50 Fun Facts About James Stewart

In which Pennsylvania town was James Stewart born in 1908?

His father ran the J. M. Stewart and Company Hardware Store and hoped his son would take it over.

What kind of business did Stewart's father run?

Stewart later gave his Oscar to his father, who displayed it in the shop alongside the family's military medals.

Which instrument, taken by his father as payment for a debt, became a fixture of James Stewart's life offstage?

A local barber taught him to play it.

What subject did Stewart major in at Princeton?

His thesis on an airport terminal design won him a graduate scholarship, which he turned down for summer stock theatre.

Which future screen legend roomed with a nearly broke Stewart in New York in the early 1930s?

They built model aeroplanes together for decades and reportedly came to blows once over politics, then never discussed it again.

Stewart's breakthrough came in which 1938 Frank Capra film, that year's Best Picture winner?

He was loaned to Columbia to play opposite Jean Arthur; the film was the year's fifth-biggest hit.

In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's Jefferson Smith is head of which youth organisation?

The film earned eleven Oscar nominations and was among the first 25 titles chosen for the National Film Registry in 1989.

Which German-born star played the saloon girl who falls for Stewart's pacifist lawman in Destry Rides Again?

Stewart's Thomas Jefferson Destry was his last screen role of a busy 1939.

In The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Stewart and Sullavan play co-workers who unknowingly become what?

Director Ernst Lubitsch called it the best film of his career; it later inspired You've Got Mail.

For which film did Stewart win his only competitive Academy Award?

He played a fast-talking reporter covering Katharine Hepburn's wedding, and beat Henry Fonda, for whom he had voted.

Who directed the 1940 film that won Stewart his Oscar?

Katharine Hepburn had bought the film rights to the Broadway play, with help from Howard Hughes, to engineer her comeback from 'box office poison'.

Why was Stewart initially rejected when he tried to join the military in November 1940?

He enlisted successfully in February 1941, months before Pearl Harbor.

Which bomber did Stewart fly in combat over Europe with the 703d Bomb Squadron?

He was sent to England in November 1943 after more than a year training pilots in New Mexico.

Stewart retired from the Air Force Reserve in 1968 holding which rank?

Promoted in 1959, he became the highest-ranking actor in American military history.

Which senator initially opposed Stewart's 1957 nomination for promotion to general's rank?

The promotion went through in July 1959; he had logged 18 hours as first pilot of a B-52.

During the Vietnam War, Stewart flew as an observer aboard which aircraft on a 1966 bombing mission?

He rarely spoke of his war service, though he discussed the Schweinfurt raid in The World at War.

What is the name of Stewart's character in It's a Wonderful Life?

The film failed to cover its costs in 1946 and only became a Christmas fixture after its copyright lapsed in the 1970s.

What eventually turned It's a Wonderful Life from a box-office disappointment into a beloved classic?

Stewart later testified in Congress against Ted Turner's plan to colourise it.

In Harvey, Stewart's Elwood P. Dowd has an invisible best friend of what species?

Harvey stands 6 feet 3 and a half inches tall and is described as a pooka from Celtic mythology.

Stewart agreed to make Winchester '73 (1950) in exchange for what?

His agent Lew Wasserman then brokered a no-fee, profit-share deal that earned him about 600,000 dollars and helped topple the studio system.

Which director made 1950s Stewart Westerns like Winchester '73 and The Man from Laramie?

Their partnership also produced the biopic The Glenn Miller Story.

In The Stratton Story (1949) Stewart played a baseball pitcher who lost what in a hunting accident?

Monty Stratton himself said Stewart 'did a great job of playing me'.

Which bandleader did Stewart portray in a 1954 biopic co-starring June Allyson?

His trombone playing was dubbed; the film won the Oscar for Best Sound Recording.

Stewart made four films with Alfred Hitchcock. Which was the first?

He played the housemaster whose Nietzschean ideas inspire two students to murder; critics later called him miscast.

Rope was notable for being Hitchcock's first film in what?

It was also edited to look like a handful of continuous takes, each running up to ten minutes, the camera's film capacity.

In Rear Window, L. B. Jefferies is confined to a wheelchair in an apartment in which New York neighbourhood?

Grace Kelly played his socialite girlfriend Lisa and Raymond Burr the salesman he suspects of murder.

Which singer co-starred with Stewart in Hitchcock's 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much?

Hitchcock said the 1934 original was 'the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional'.

In Vertigo, Stewart plays a retired detective from which city who suffers a crippling fear of heights?

The film pioneered the dolly zoom, still known as 'the Vertigo effect'.

Which film did Vertigo displace atop the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll?

On release it drew tepid reviews and poor box office; Hitchcock blamed Stewart for looking too old opposite Kim Novak.

Which Hitchcock role that Stewart wanted went instead to Cary Grant, after Vertigo's failure?

Grant was four years older than Stewart but photographed much younger.

Which jazz great composed the score for Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and appeared in the film?

Stewart's small-town lawyer Paul Biegler earned him his fifth and final Oscar nomination.

Robert Traver, author of Anatomy of a Murder, sat on which state's Supreme Court?

John D. Voelker drew on a 1952 murder case in which he was the defence attorney.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ransom Stoddard arrives in which frontier town?

John Wayne got top billing in the film itself, though Stewart was billed first on posters and trailers.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, what should a paper do when a myth has become fact?

The newspaper editor says it after hearing who really shot Valance.

How old was Stewart when he played his boyhood hero Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis?

He dieted strenuously to resemble the 25-year-old Lindbergh of 1927; Billy Wilder directed.

In The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), Frank Towns crash-lands his cargo plane in which desert?

Robert Aldrich's survival drama was praised by critics but flopped at the box office.

Stewart's final film role, in 1991, was voicing Sheriff Wylie Burp in which animated sequel?

It closed a career of 80 films stretching back to 1935.

In John Wayne's final film, The Shootist (1976), Stewart plays a doctor who delivers what news?

By then a hearing impairment was making Stewart flub his cues, though vanity kept him from a hearing aid.

Which late-night host regularly had Stewart on to read his own poems, later collected in a 1989 book?

The collection was titled Jimmy Stewart and His Poems.

What happened to James Stewart's adopted son Ronald?

Ronald, a Marine lieutenant, died in June 1969 aged 24; Stewart nevertheless kept campaigning for conservative causes.

Which president did Stewart once publicly correct for calling him a major general at a campaign event?

Stewart was a frequent White House guest during the Reagan years and had backed his 1976 nomination bid.

Where did the AFI rank Stewart on its 1999 list of the greatest American male screen legends?

He also received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1980 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985.

How many films did Stewart appear in between 1935 and 1991?

He died of a heart attack caused by a pulmonary embolism at his Beverly Hills home in July 1997, aged 89.

On what date did the Jimmy Stewart Museum open in his hometown, with his daughters attending?

It sits on the third floor of the town library, a short walk from his birthplace and the family store.

Which prep school did Stewart attend from 1923, because his father doubted a public-school boy would get into Princeton?

There he high-jumped, edited the yearbook art and made his stage debut in The Wolves in 1928.

Stewart's Princeton thesis, which won him a graduate scholarship he turned down, was a design for what?

He chose instead to join the University Players summer stock company on Cape Cod.

Which singer nearly married Stewart in Las Vegas in 1943 before he got cold feet?

They had met at the Hollywood Canteen while he was in the military; Hedda Hopper dubbed him the 'Great American Bachelor'.

Which actress mentored Stewart and co-starred with him in four films, including The Mortal Storm?

They met in the University Players; director Edward H. Griffith said she 'made him a star'.

Which hobby did Stewart and Henry Fonda share, first taken up during their New York years?

The two also flew kites and played golf; on Fonda's death Stewart said only, 'I've just lost my best friend.'

Who plays James Stewart in Aaron Burns's biopic Jimmy?

The film covers his rise, his wartime service and his return in It's a Wonderful Life, with Jason Alexander in support.