Jimmy Stewart Jimmy Stewart (1908-1997), American actor, known for his distinctive drawl and endearing sincerity.

Jimmy Stewart Jimmy Stewart (1908-1997), American actor, known for his distinctive drawl and endearing sincerity. He was born James Maitland Stewart in Indiana, Pennsylvania. In 1932, the year he graduated from college with a degree in architecture, Stewart made his professional theater debut in Falmouth, Massachusetts, with the University Players (a company including actors Henry Fonda, Joshua Logan, and Margaret Sullavan) in Goodbye Again. He remained with the Players for a time but then made his way to Broadway. Stewart's first motion-picture appearance was in 1935 in The Murder Man. He played a variety of supporting leads at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), which then began to feature him in such films as Born to Dance (1936), with Eleanor Powell, and You Can't Take It with You (1938), a film adaptation by director Frank Capra of the play by American playwrights George Kaufman and Moss Hart. The latter film initiated a collaboration with Capra that led to two of Stewart's most famous roles: as the title character in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and as George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Stewart's other notable films of the prewar years include the satirical Western Destry Rides Again (1939), It's a Wonderful World (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and The Philadelphia Story (1940), which earned him an Academy Award for best actor. Stewart served as a bomber pilot during World War II (1939-1945), and he later attained the rank of brigadier general in the United States Air Force Reserve. After the war, he returned to the theater in Harvey (1947), a fantasy-comedy about an affable alcoholic and his invisible companion, a 6-foot rabbit; he later re-created the role in the 1950 film version of the play (see Harvey). Stewart also became known for tougher characterizations in a string of 1950s and early 1960s Westerns, beginning with Broken Arrow (1950); continuing with six films for director Anthony Mann, including Winchester '73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), and The Far Country (1955); and ending with three films for director John Ford: Two Rode Together (1961), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). Other notable Stewart performances of his most active period--the 1950s--include those in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), and Anatomy of a Murder (1959). That decade also saw his memorable association with director Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he had first worked in Rope (1948). Hitchcock cast him in Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), and Vertigo (1958), leading to three of Stewart's finest performances. After the Ford Westerns, most of Stewart's films of the 1960s and 1970s were undistinguished. Having earlier worked in radio, he undertook some television projects in the 1970s, but with little success. In 1980 he was honored by the American Film Institute with its Life Achievement Award. In 1985 Stewart received a special Academy Award "for 50 years of meaningful performances," and later that year he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the government of the United States, the nation's highest civilian honor. In 1989 his book Jimmy Stewart and His Poems became a bestseller. Microsoft ® Encarta ® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.