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(May 20, 1908 – July 2, 1997) was a highly acclaimed American film and stage actor, best known for his homebred, idealistic screen persona. Over the course of his career, he starred in many films widely considered classics and was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning one in competition and one life achievement Oscar.

Born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, he first pursued a career as an architect before being drawn to the theater in college. His first success came as an actor on Broadway, before making his Hollywood debut in 1935. Stewart's career gained momentum after his well-received Frank Capra films, including his Academy Award nominated role in i. Throughout his seven decades in Hollywood, Stewart cultivated a versatile career and recognized screen image in such classics as i.

Stewart left his mark in a number of different film genres, including screwball comedy, westerns, and suspense thrillers. He worked for a number of renowned directors later in his career, including Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, and Anthony Mann. He was awarded many of the industry's highest honors, including Lifetime Achievement awards from every substantial film organization. He died in 1997, leaving behind a legacy of classic performance and is considered one of the finest actors of the "Golden Age of Hollywood."

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James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908 to devoutly Presbyterian parents, Alexander and Elizabeth Jackson Stewart, in Indiana, Pennsylvania. The son of a prosperous hardware store owner, he was expected to continue the business, which had been in the family for three generations. The young Stewart was first attracted to aviation, but abandoned dreams of being a pilot to attend Princeton University in 1928. Stewart took quickly to architecture, and was to continue pursuing the field as a graduate student, but he gradually became attracted to the school's drama and music clubs.

His talents led him to be invited to the University Players, a performing arts club comprised of Ivy League musicians and thespians. Taking bit parts in the Players' productions over the summer of 1932, he moved to New York City in the fall, where he shared an apartment with rising actor Henry Fonda and directorplaywright Joshua Logan. In November he was cast in his first major stage production, as a chauffeur in the Broadway comedy i, in which he had two lines. The play was a moderate success and brought more substantial stage roles for Stewart, including the 1934 hit, i.

With several favorably reviewed performances on Broadway, he attracted the interest of MGM, and signed a contract with the company in April of 1935. At first, he had trouble breaking into Hollywood due to his gangly looks and shy, humble screen presence. His first film was the poorly received Spencer Tracy vehicle, i, an adaptation of a popular opera, was more successful. After mixed success in film, he received his first substantial part in 1936's i, playing a psychotic killer. Stewart found his footing in Hollywood thanks largely to ex-University Player Margaret Sullavan, who campaigned for Stewart to be her leading man in the 1936 romantic comedy i and rehearsed extensively with him.

Stewart was a life long supporter of Scouting. He was a Second Class Scout when he was a youth, an adult Scout leader, and a recipient of the prestigious Silver Buffalo Award from the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). He made advertisements for BSA, which led to him sometimes i

Stewart began a successful partnership with director Frank Capra in 1938, when he was loaned out to Columbia Pictures to star in i. The heartwarming Depression-era film, starring matinee idol Jean Arthur, went on to win the 1939 Best Picture Academy Award. 1939 saw Stewart team with Capra and Arthur again for the political comedy-drama, i. Stewart replaced intended star Gary Cooper in the film about an idealistic man thrown into the political arena. Upon the film's October release, it garnered critical praise and became a box office success. For his performance, Stewart was nominated for the first of five Academy Awards for Best Actor. i, also released that year, became Stewart's first western film, a genre for which he would become famous for later in his career.

1940 saw Stewart and Margaret Sullavan teaming again for two films. The first, the Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy, i, starred Stewart and Sullavan as co-workers unknowingly involved in a pen-pal romance who cannot stand each other in real life. i, directed by Frank Borzage, was one of the first blatantly anti-Nazi films to be produced in Hollywood, and featured the pair as a husband and wife caught in turmoil upon Hitler's rise to power. He also starred opposite Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in George Cukor's classic i. His performance as an intrusive, fast-talking reporter earned him his only Academy Award in a competitive category (Best Actor, 1941).

He went on to appear in a series of screwball comedies with varying levels of success. Stewart followed the mediocre i. Foreseeing war on the horizon, Stewart enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps in March of 1941. Stewart's enlistment coincided with the lapse in his MGM contract and marked a turning point in Stewart's career.

"Col. Stewart being awarded the Croix de guerre with palm by Lt. Gen. Henri Valin, Chief of Staff of the French Air Force, for his role in the liberation of France. USAF photo." Col. Stewart being awarded the Croix de guerre with palm by Lt. Gen. Henri Valin, Chief of Staff of the French Air Force, for his role in the liberation of France. USAF photo.

Nearly a year before the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Stewart was drafted into the United States Army Air Corps, although his enlistment was denied due to a weight restriction. Only five pounds under the minimum limit, he was able to convince the draft board to accept him. He successfully enlisted in the army in March of 1941. Since the United States had yet to declare war on Germany and because of the army's unwillingness to put celebrities on the front, Stewart was held back from combat duty.

While petitioning his superiors for combat assignment, Stewart aligned himself with the First Motion Picture Unit and starred and produced a number of training and educational films. Between 1942 and the end of the war, he appeared in nearly a dozen productions, some of which were screened theatrically in civilian theaters.

In August 1943 he was finally assigned combat duty with the 445th Bombardment Group. While flying missions over Germany, he was promoted to major (commanding a squadron of B-24 Liberator bombers). In 1944 he received both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Croix de Guerre, and was awarded seven battle stars through the course of the year. The following year, he was promoted to chief of staff in the second combat wing of the Eighth Air Force.

Stewart continued to play an active role in the United States Air Force Reserves after the war, achieving the rank of Brigadier General on July 23, 1959. His final mission for the air force was a B-52 Stratofortress bombing run during the Vietnam War and he retired from the air force on May 31, 1968 after twenty-seven years of service. Perhaps due to his dislike of violence, Stewart declined to answer any questions about his combat during World War II and the Vietnam War, though he remained a proponent of the armed forces.

After the war, Stewart settled down at age 41, marrying former model Gloria Hatrick McLean on August 9, 1949. They remained devotedly married until her death on February 16, 1994 due to lung cancer. Stewart adopted her two sons, Michael and Ronald, and together they had twin daughters, Judy and Kelly, on May 7, 1951. Ronald was killed on June 8, 1969 while serving in Vietnam.

Upon James Stewart's return to Hollywood in the fall of 1945, he decided not to renew his MGM contract. Instead, Stewart signed with an MCA talent agency. The move made Stewart one of the first independently contracted actors and gave him more freedom to choose the roles he wished to play. For the remainder of his career, Stewart was able to work without limits to director and studio availability.

For his first film in five years, Stewart appeared in his third and final Frank Capra production, i. Stewart appeared as George Bailey, a small-town man and upstanding citizen, who becomes increasingly frustrated by his ordinary existence and financial troubles. Driven to suicide on Christmas Eve, he is led to reassess his life by an "angel-in-training," played by Henry Travers. Though the film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Stewart's third Best Actor nomination, it received only moderate success at the box office, possibly due to its dark nature. However, in the decades since the film's release, it grew to define Stewart's film persona and is widely considered as a sentimental Christmas film classic.

Stewart also returned to the stage for the Mary Chase-penned comedy i, which opened to nearly universal praise in November, 1944. Elwood P. Dowd, the protagonist and Stewart's character, is a wealthy eccentric living with his sister, whose best friend is an invisible rabbit. While trying to have Dowd committed to a sanitorium, his aunt is committed herself while the play follows Dowd on an ordinary day in his not-so-ordinary life. James Stewart took over the role from Frank Fay in 1947 and gained an increased Broadway following in the unconventional play. The play, which ran for nearly three years with Stewart as its star, was successfully adapted into a 1950 film, directed by Henry Koster, with Stewart playing Dowd and Josephine Hull as his sister, Veta. For his performance in the film, Stewart received his fourth Best Actor nomination.

After i in 1949, Stewart entered what many critics cite as his "golden era" as an actor. During the 1950s, he took on more challenging roles and expanded into the western and suspense genres, thanks largely to collaborations with directors Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Mann. Other notable performances by Stewart during this time include the critically acclaimed 1950 Delmer Daves western i, which featured Stewart as a ex-soldier making peace with the Apache; a troubled clown in the 1952 Best Picture i

James Stewart's collaborations with director Anthony Mann expanded Stewart's popularity and expanded his career into the realm of the western. Stewart's first appearance in a film helmed by Mann came with the 1950 western classic, i. The film, which became a massive box office hit upon its release, set the pattern for their future collaborations. Other Stewart-Mann westerns, such as i (1955) were perennial favorites among young audiences entranced by the American west. Frequently, the films featured Stewart as a troubled cowboy seeking redemption, while facing corrupt cattlemen, ranchers, and outlaws. Their collaborations laid the foundation for many of the westerns of the 1950s and remain popular today.

Stewart and Mann also collaborated on other films outside the western genre. 1953's i, released the same year, transplanted the plot arch of their western collaborations in the present day, with Stewart as a Louisiana oil-driller facing corruption. i, released in 1955 allowed Stewart to utilize his experiences in the United States Air Force on film.

The second collaboration to define Stewart's career in the 1950s was with acclaimed mystery and suspense director Alfred Hitchcock. Stewart had previously appeared in Hitchcock's technologically innovative 1948 film i. Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries, the central character of the film, portrayed by Stewart, projects his fantasies and fears onto the people he observes out his apartment window while on hiatus due to a broken leg. Jeffries gets into more than he can handle, however, when he believes he has witnessed a salesman murder his wife.

After starring in Hitchcock's remake of the director's own production, i. The film starred Stewart as Scottie, a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia, who develops an obsession of a woman he is shadowing. Scottie's obsession inevitably leads to the destruction of everything he once had and believed in. Though the film is widely considered a classic today, it was met with negative reviews and poor box office receipts upon its release, and marked the last collaboration between Stewart and Hitchcock.

In 1960, James Stewart was awarded the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and nominated for his fifth and final Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the 1959 Otto Preminger film i. The early courtroom drama starred Stewart as Paul Biegler, the lawyer of a man who claims temporary insanity after murdering the man who raped his wife. Stewart's nomination was one of seven for the film, and saw his transition into the final decades of his career.

The early sixties saw Stewart taking lead roles in three John Ford films. The first, 1962's i (with John Wayne) became a classic western and featured Stewart as an attorney who goes against his virtues when he is forced to shoot an outlaw (played by Lee Marvin). Stewart's character is forced to face his past as he attempts to build a career in politics. i, in which a white-suited Stewart played Wyatt Earp in a long sequence in the middle of the movie, failed domestically and was widely forgotten.

, Stewart transitioned into more family-related films in the 1960s. These included the successful Henry Koster outing i

After a progression of lesser western films in the late sixties and early seventies, James Stewart transitioned from cinema to television. He first starred in the NBC comedy i, in which he played a small town lawyer investigating his cases. The series garnered Stewart a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Dramatic TV Series, but failed to gain a wide audience and was cancelled after one season. During this time, Stewart periodically appeared on Johnny Carson's i, sharing poems he had written at different times in his life. His poems were later successfully compiled into a short anthology titled i, James Stewart retired from acting to spend time with his family. He returned only to voice Sheriff Wylie Burp in the successful 1991 animated film i.

Stewart died on July 2, 1997 of a pulmonary embolism, just one day after fellow screen veteran and i co-star Robert Mitchum died. He is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Jimmy Stewart has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1708 Vine Street. In 1972, he was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was awarded various lifetime achievement awards from the Academy Awards (1985), American Film Institute (1980), Lincoln Center (1990), Golden Globe Awards (1965), National Board of Review (1990), and the Screen Actors Guild (1969).

A statue of Stewart was erected on the lawn of the Indiana County Courthouse in his hometown, Indiana, Pennsylvania, on May 20, 1983 to celebrate Stewart's 75th birthday. In 1995, a museum dedicated to his life and career, The Jimmy Stewart Museum, opened as well.

From the beginning of James Stewart's career in 1935 through his final theatrical project in 1991, Stewart appeared in ninety-two films, television programs, and shorts. Through the course of his career, he appeared in many landmark and critically acclaimed films, including such classics as i). Stewart's career defied the boundaries of genre and trend, and he made his mark in screwball comedies, suspense thrillers, westerns, and family films.