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Brigadier General James Stewart

James Stewart with members of the 389th Bomb Group in Norfolk.

1908-1997

Many people think of James Stewart more as the pilot of the Spirit of St. Louis or the flying wreck of Flight of the Phoenix than an Eighth Air Force Liberator. One of America's most beloved actors, Stewart today is less movie star than cultural icon, a gracefully aged embodiment of values and traditions our nation holds dear, as we are continually reminded by endless broadcasts of his best-remembered film, It's a Wonderful Life The tall, gangly, soft-spoken youth who endeared himself to moviegoers by virtue of his appealing diffidence, boyish earnestness, and innate kindness is the Stewart most film lovers cherish, although he certainly proved that he was much more, especially in his films of the 1950s and 1960s.

In his youth Stewart aspired to be an architect, and he applied himself to that goal during his stay at Princeton, but in 1932 fellow classmate Joshua Logan convinced him to join the newly formed University Players group in Massachusetts, where he first met Henry Fonda (who was to become a lifelong friend) and Margaret Sullavan, among others. Stewart was already a Broadway veteran when Hollywood beckoned in 1935. He made his MGM debut in a short subject, and then appeared in his first feature film.

In You Can't Take It With You, that year's Academy Award winner for Best Picture, third-billed behind Jean Arthur and Lionel Barrymore, Stewart began his fruitful association with director Frank Capra, who saw in Stewart's shy, stammering, sincere screen character the ideal incarnation of his American Everyman. Capra played on that persona by casting Stewart as the idealistic young senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a box-office blockbuster that earned the actor his first Academy Award nomination. He followed it up that same year with a well-remembered turn as the seemingly gun-shy sheriff in Destry Rides Again. It's interesting to speculate what might have happened to his career if World War II hadn't intervened.

Brigadier General James Stewart joined the Army in 1941 as a private, and was commissioned in 1942. He completed basic and advanced flight training and then instructed in AT-9s at Mather Field, California. He was a pilot in Bombardier Training School at Kirtland for six months before being transferred to Hobbs for four-engine training. An instructor on B-17s, he went to Gowen Field, stayed there for nine months, and was then made squadron commander of the 703rd Squadron of the 445th Bomb Group at Sioux City.

I put the B-24 to a severe test one night in Iowa: I was making a landing in a thunderstorm and, between lots of lightning and some bad judgment on my part, I flew the poor bird into the ground at 120 miles an hour. The nose wheel gave way and was never found again, but, other than that, she just bounced and settled down with a groan. I remember the B-24 very well and, although it came out of the war with a rather questionable reputation for some reason I think most of those who flew the airplane have a very soft spot in their hearts for the machine. I learned four-engine operation in the B-17. But while I was instructing in that airplane the change was suddenly made to the B-24; the transition didn't seem at all difficult, which speaks well for the bird. In combat, the airplane was no match for the B-17 as a formation bomber above 25,000 feet, but, from 12,000 to, 18,000 feet the airplane did a fine job.

In the fall of 1943 the 445th moved to Tibenham, in East Anglia, as part of the 8th Air Force. In all, General Stewart is credited with twenty combat missions, all as command pilot. He led the 2nd Combat Wing - the 389th, 445th and 453rd groups - to Berlin on March 22, 1944. Early in 1944 he transferred to the 453rd Bomb Group, one of the 445th's two sisters, as group operations officer. He returned to the States as a full Colonel in 1945.

He returned to Hollywood in 1946, teaming up once again with Frank Capra for It's a Wonderful Life As George Bailey, the small-town dreamer who reaches rock bottom-the literal depths of despair-before learning how many lives he's touched, Stewart delivered what may be his best performance, and picked up another Oscar nomination. No longer the gawky, stammering youth, he tried a wide variety of roles over the next several decades, adapting himself to the more naturalistic screen style of the post-WWII era. He played a crusading reporter, an intellectual detective (of sorts) directed by Alfred Hitchcock, who generally used Stewart's talents wisely, a disabled ballplayer in The Stratton Story, and an ex-Cavalry officer.

Stewart adopted a lighter, breezier tone for his portrayal of kindly, eccentric Elwood P. Dowd, a man befriended (so he says) by a six-foot-tall white rabbit in Harvey. He'd had plenty of practice in the role, having played it for a brief time on Broadway; he snagged another, much deserved Academy Award nomination for his delightful performance. But then it was on to sterner stuff. The 1950s saw Stewart in several extremely tough Westerns, occasionally showing a harshness hitherto unsuspected by his fans. Stewart negotiated an unprecedented contract with Universal that would entitle him to a cut of his films' profits. Stewart didn't confine his efforts to Westerns in this decade. He had a memorable role as a mercy-killing doctor who hides with a circus and worked for Hitchcock in three of the director's best 1950s films. He also played the famous swing-era bandleader in The Glenn Miller Story, and finished out the decade with a masterful turn as a cagey country lawyer for the defense in a sensational trial in Anatomy of a Murder, a characterization for which he was again Oscar-nominated.

As the 1960s progressed, he fell back on his well-established persona to carry him through uninspired, undistinguished films. Two meritorious exceptions: Flight of the Phoenix, which starred him as a pilot struggling to save his passengers after a crash in the Arabian desert, and The Shootist, which gave him a small but juicy supporting role as the doctor who tells aging gunfighter John Wayne that he's terminally ill.

The Last Mission

After he was discharged from the Army Air Forces on September 29, 1945, Stewart was immediately appointed to colonel in the U.S. Army Air Forces Reserve. He was promoted to brigadier general in 1959 and retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserve in 1968. But, before retiring, the decorated officer had one last mission:

After Stewart's death in 1997, Air Power History published a memoriam that included this little-known item: "In 1966, during his annual two weeks of active duty, Stewart requested a combat assignment and participated in a bombing strike over Vietnam. Stewart's stepson, 1st Lt. Ronald McLean, was killed at age 24 in the Vietnam War.

In his World War II years, Stewart flew 20 combat missions, among them the tough ones: Brunswick, Bremen, Frankfurt, Schweinfurt and Berlin. His wartime decorations included the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, four Air Medals, and the French Croix de Guerre with Palm.

With myriad honors of a celebrated and eclectic career, including the highest in his profession, the Academy Award, it is not hard to believe that Jimmy Stewart reached the best time of his life in those eventful and dangerous years of World War II.

A Daughter's Tribute

My father's experiences during World War II affected him more deeply and permanently than anything else in his life. Yet his children grew up knowing almost nothing about those years. Dad never talked about the war. My siblings and I knew only that he had been a pilot, and that he had won some medals, but that he didn't see himself as a hero. He saw only that he had done his duty.

Starr Smith's book has opened a door for me into this part of my father's life. Mr. Smith conveys with great skill what it meant to fly in the Eighth Air Force during the war; to be Operations Officer of a Bomb Group; what was involved, for example, in the planning and execution of missions. Above all, Mr. Smith, who worked with my father during that time, shows us what he was like as an individual in his role of pilot and leader. I know the war held terrible memories for my father, as it must for anyone who lived through that combat. But he was also deeply proud to have served his country. He would feel honored by this book.

Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot Starr Smith, with foreword by Walter Cronkite. Of all the celebrities who served their country during World War II - and they were legion - Jimmy Stewart was unique. On December 7th, when the attack on Pearl Harbor woke so many others to the reality of the war, Stewart was already serving-as a private on guard duty at the Army Air Corp's Moffet Field south of San Francisco. Seeing war on the horizon, Jimmy Stewart, at the height of his fame after Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, had enlisted several months earlier. Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot chronicles the star's long journey to become a bomber pilot in combat. Author Starr Smith recounts how Stewart's first battles were with the Air Corps high command, who insisted on keeping the naturally talented pilot out of harm's way as an instructor pilot for B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators. We learn how, by 1944, Stewart managed to get assigned to a Liberator squadron that was deploying to England to join the mighty Eighth Air Force - and how, once in the thick of it, he rose to command his own squadron and flew twenty combat missions, including one to Berlin. Written by a public relations officer assigned to Stewart, Jimmy Stewart, Bomber Pilot offers a fascinating, firsthand look at the making of a true American star.

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