49 Fun Facts About James Stewart

In which Pennsylvania town was James Stewart born in 1908?

Indiana, Pennsylvania, dedicated a bronze statue of Stewart on his 75th birthday in 1983, and it still stands on the courthouse lawn near his boyhood home.

What kind of business did Stewart's father run?

A hardware store, founded by his grandfather: his father hoped Jimmy would come home to run it, and put his son's Academy Award on display there.

Which instrument did James Stewart play as a boy and later on screen in the Western Night Passage?

Accordion: Stewart was an amateur accordionist long before he acted, and the director who quit Night Passage later accused him of making the film only to play one.

What subject did Stewart major in at Princeton?

Architecture: with few building jobs to be had in the Depression, he took up a friend's offer to join a summer theatre company on Cape Cod instead.

Which future star shared rooms with Stewart in New York when both were struggling stage actors in the early 1930s?

Henry Fonda, a liberal Democrat, stayed friends for life with the conservative Stewart by a simple rule: the pair did not talk politics.

Stewart's first film for Frank Capra was which 1938 comedy, that year's Best Picture winner?

You Can't Take It with You came his way because Capra had noticed him in Navy Blue and Gold, so MGM lent Stewart to Columbia to play the banker's son opposite Jean Arthur.

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

The Boy Rangers adore their leader Jefferson Smith, and it is the governor's own children who badger their father into handing him the vacant Senate seat.

Which star played Frenchy, the saloon singer who falls for Stewart's pacifist lawman, in Destry Rides Again?

Marlene Dietrich, playing against type as the brawling Frenchy, introduced 'See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have' in the film, and it became one of her hit records.

In The Shop Around the Corner, Stewart's clerk and a co-worker he can't stand unknowingly become what?

Romantic pen-pals: the two bickering Budapest shop clerks fall in love by anonymous letter, a plot later reworked with email as You've Got Mail.

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

The Philadelphia Story won him Best Actor as a tabloid reporter covering a society wedding, and within weeks of the ceremony he had swapped Hollywood for an Army uniform.

Who directed Stewart, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story?

George Cukor was Katharine Hepburn's choice: she held the film rights to the play and sold them to MGM only on terms that let her pick her director and co-stars.

Why did the Army turn Stewart down at his first physical, before he enlisted in 1941?

He was underweight for his six-foot-three frame, and even at a second physical in 1941 the lanky star only just scraped through to be inducted as a private.

Which bomber did Stewart fly in combat over Europe as a squadron commander in the Second World War?

B-24 Liberator: fearing his fame would keep him in safe training jobs, Stewart pressed for a combat posting and led his squadron's bombers to England in November 1943.

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

Brigadier general: he had joined the Army in 1941 as a private and finished the war a colonel, then kept training with the reserve between films until he turned sixty.

In which 1955 film did Stewart, himself a reserve pilot, play a baseball star called back into uniform?

Strategic Air Command put him back in a cockpit on screen, yet Stewart kept a clause in his contracts barring studios from using his real war record to sell his films.

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?

George Bailey was Stewart's first part after coming home from the war, in a film that disappointed at the box office yet became his own favourite of all his pictures.

What turned It's a Wonderful Life from a box-office disappointment into a Christmas tradition?

A lapsed copyright: once the film fell out of copyright in the 1970s, television stations could air it freely every Christmas, and the endless repeats won it the audience it had missed in 1946.

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

A rabbit: Harvey is a pooka, a shape-shifting spirit of Celtic folklore, and by the end of the film even the sanatorium's chief doctor has begun to see him.

In 1950 Stewart traded his usual salary for a share of the profits of which Western?

Winchester '73 turned into a surprise hit, so the gamble paid Stewart far more than his usual fee, and other stars were soon demanding a cut of the profits too.

Which director made eight films with Stewart, among them the Western The Man from Laramie?

Anthony Mann's Westerns gave Stewart a harder edge, recasting Hollywood's most genial leading man as bitter, obsessive loners driven by revenge.

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

A leg: Monty Stratton of the Chicago White Sox lost his right leg after shooting himself by accident in 1938, yet eight years later he was pitching again in the minor leagues on an artificial one.

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

Glenn Miller vanished in 1944 when his plane was lost over the English Channel, and the film of his life became one of the most popular Stewart ever made.

Which was the first of Stewart's four films with Alfred Hitchcock?

Rope cast Stewart as the old teacher of two young men who strangle a friend, hide him in a chest and then serve a dinner party from its lid.

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

Greenwich Village never saw a camera: the whole courtyard, with its dozens of apartments, was built indoors on a single Paramount stage and filmed from Jefferies's room.

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

Doris Day sings 'Que Sera, Sera' in the film so that her kidnapped son will hear her, and the song won an Oscar and became her signature tune.

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

San Francisco landmarks from Fort Point to Mission Dolores fill the film, and the zoom-while-tracking shot devised to show Scottie's dizziness is still called the Vertigo shot.

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

Citizen Kane had topped every critics' poll since 1962, while Vertigo had not even reached the top ten until 1982, two years after Hitchcock's death.

Which Hitchcock thriller did Stewart want to star in, only for the lead to go to Cary Grant the year after Vertigo?

North by Northwest went to Grant because Hitchcock blamed Vertigo's limited success on Stewart looking too old for his young co-star, though Grant was in fact four years older.

Which jazz great scored Stewart's courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder and also appears in it?

Duke Ellington turns up as Pie Eye, leader of a roadhouse band, and Stewart's jazz-loving lawyer sits down beside him at the piano.

The judge facing Stewart's lawyer in Anatomy of a Murder was played by Joseph Welch, famous for rebuking which senator?

Joe McCarthy: Welch was the Army's lawyer at the televised 1954 hearings, and his question 'Have you no sense of decency?' is remembered as the moment the senator's power began to drain away.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Stewart's young lawyer Ransom Stoddard arrives in which frontier town?

Shinbone is where Stoddard, robbed on the road by Valance, hangs out his lawyer's shingle while John Wayne's rancher mocks the tenderfoot as 'Pilgrim'.

In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, what does the newspaper editor say to do when a myth has become fact?

Print the legend: 'When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,' says editor Maxwell Scott, burning his notes on learning that Stoddard never fired the shot that made his name.

At 47, Stewart played which aviator, who had been only 25 at the time of his famous flight?

Charles Lindbergh had been Stewart's hero ever since the solo Atlantic crossing of 1927, and the actor, a pilot himself, lobbied the studio to star in The Spirit of St. Louis.

In The Flight of the Phoenix, Stewart's pilot Frank Towns crash-lands his cargo plane in which desert?

The Sahara strands the survivors until they build a smaller plane from the wreck, and stunt pilot Paul Mantz was killed flying that makeshift aircraft for the cameras.

Stewart's final film role, in 1991, was a voice part in which animated sequel?

An American Tail: Fievel Goes West cast the 83-year-old Stewart as Wylie Burp, a worn-out bloodhound sheriff whom the young mouse talks into one last stand.

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

A terminal cancer diagnosis: Stewart's doctor gives the old gunfighter only weeks to live, a part with a grim echo for Wayne, who had been fighting the same disease himself.

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

Johnny Carson's Tonight Show made Stewart an accidental poet: his reading of a verse about his dog Beau went over so well that a best-selling book of his poems followed.

What happened to James Stewart's stepson Ronald McLean?

He was killed in action in Vietnam, a war Stewart had seen for himself: the actor, still a reserve officer, had earlier flown over it as an observer on a bombing mission.

Which president awarded Stewart the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States?

Ronald Reagan presented it in 1985, with a citation saying that the boyish, honest and kind characters Stewart played on screen mirrored the man in real life.

In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's young senator fights a crooked land deal with which tactic?

A filibuster: Smith holds the Senate floor for hours on end, a picture of Congress that so angered real politicians that there were calls for the film to be banned.

Which actress starred opposite Stewart twice in 1958, in Vertigo and Bell, Book and Candle?

Kim Novak seems to play two women in Vertigo: Stewart's detective falls for the haunted Madeleine, then remakes another woman in her image without guessing they are one and the same.

Why did the modest Stewart finally agree to a museum about himself in his Pennsylvania hometown?

To help the local economy: Stewart thought a museum about himself immodest, and gave way only on condition that it stayed small, sat downtown and brought business to his birthplace.

In Shenandoah, Stewart's Virginia farmer tries to keep his sons out of which war?

The Civil War rages within miles of his farm, yet Charlie Anderson insists it is no concern of his family, and the film's anti-war message struck home as doubts about Vietnam grew.

Who played Lisa Fremont, the socialite girlfriend who does the legwork for Stewart's housebound photographer in Rear Window?

Grace Kelly's Lisa turns from fashion plate to burglar, climbing into the suspected killer's flat across the courtyard while Jefferies can only watch through his camera lens.

In The Greatest Show on Earth, why does Stewart's clown Buttons never take off his make-up?

He is wanted by the police: Buttons is really a doctor wanted for the mercy killing of his wife, and he gives himself away by saving a man's life after the circus train crashes.

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

Margaret Sullavan knew him from their summer-stock days and pressed her studio to cast the unknown Stewart as her leading man, the first of the four films they made together.

In Bell, Book and Candle, Stewart's publisher falls for a Manhattan neighbour who is secretly what?

A witch: she puts a love spell on him, and the 1958 comedy is credited as part of the inspiration for the television series Bewitched.

Who plays James Stewart in Aaron Burns's 2026 biopic Jimmy?

KJ Apa, the Riverdale star, leads a cast with Jason Alexander as studio chief Louis B. Mayer, in a film about the idol who walked away from Hollywood to fly in the war.