerns and Hitchcock's Rear Window and Vertigo, and a run of vengeful, obsessive, damaged men. Critics have argued the war is visible in that turn. Stewart rarely discussed it, and talked about it publicly at length only once, in a 1974 documentary, about a raid that went badly.

Two of his failures became canon without his help. It's a Wonderful Life fell out of copyright in the early 1970s, ran free on American television every December, and turned into the Christmas film. Vertigo, dismissed in 1958, topped the Sight and Sound critics' poll of the greatest films ever made in 2012. The American Film Institute placed him third among the greatest male stars in 1999. He died at home in Beverly Hills in 1997 and was buried at Forest Lawn in Glendale, privately, with full military honors and a three-volley salute over the grave.

James Stewart's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington film
  Capra's idealist filibustering the Senate, and Stewart's first Best Actor nomination 1939
• The Philadelphia Story film
  His only competitive Academy Award, for a part he rated below the one before 1940
• It's a Wonderful Life film
  Failed to cover its costs, then became the thing he is best known for 1946
• Winchester '73 film
  First of the Anthony Mann westerns, and the profit-share deal that undercut the studio contract 1950
• Rear Window film
  Hitchcock, a broken leg, and a man who cannot stop watching 1954
• Vertigo film
  Poorly reviewed on release, voted the greatest film ever made in 2012 1958

• 1932 aged ~24 Graduates from Princeton in architecture and turns down a scholarship to act He joined the University Players on Cape Cod instead, where he met Henry Fonda.
• February 27, 1941 aged 32 Wins the Academy Award for Best Actor for The Philadelphia Story He beat Henry Fonda, whom he had voted for and once roomed with when both were broke.
• March 22, 1941 aged 32 Reports for induction as a private in the Army Air Corps Rejected for low weight in November 1940, he enlisted on a second attempt in February 1941.
• January 7, 1944 aged 35 Promoted to major after a bombing mission to Ludwigshafen
• March 29, 1945 aged 36 Promoted to full colonel, four years after reporting as a private
• August 9, 1949 aged 41 Marries Gloria Hatrick McLean at Brentwood Presbyterian Church He adopted her two sons and they had twin daughters in 1951. She died in 1994.
• July 23, 1959 aged 51 Promoted to brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve The highest military rank ever held by an American actor.
• June 8, 1969 aged 61 His son Ronald is killed in action in Vietnam at 24 A Marine lieutenant. Stewart remained a supporter of the war afterward.
• July 2, 1997 aged 89 Dies at home in Beverly Hills at 89 A heart attack caused by a pulmonary embolism, with his children present.

• Alfred Hitchcock 1899–1980
  Director whose Hollywood films and television presence defined modern suspense and influenced generations of American filmmakers. directed by
• Cary Grant 1904–1986
  The definitive Hollywood leading man, and one of the first stars to break the studio contract system. replaced by
• John Wayne 1907–1979
  Western star whose screen persona became a durable symbol of American masculinity. rival