James Stewart: the story on HearLore

James Stewart

James Maitland Stewart was born on the 20th of May 1908 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, into a family that had lived in the state for generations. His father ran the J. M. Stewart and Company Hardware Store, a business that the elder Stewart hoped his eldest son would eventually inherit after attending Princeton University. Instead, the shy child spent his afternoons in the basement of the family home, engrossed in model airplanes, mechanical drawings, and chemistry. This early obsession with aviation was so profound that he abandoned his initial dream of becoming a pilot when his father steered him toward architecture at Princeton. Yet, the dream never truly died. Stewart was a devout Presbyterian raised by a deeply religious father, and his mother was a pianist who made music a central part of family life. When a customer could not pay his bill, Stewart's father accepted an old accordion as payment. Stewart learned to play the instrument with the help of a local barber, and the accordion became a fixture offstage during his acting career. He attended the Wilson Model School for primary and junior high school, where he was not a gifted student, receiving average to low grades. Teachers attributed this not to a lack of intelligence, but to his creativity and tendency to daydream. At Mercersburg Academy prep school, he participated in track, art, and the glee club, but was relegated to the third-tier football team due to his slender physique. He made his first onstage appearance at Mercersburg in 1928 as Buquet in the play The Wolves. During summer breaks, he worked as a brick loader and then as a magician's assistant, but his heart remained fixed on the sky.

The Lanky Young Bumpkin

Stewart enrolled at Princeton in 1928 as a member of the class of 1932, majoring in architecture and becoming a member of the Princeton Charter Club. He excelled academically but also became attracted to the school's drama and music clubs, including the Princeton Triangle Club. Upon his graduation in 1932, he was awarded a scholarship for graduate studies in architecture for his thesis on an airport terminal design, but chose instead to join University Players, an intercollegiate summer stock company performing in West Falmouth, Massachusetts. At the end of the season, Stewart moved to New York with his Players friends Joshua Logan, Myron McCormick, and newly single Henry Fonda. Along with McCormick, Stewart debuted on Broadway in the brief run of Carry Nation and a few weeks later appeared as a chauffeur in the comedy Goodbye Again. The New Yorker commented that his chauffeur came on for three minutes and walked off to a round of spontaneous applause. Following the seven-month run of Goodbye Again, Stewart took a stage manager position in Boston, but was fired after frequently missing his cues. Returning to New York, he landed a small part in Spring in Autumn and a role in All Good Americans, where he was required to throw a banjo out of the window. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times wrote that throwing a $250 banjo out of the window at the concierge was constructive abuse and should be virtuously applauded. Both plays folded after only short runs, and Stewart began to think about going back to his studies. He was convinced to continue acting when he was cast in the lead role of Yellow Jack, playing a soldier who becomes the subject of a yellow fever experiment. It premiered at the Martin Beck Theater in March 1934. Stewart received unanimous praise from the critics, but the play proved unpopular with audiences and folded by June. During the summer, Stewart made his film debut with an unbilled appearance in the Shemp Howard comedy short Art Trouble, filmed in Brooklyn, and acted in summer stock productions of We Die Exquisitely and All Paris Knows at the Red Barn Theater on Long Island. In the fall, he again received excellent reviews for his role in Divided by Three at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, which he followed with the modestly successful Page Miss Glory and the critical failure A Journey by Night in spring 1935. Soon after A Journey by Night ended, Stewart signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, orchestrated by talent scout Bill Grady, who had been tracking Stewart's career since seeing him perform in Princeton. His first Hollywood role was a minor appearance in the Spencer Tracy vehicle The Murder Man in 1935. His performance was largely ignored by critics, although the New York Herald Tribune, remembering him in Yellow Jack, called him wasted in a bit that he handles with characteristically engaging skill. MGM did not see leading-man material in Stewart, described by biographer Michael D. Rinella as a lanky young bumpkin with a hesitant manner of speech. During this time, his agent Leland Hayward decided that the best path for him would be through loan-outs to other studios. Stewart had only a small role in his second MGM film, the hit musical Rose Marie in 1936, but it led to his casting in seven other films within one year, including Next Time We Love and After the Thin Man. He also received crucial help from his University Players friend Margaret Sullavan, who campaigned for him to be her leading man in Next Time We Love, a Universal romantic comedy filmed right after Rose Marie. Sullavan rehearsed extensively with him, boosting his confidence and helping him incorporate his mannerisms and boyishness into his screen persona. Next Time We Love was a box-office success and received mostly positive reviews, leading Stewart to be noticed by critics and MGM executives. Time stated that the chief significance of the film in the progress of the cinema industry is likely to reside in the presence in its cast of James Stewart, and The New York Times called him a welcome addition to the roster of Hollywood's leading men.

When was James Stewart born and where was he born?

James Maitland Stewart was born on the 20th of May 1908 in Indiana, Pennsylvania. He was born into a family that had lived in the state for generations.

What was James Stewart's first major film role and when did it happen?

James Stewart made his film debut with an unbilled appearance in the Shemp Howard comedy short Art Trouble in 1934. His first credited film role was a minor appearance in The Murder Man in 1935.

Which film won James Stewart his only competitive Academy Award for Best Actor?

James Stewart won his only Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in The Philadelphia Story in 1940. He beat out Henry Fonda for the award and later gave the Oscar to his father.

Who directed the film Rear Window and when was it released?

Alfred Hitchcock directed the thriller Rear Window which was released in 1954. The film became the eighth highest-grossing film of that year and featured Stewart as a photographer observing a murder.

When did James Stewart die and what was the cause of his death?

James Stewart died on the 2nd of July 1997 after becoming reclusive following the death of his wife Gloria on the 16th of February 1994. He spent most of his time at home until his death.

What military service did James Stewart perform during World War II?

James Stewart served as a military officer in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. He later narrated the film X-15 for the USAF in 1961 and used his air force experiences to develop the film Strategic Air Command.

The Idealist in the Senate

Stewart became a major star when he was loaned out to Columbia Pictures to play the lead role in Frank Capra's You Can't Take It with You in 1938 opposite Jean Arthur. Stewart played the son of a banker who falls in love with a woman from a poor and eccentric family. Capra had recently completed several well-received films and was looking for a new type of leading man. He had been impressed by Stewart's role in Navy Blue and Gold in 1937. According to Capra, Stewart was one of the best actors ever to hit the screen, understood character archetypes intuitively, and required little directing. You Can't Take It With You became the fifth highest-grossing film of the year and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was also critically successful, but while Variety wrote that the performances of Stewart and Arthur garnered much of the laughs, most of the critical acclaim went to Lionel Barrymore and Edward Arnold. In contrast to the success of You Can't Take It With You, Stewart's first three film releases of 1939 were all commercial disappointments. In the melodrama Made for Each Other, he shared the screen with Carole Lombard. Stewart blamed its directing and screenwriting for its poor box-office performance. Regardless, the film received favorable reviews, with Newsweek writing that Stewart and Lombard were perfectly cast in the leading roles. The other two films, The Ice Follies of 1939 and It's a Wonderful World, were critical failures. In Stewart's fourth 1939 film, he worked with Capra and Arthur again in the political comedy-drama Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Stewart played an idealist thrown into the political arena. It garnered critical praise and became the third-highest-grossing film of the year. The Nation stated that Stewart takes first place among Hollywood actors. Now he is mature and gives a difficult part, with many nuances, moments of tragic-comic impact. Later, critic Andrew Sarris qualified Stewart's performance as lean, gangling, idealistic to the point of being neurotic, thoughtful to the point of being tongue-tied, describing him as particularly gifted in expressing the emotional ambivalence of the action hero. Stewart won the New York Film Critics Circle award and received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Stewart's last screen appearance of 1939 came in the Western Destry Rides Again, in which he portrayed a pacifist lawman alongside Marlene Dietrich, a saloon girl who falls in love with him. It was critically and commercially successful. TIME magazine wrote that James Stewart, who had just turned in the top performance of his cinematurity as Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, turns in as good a performance or better as Thomas Jefferson Destry. Between films, Stewart had begun a radio career and had become a distinctive voice on the Lux Radio Theater, The Screen Guild Theater, and other shows. So well-known had his slow drawl become that comedians began impersonating him. Stewart and Sullavan reunited for two films in 1940. The Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner starred them as co-workers who cannot stand each other but unknowingly become romantic pen-pals. It received good reviews and was a box-office success in Europe, but failed to find an audience in the US, where less-gentle screwball comedies were more popular. Director Lubitsch assessed it to be the best film of his career, and it has been regarded highly by later critics, such as Pauline Kael and Richard Schickel. The drama The Mortal Storm, directed by Frank Borzage, featured Sullavan and Stewart as lovers caught in turmoil upon Hitler's rise to power. It was one of the first blatantly anti-Nazi films to be produced in Hollywood, but according to film scholar Ben Urwand, ultimately made very little impact as it did not show the persecution experienced by Jews or name that ethnic group. Despite being well received by critics, it failed at the box office. Ten days after filming The Mortal Storm, Stewart began filming No Time for Comedy with Rosalind Russell. Critics complimented Stewart's performance; Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called Stewart the best thing in the show, yet the film was again not a box-office success. Stewart's final film to be released in 1940 was George Cukor's romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, in which he played an intrusive, fast-talking reporter sent to cover the wedding of a socialite with the help of her ex-husband. The film became one of the largest box-office successes of the year and received widespread critical acclaim. The New York Herald Tribune stated that Stewart contributes most of the comedy to the show. In addition, he contributes some of the most irresistible romantic moments. His performance earned him his only Academy Award in a competitive category for Best Actor, beating out Henry Fonda, for whom he had voted and with whom he had once roomed, both almost broke, in the early 1930s in New York. Stewart himself assessed his performance in Mr. Smith to be superior and believed the academy was recompensing for not giving him the award the year prior. Moreover, Stewart's character was a supporting role, not the male lead. He gave the Oscar to his father, who displayed it at his hardware store alongside other family awards and military medals.

The Pilot Who Became a Colonel

After his experiences in the war, Stewart considered returning to Pennsylvania to run the family store. His former agent, Leland Hayward, had also left the talent business in 1944 after selling his roster of stars, including Stewart, to Music Corporation of America. Stewart decided not to renew his MGM contract and instead signed a deal with MCA. He later stated that he was given a new beginning by Frank Capra, who asked him to star in It's a Wonderful Life in 1946, the first postwar film for both of them. Stewart played George Bailey, an upstanding small-town man who becomes increasingly frustrated by his ordinary existence and financial troubles. Driven to suicide on Christmas Eve, he is led to reassess his life by Clarence Odbody, an angel, second class, played by Henry Travers. During filming, Stewart experienced doubts about his abilities and continued to consider retiring from acting. Although It's a Wonderful Life was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Stewart's third Best Actor nomination, it received mixed reviews and was only a moderate success at the box office, failing to cover its production costs. Several critics found the movie too sentimental, although Bosley Crowther wrote that Stewart did a warmly appealing job, indicating that he has grown in spiritual stature as well as in talent during the years he was in the war, and President Harry S. Truman concluded that If my wife and I had a son we'd want him to be just like Jimmy Stewart in this film. In the decades since its release, It's a Wonderful Life has grown to define Stewart's film persona and is widely considered a Christmas classic, and according to the American Film Institute, is one of the 100 best American movies ever made. Andrew Sarris stated that Stewart's performance was underappreciated by critics of the time, who could not see the force and fury of it, and considered his proposal scene with Donna Reed, one of the most sublimely histrionic expressions of passion. Stewart later named the film his personal favorite out of his filmography. In the aftermath of It's A Wonderful Life, Capra's production company went into bankruptcy, while Stewart continued to have doubts about his acting abilities. His generation of actors was fading, and a new wave of actors, including Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, and James Dean, would soon remake Hollywood. Stewart returned to making radio dramas in 1946; he continued this work between films until the mid-1950s. He also made a comeback on Broadway to star in Mary Coyle Chase's Harvey in July 1947, replacing the original star Frank Fay for the duration of his vacation. The play had opened to nearly universal praise in 1944 and told the story of Elwood P. Dowd, a wealthy eccentric, whose best friend is an invisible man-sized rabbit and whose relatives are trying to get him committed to a mental asylum. Stewart gained a following in the unconventional play, and although Fay returned to the role in August, they decided that Stewart would take his place again the next summer. Stewart's only film to be released in 1947 was the William A. Wellman comedy Magic Town, one of the first films about the new science of public opinion polling. It was poorly received both commercially and critically. Stewart appeared in four new film releases in 1948. Call Northside 777 was a critically acclaimed film noir, while the musical comedy On Our Merry Way, in which Stewart and Henry Fonda played jazz musicians in an ensemble cast, was a critical and commercial failure. The comedy You Gotta Stay Happy, which paired Stewart with Joan Fontaine, was the most successful of his post-war films up to that point. Rope, in which Stewart played the idolized teacher of two young men who commit murder to show their supposed superiority, began his collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock. Shot in long real-time takes, Stewart felt pressure to be flawless in his performance; the added stress led to him sleeping very little and drinking more heavily. Rope received mixed reviews, and Andrew Sarris and Scott Eyman have later called him miscast

The Man Who Couldn't Fly

in the role of a Nietzsche-loving philosophy professor. The film's screenwriter Arthur Laurents also stated that the casting of Stewart was absolutely destructive. He's not sexual as an actor. Stewart found success again with The Stratton Story in 1949, playing baseball champion Monty Stratton opposite June Allyson. It became the sixth highest-grossing film of 1949 and was well received by the critics. The New York Times noted that The Stratton Story was the best thing that has yet happened to Mr. Stewart in his post-war film career. He gives such a winning performance that it is almost impossible to imagine any one else playing the role. Stewart's other 1949 release saw him reunited with Spencer Tracy in the World War II film Malaya. It was a commercial failure and received mixed reviews. In the 1950s, Stewart redefined his career as a star of Western films. In the 1950s, Stewart experienced a career renewal as the star of Westerns and collaborated on several films with director Anthony Mann. The first of these was the Universal production Winchester '73 in 1950, which Stewart agreed to do in exchange for being cast in a screen adaptation of Harvey. It also marked a turning point in Hollywood, as Stewart's agent, Lew Wasserman, brokered an innovative deal with Universal, in which Stewart would receive no fee in exchange for a percentage of the profits. Stewart was also granted authority to collaborate with the studio on casting and hiring decisions. Stewart ended up earning about $600,000 for Winchester '73, significantly more than his usual fee, and other stars quickly capitalized on this new way of doing business, which further undermined the decaying studio system. Stewart chose Mann to direct, and the film gave him the idea of redefining his screen persona through the Western genre. In the film, Stewart is a tough, vengeful sharpshooter, the winner of a prized rifle that is stolen and passes through many hands, until the showdown between him and his brother. Winchester '73 became a box-office success upon its summer release and earned Stewart rave reviews. He also starred in another successful Western that summer, Broken Arrow, which featured him as an ex-soldier and Native American agent making peace with the Apache. Stewart's third film release of 1950 was the comedy The Jackpot; it received critical acclaim and was commercially successful, but was a minor film in his repertoire and has largely been forgotten by contemporary critics and fans. In December 1950, the screen adaptation of Harvey was released, directed by Henry Koster and with Stewart reprising his stage role. With critics comparing his performance with Fay's, Stewart's performance as well as the film itself received mixed reviews. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that so darling is the acting of Stewart and all the rest that a virtually brand-new experience is still in store for even those who saw the play, while Variety called him perfect in the role. John McCarten of The New Yorker stated that although he doesn't bring his part to the battered authority of Frank Fay, he nevertheless succeeds in making plausible the notion that Harvey, the rabbit, would accept him as a pal. Stewart later stated that he was dissatisfied with his performance, stating, I played him a little too dreamily, a little too cute-cute. Despite the film's poor box office performance, Stewart received his fourth Academy Award nomination as well as his first Golden Globe nomination. Similar to It's a Wonderful Life, Harvey achieved popularity later, after frequent television showings. Stewart appeared in only one film released in 1951, playing a scientist in Koster's British production No Highway in the Sky, which was one of the first airplane disaster films ever made. Filmed in England, it became a box office success in the United Kingdom, but failed to attract audiences in the United States. Stewart took a small supporting role as a troubled clown in Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952, which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Critics were curious why Stewart had taken such a small, out-of-character role; he responded that he was inspired by Lon Chaney's ability to disguise himself while letting his character emerge. In the same year, Stewart starred in a critically and commercially failed biopic, Carbine Williams, and continued his collaboration with Mann in Bend of the River, which was a commercial and critical success. Stewart followed Bend of the River with four more collaborations with Mann in the next two years. The Naked Spur in 1953 and The Far Country in 1954 were successful with audiences and developed Stewart's screen persona into a more mature, ambiguous, and edgier presence. The films featured him as troubled cowboys seeking redemption while facing corrupt cattlemen, ranchers, and outlaws; a man who knows violence first-hand and struggles to control it. The Stewart, Mann collaborations laid the

The Westerner and The Hitchcock Hero

foundation for many of the Westerns of the 1950s and remain popular today for their grittier, more realistic depiction of the classic movie genre. In addition, Stewart starred in the Western radio show The Six Shooter for its one-season run from 1953 to 1954. He and Mann also collaborated on films outside the Western genre such as Thunder Bay in 1953 and The Glenn Miller Story in 1954, the latter a critically acclaimed biopic in which he starred opposite June Allyson. It earned Stewart a BAFTA nomination and continued his portrayals of American heroes. Stewart's second collaboration with Hitchcock, the thriller Rear Window, became the eighth highest-grossing film of 1954. Hitchcock and Stewart also formed a corporation, Patron Inc., to produce the film. Stewart portrayed a photographer, loosely based on Robert Capa, who projects his fantasies and fears onto the people he observes out his apartment window while on hiatus due to a broken leg and comes to believe that he has witnessed a murder. Limited by his wheelchair, Stewart had to react to what his character sees with mostly facial responses. Like Mann, Hitchcock uncovered new depths to Stewart's acting, showing a protagonist confronting his fears and repressed desires. Although most of the initial acclaim for Rear Window was directed towards Hitchcock, critic Vincent Canby later described Stewart's performance in it as grand and stated that his longtime star status in Hollywood has always obscured recognition of his talent. 1954 was a landmark year in Stewart's career in terms of audience success, and he topped Look magazine's list of the most-popular movie stars, displacing rival Western star John Wayne. Stewart continued his successful box-office run with two collaborations with Mann in 1955. Strategic Air Command paired him again with June Allyson in a film focusing on the Cold War. Stewart took a central role in its development, using his experiences from the air force. Despite criticism for the dry, mechanistic storyline, it became the sixth highest-grossing film of 1955. Stewart's final collaboration with Mann in the Western genre, The Man from Laramie, one of the first Westerns to be shot in CinemaScope, was well received by the critics and audiences alike. Following his work with Mann, Stewart starred opposite Doris Day in Hitchcock's remake of his earlier film The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956. The film was another success. Even though critics preferred the first version, Hitchcock himself considered his remake superior. Stewart's next film, Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St. Louis in 1957, saw him star as his young adulthood hero, Charles Lindbergh. It was a big-budget production with elaborate special effects for the flying sequences, but received only mixed reviews and did not earn back its production costs. Stewart ended the year with a starring role in the Western Night Passage in 1957, which had originally been slated as his ninth collaboration with Mann. During the pre-production, a rift developed between Mann and writer Borden Chase over the script, which Mann considered weak. Mann decided to leave the film and never collaborated with Stewart again. Soured by this failure, Stewart avoided the genre and would not make another Western for four years. Stewart's collaboration with Hitchcock ended the following year with Vertigo in 1958, in which he starred as an acrophobic former policeman who becomes obsessed with a woman he is shadowing. Although Vertigo has later become considered one of Hitchcock's key works and was ranked the greatest film ever made by the Sight & Sound critics' poll in 2012, it was met with unenthusiastic reviews and poor box-office receipts upon its release. Regardless, several critics complimented Stewart for his performance, with Bosley Crowther noting that Mr. Stewart, as usual, manages to act awfully tense in a casual way. Hitchcock blamed the film's failure on Stewart being too old to convincingly be Novak's love interest: he was fifty years old at the time and had begun wearing a silver hairpiece in his movies. Consequently, Hitchcock cast Cary Grant in his next film, North by Northwest, a role Stewart wanted; Grant was four years older than Stewart but photographed much younger. Stewart's second 1958 film release, the romantic comedy Bell, Book and Candle, also paired him with Kim Novak, with Stewart later echoing Hitchcock in saying that he was miscast as 25-year-old Novak's romantic partner. The film and Stewart's performance received poor reviews and resulted in a box office failure. However, according to film scholar David Bingham, by the early 1950s, Stewart's personality was so credible and well-established, that his choice of role no longer affected his popularity. Stewart ended the decade with Otto Preminger's realistic courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder in 1959 and the crime film The FBI Story in 1959. The former was a box office success despite its explicit dealing with subjects such as rape, and garnered good reviews. Stewart received critical acclaim for his role as a small-town lawyer involved in a difficult murder case; Bosley Crowther called it one of the finest performances of his career. Stewart won his first BAFTA, a Volpi Cup, a New York Film Critics Circle Award, and a Producers Guild of America Award, as well as earned his fifth and final Academy Award nomination for his performance. The FBI Story, in which Stewart portrayed a Depression-era FBI agent, was less well received by critics and was commercially unsuccessful. Despite its commercial failure, the film marked the close of the most commercially successful decade of Stewart's career. According to Quigley's annual poll, Stewart was one of the top money-making stars for ten years, appearing in the top ten in 1950, 1952, 1959, and 1965. He topped the list in 1955. Stewart opened the new decade by starring in the war film The Mountain Road in 1960. To his surprise, it was a box office failure, despite his claims that it was one of the best scripts he'd ever read. He began a new director collaboration with John Ford, making his debut in his films in the Western Two Rode Together in 1961, which had thematic echoes of Ford's The Searchers. The same year, he also narrated the film X-15 for the USAF. Stewart was considered for the role of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird, but he turned it down, concerned that the story was too controversial. Stewart and Ford's next collaboration was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in 1962. A classic psychological Western, the picture was shot in black-and-white film noir style at Ford's insistence, with Stewart as an East Coast attorney who goes against his non-violent principles when he is forced to confront a psychopathic outlaw in a small frontier town. The complex film initially garnered mixed reviews but became a critical favorite over the ensuing decades. Stewart was billed above John Wayne in posters and the trailers, but Wayne received top billing in the film itself. Stewart, Wayne, and Ford also collaborated for a television play that same year, Flashing Spikes, for ABC's anthology series Alcoa Premiere, albeit featuring Wayne billed with a television pseudonym, Michael Morris, for his lengthy cameo. Next, Stewart appeared as part of an all-star cast, including Henry Fonda and John Wayne, in How the West Was Won, a Western epic released in the United States in early 1963. The film went on to win three Academy Awards and reap massive box-office figures. In 1962, Stewart signed a multi-movie deal with 20th Century Fox. The first two of these films reunited him with director Henry Koster in the family-friendly comedies Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation with Maureen O'Hara and Take Her, She's Mine, which were both box-office successes. The former received moderately positive reviews and won Stewart the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival; the latter was panned by the critics. Stewart then appeared in John Ford's final Western, Cheyenne Autumn in 1964, playing a white-suited Wyatt Earp in a long semi-comedic sequence in the middle of the movie. The film failed domestically and was quickly forgotten. In 1965, Stewart was given his first honorary award for his career, the Cecil B. DeMille Award. He appeared in three films that year. The Fox family-comedy Dear Brigitte, which featured French actress Brigitte Bardot as the object of Stewart's son's infatuation, was a box-office failure. The Civil War film Shenandoah was a commercial success with strong anti-war and humanitarian themes. The Flight of the Phoenix continued Stewart's series of aviation-themed films; it was well-received critically, but a box-office failure. For the next few years, Stewart acted in a series of Westerns: The Rare Breed with Maureen O'Hara, Firecreek with Henry Fonda, Bandolero! with Dean Martin, and The Cheyenne Social Club with Henry Fonda again. In 1968, he received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. Stewart returned on Broadway to reprise his role as Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey at the ANTA Theatre in February 1970; the revival ran until May. He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance for it. In 1971, Stewart starred in the NBC sitcom The Jimmy Stewart Show. He played a small-town college professor whose adult son moves back home with his family. Stewart disliked the amount of work needed to film the show each week and was relieved when it was canceled after only one season due to bad reviews and poor ratings. His only film release for 1971, the comedy-drama Fools' Parade, was more positively received. Robert Greenspun of The New York Times stated that the movie belongs to Stewart, who has never been more wonderful. For his contributions to Western films, Stewart was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City in 1972.

The Last Flight and The Legacy

Stewart returned to television in Harvey for NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame series in 1972 and then starred in the CBS mystery series Hawkins in 1973. Playing a small-town lawyer investigating mysterious cases, similar to his character in Anatomy of a Murder, Stewart won a Golden Globe for his performance. Nevertheless, Hawkins failed to gain a wide audience, possibly because it rotated with Shaft, which had a starkly conflicting demographic, and was canceled after one season. Stewart also periodically appeared on Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show, sharing poems he had written at different times in his life. His poems were later compiled into a short collection, Jimmy Stewart and His Poems in 1989. After performing again in Harvey at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London in 1975, Stewart returned to films with a major supporting role in John Wayne's final film, The Shootist in 1976, playing a doctor giving Wayne's gunfighter a terminal cancer diagnosis. By this time, Stewart had a hearing impairment, which affected his ability to hear his cues and led to him repeatedly flubbing his lines; his vanity would not allow him to admit this or to wear a hearing aid. Stewart was offered the role of Howard Beale in Network in 1976 but refused it due to its explicit language. Instead, he appeared in supporting roles in the disaster film Airport '77 with Jack Lemmon, the remake of The Big Sleep with Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe, and the family film The Magic of Lassie in 1978. Despite mixed reviews, Airport '77 was a box-office success, but the two other films were commercial and critical failures. Harry Haun of New York Daily News wrote in his review of The Big Sleep that it was really sad to see James Stewart struggle so earnestly with material that just isn't there. Stewart made a memorable cameo appearance on the final episode of The Carol Burnett Show in March 1978, surprising Burnett, a lifelong Stewart fan. Stewart's final live-action feature film was the critically panned Japanese film The Green Horizon in 1980, directed by Susumu Hani. Stewart took the role because the film promoted wildlife conservation and allowed his family to travel with him to Kenya. In the 1980s, Stewart semi-retired from acting. He was offered the role of Norman Thayer in On Golden Pond in 1981 but turned it down because he disliked the film's father-daughter relationship; the role went instead to his friend, Henry Fonda. Stewart filmed two television movies in the 1980s: Mr. Krueger's Christmas, produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which allowed him to fulfill a lifelong dream to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and Right of Way, an HBO drama that co-starred Bette Davis. He also made an appearance in the historical miniseries North and South in 1986 and did voiceover work for commercials for Campbell's Soups in the 1980s and 1990s. Stewart's last film performance was voicing the character of Sheriff Wylie Burp in the animated movie An American Tail: Fievel Goes West in 1991. Stewart remained in the public eye due to his frequent visits to the White House during the Reagan administration. The re-release of Hitchcock films gained him renewed recognition, with Rear Window and Vertigo praised by film critics. Stewart also received several honorary film industry awards at the end of his career: an American Film Institute Award in 1980, a Silver Bear in 1982, Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, an Academy Honorary Award in 1985, and National Board of Review and Film Society of Lincoln Center's Chaplin Award in 1990. The honorary Oscar was presented by former co-star Cary Grant for his 50 years of memorable performances, for his high ideals both on and off the screen, with respect and affection of his colleagues. In addition, Stewart received the highest civilian award in the US, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his contributions in the fields of the arts, entertainment and public service, in 1985. Stewart's wife Gloria died of lung cancer on the 16th of February 1994, aged 75. According to biographer Donald Dewey, her death left Stewart depressed and lost at sea. Stewart became even more reclusive, spending most of his time at home until his death on the 2nd of July 1997.