How movie star James Stewart became a war hero

It’s trite but true; Jimmy Stewart played the Everyman better than everyone. He had the gawky innocence to be an idealistic senator, in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”; an eccentric with a six-foot-tall rabbit pal in “Harvey”; and a depth, in “Rear Window” and “Vertigo,” that even Alfred Hitchcock found mysterious.

But it was director Frank Capra who gave us the Jimmy Stewart that everyone still depends on every Christmas. “It’s a Wonderful Life” is remarkable for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that Stewart’s memorable performance was his first after an almost-five-year absence from Hollywood. Audiences hadn’t seen him on screen since 1941, the same year he took home the Academy Award for “The Philadelphia Story.” He was a Hollywood A-lister. But not long after, he found himself on another list: the list for the draft.

Stewart could have served safely stateside doing recruiting films and such. But he wanted, or at least felt, he needed to do more. Already an accomplished pilot, Stewart enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

“He knew that America needed good pilots; he was one,” said Janie McKirgan, curator at the Jimmy Stewart Museum in his hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania.

McKirgan said few wanted to let Hollywood’s golden boy actually fly: “It took a long time for him to find somebody in the Army Air Corps that was willing to take that risk,” she said. “Because if Jimmy Stewart, Academy Award-winning Jimmy Stewart, got shot down, it would be a huge blow to troop morale, to America, to everything.”

His fight to be able to fight despite his celebrity is the subject of a new film out this week, called “Jimmy.” It stars Max Casella as director Frank Capra, and K.J. Apa as Jimmy Stewart. “We really set out to make the movie that Frank and Jimmy never got to make,” Apa said.

Casella said he was only vaguely aware of Stewart’s wartime service; Apa did not know about it: “I can’t believe it was true,” he said. “It was the courage that made me dumbfounded of his story.”

Casella said, “He gave up Hollywood at the very top of the mountain.”

To watch a trailer for “Jimmy” click on the video player below:

There’a a lot of what you’d want in the film: Old Hollywood, action-packed air battles. But really at its heart, this is a movie about what Stewart’s service did to his soul. Stewart flew 20 combat missions over Germany. He lost men, and saw things he wished he didn’t. But like most of that generation, he kept those horrors to himself.

“Dad never talked about his military service to us,” said Kelly Stewart Harcourt, one of his twin daughters. “Never talked about his war service at all.”

Harcourt, an executive producer on the film, says her dad came home from war a different man: “He said, ‘I’m an out-of-work actor and an out-of-work pilot, and I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Do I even want to make films again?'”

Her dad kept a diary, something she and her sister found in his nightstand after he passed away in 1997. She read from it, having never shared it publicly:

“This was a terrible day. We lost 13 crews out of the group on the mission today. Only half of them came back.”

The next day, though, in the see-saw of war, everyone came home safely. That was a cause for celebration.  And yet, Stewart wrote this:

“It’s strange that this could practically cancel out the loss of all those boys, but I guess that’s the way things have to be in this god-damn, stupid, lousy, dirty war.”

Harcourt says her dad suffered from nightmares, depression, anxiety – symptoms that would be diagnosed as PTSD today.  And that, in a way, is what gets us back to “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“Dear Father in heaven, I’m not a praying man but, if You’re up there and You can hear me, show me the way…”

For years there had been quiet speculation that whatever demons Stewart may have brought home were exorcised in the role of George Bailey, a desperate man also pushed to the edge. Harcourt believes he brought those feelings to the role of Bailey. “You can’t pull off that performance without feeling like that,” she said.

We’ll never know, of course.  Whatever his muse, its effect was unforgettable.

Stewart went on to do more than 50 films after “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But he was most proud of his service to his country. In 1983, Stewart was honored at the Kennedy Center, where cadets from the U.S. Air Force Academy brought him near tears.

Jimmy Stewart did indeed have a wonderful life, but his sacrifice, and those of others, gave us a pretty wonderful life, too.

Web extra: Filming Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” kiss (Video)
Hollywood historian Sam Wasson, author of the biography “Frank Capra: A Life,” talks with Lee Cowan about Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed’s emotional performance in Capra’s 1946 classic “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and how the director created a timeless classic – even if it wasn’t the box office giant he’d hoped for.

Read an excerpt: “Frank Capra: A Life” by Sam Wasson

     
Story produced by David Rothman. Editor: Remington Korper. 

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