Posted on 12/07/2020 9:51:06 AM PST by Kaslin
You should definitely rewatch 'It's A Wonderful Life' this Christmas, but the life of the real George Bailey is equally inspiring.
“Celebrity” is lately becoming more and more synonymous with “easily-offended hypocrite who lectures fans to find a sense of self-morality.” Leonardo DiCaprio and Prince Harry shame us about climate change from private jets, while Harry Styles wears dresses to teach us about masculinity and Michelle Williams congratulates herself for killing her unborn child in the name of her career.
There’s an ongoing epidemic of selfishness in Tinseltown. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if more stars found something other than themselves to worship?
Maybe that’s part of what made the nation fall in love with Jimmy Stewart. From setting aside his thriving movie career to fly bombers in World War II to tending a happy, lifelong marriage, Stewart set an example that was rare in his time and even rarer today.
Born to the owner of a Pennsylvania hardware store in 1908, Stewart went to Princeton University before starting his career on Broadway. From New York, he went to Hollywood and began a thriving film career with enduring hits like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “The Philadelphia Story.”
Despite his promising successes, Stewart left Hollywood for the Army. The military had previously rejected him for being underweight, but he worked to gain weight and successfully enlisted in March 1941, months before the United States even entered World War II. He was the first major American film star to enlist in the war.
Author Robert Matzen recounts Louis Mayer, co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, trying to convince Stewart not to give up his film career for military service. “You’re just giving up this wonderful screen career,” Mayer said. “You’ll regret it.”
“This country’s conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together,” Stewart replied.
Stewart began as a private, but with his pilot’s license he eventually became a bomber pilot and was a colonel by the end of the war. Years later, in the Air Force Reserves, Stewart would become a brigadier general. During the war, he flew B-24 bombers, completing 20 combat missions in Europe. In 1943, he commanded the 703rd Bomb Squadron in England.
“It’s A Wonderful Life” was the first movie Stewart made after his wartime service. While post-traumatic stress disorder was not diagnosed as such at the time, Stewart’s biographer Robert Matzen has suggested he was suffering from PTSD during filming, which strongly influenced his portrayal of George Bailey’s struggles.
At one point in the movie, a desperate Bailey drinks despondently in a bar, crying, “I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope.” Afterward, Stewart said the breakdown was unscripted. “As I said those words, I felt the loneliness, the hopelessness of people who had nowhere to turn,” he remembered in 1977. “I broke down sobbing. That was not planned at all.”
Military service’s emotional toll on Stewart didn’t end there. His 24-year-old stepson Ronald was killed in action in the Vietnam War. But his death didn’t leave the Stewart family with regrets about his service. “His mother and I are proud that he served his country,” Stewart said. “We don`t look at it as a tragedy. The tragedy was that our boy and so many like him were sacrificed without having a unified country behind them.”
Military service in the Stewart family extended past Jimmy and Ronald. The movie star’s great-great-great-grandfather Fergus Moorehead fought in the American Revolution, and his grandfather was a Civil War general. Additionally, his father served in World War I and the Spanish-American War.
Hollywood isn’t known for happy (or long-lasting) marriages, but the Stewarts broke the mold. After years of brushing off the idea of settling down, Stewart met Gloria Hatrick McLean, a model and actress who had worked as an ambulance driver during the war. They married in 1949, and their marriage lasted until Gloria’s death 45 years later. In contrast to most Hollywood unions, a magazine in the 1980s labeled their relationship “Dream Factory’s outstanding marriage.”
Gloria would say that her husband “likes nothing better than to spend an evening at home,” and that he was “too normal to be an actor.” Jimmy once told director Frank Capra that his marriage was “darn good,” and that he reckoned it was simply “because Gloria and I really like each other.”
The Stewarts also raised four children together: two sons from Gloria’s previous marriage and two twin daughters. Daughter Kelly Stewart-Harcourt reflected that her father “taught us to do the right thing, without ever sitting us down and telling us to do the right thing.”
“My parents were incredibly unpretentious,” she continued, adding that her father was often answering fan mail and never declined to give an autograph. Once, the Stewarts were guests of President and Nancy Reagan at an event. When a cabinet member’s wife asked Stewart for an autograph, he replied, “Are you sure you want mine with all these really important people here?”
Reagan awarded Stewart the Medal of Freedom in 1985, calling the actor “an American boy who grew to a glorious manhood, but never lost his sense of wonder or his innocence.” Stewart was once asked in a documentary what kind of man he wanted to be remembered as. “A guy who believed in hard work, and decent values, love of country, love of family, love of community, love of God,” he responded.
Commenting on Stewart’s on-screen authenticity, co-star Kim Novak asked, “How often can you find somebody who’s spent his whole life in Hollywood but represents so much of America?” The answer today is, very rarely. But from the 1930s up until his death in 1997, you had to look no further than Jimmy Stewart.
On one movie, she slept with four different men, and none of them knew she was whoring with the others.
Then came "The Rear Window." Mrs. Stewart took Jimmy to the set every day herself. She waited on set while the movie was filmed. Then she drove him home.
I like her.
Loved Jimmy Stewart. A class act and a great American.
Those days are long gone, however... half the country didn’t hate the other half back then. At least not to the same degree as today, anyway.
He's a one of a kind American....a real American.
Could you imagine any Lib in Hollywierd giving up an acting career to join the military??
You can always play the history game of “it really started earlier than that …” but as far as I’m concerned, the Left looked at America after WWII and saw that we were culturally, militarily, and economically dominant. They worked inside our society (Joseph McCarthy was right) and ate away at all of the values that made us special. Jimmy Stewart, as a WWII veteran, Hollywood icon, and strong patriot encapsulated all of our best features. We don’t produce many people like that anymore, because “they” don’t want us to have people to look up to.
A conservative would never get any role.
Our local theatre group is far left. If you are conservative forget about ever getting a part. The theatre producer is a far left college professor.
Liberals control every aspect from ticket sales person all the way up to the top.
The new idea is in the closet conservatives need to act liberal and get jobs in media and academia and take over like liberals did over the last 30 years
One of my favorite movies of all time is Harvey. I’d like to have Elwood P. Dowd’s outlook on life.
Grace Kelly was before my era.
All I can say is - man, I wish I were on the set of Rear Window...
Jim was a their answer smuggler,
Seriously though he smuggled out a yeti hand , true story, weird story,
God bless you Jimmy, we miss you.
Wow autocorrect really butchered that lol
As a general he also flew with a B-52 crew in a mission over Vietnam. It was kept very quiet at the time lest he become a prime target. He was the real deal.
I respect the man, he was a great actor. But, I hate “let’s a Wonderful Life.” It is just too much sugar for my system.
If whores are your thing, knock yourself out.
Probably not a far off description.
Jimmy Stewart was my kind of guy. When he was very old, he was interviewed on the Today Show. He showed a pocket Bible that he kept close to his heart when he flew bombing missions during WW II. He said he kept it open to Psalm 91.
Then, the female host asked him how he would like to be remembered (and the host started mentioning is famous roles and acting awards).
Instead, Steward said:
"Oh....gee….well...I would like to be remembered as a good husband, a good father, a man of God."
You really have something against Grace Kelly, don’t you?
20 missions over Germany? Anyone who read any books about the Eight Air Force or “mighty 8” know that you are 60/40 ratio , going to die on 1 mission alone.
The US Air Force took more casualties than both the Army and Marines COMBINED. I know Jimmy S played lanky characters but he has brass balls.
My top 3 western is still Liberty Valance. Lee Marvin was a US Marine who survived Iwo JIma and Stewart who survived 20 missions..amazing.
James Stewart is my all time favorite actor. He was heads and shoulders better than any other actor of his era. The range and breadth of his roles is phenomenal. He should have won the best actor Oscar for Mr. Smith even though 1939 saw the release of several of the greatest classic movies. They gave him the Oscar the following year for Philadelphia Story as a consolation for losing it the previous year. Jimmy was a great human being in addition to being a great actor. I actually love the man. Other than President Reagan, there isn’t another actor living or dead about whom I could say that.
Amen to that. This country *really* needs more Jimmy Stewarts these days.
I am certainly not going to diagnose Jimmy Stewart. But after reading this:
While post-traumatic stress disorder was not diagnosed as such at the time, Stewart’s biographer Robert Matzen has suggested he was suffering from PTSD during filming, which strongly influenced his portrayal of George Bailey’s struggles.
At one point in the movie, a desperate Bailey drinks despondently in a bar, crying, “I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope.” Afterward, Stewart said the breakdown was unscripted. “As I said those words, I felt the loneliness, the hopelessness of people who had nowhere to turn,” he remembered in 1977. “I broke down sobbing. That was not planned at all.”
I get really angry.
The man was an actor who felt emotions and interpreted them. That is what actors do. One does not have to have PTSD to understand and feel the pain and hopelessness of the human condition. That is part of being human. To make it a pathology is perverting what it is like to have human empathy.
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