James Stewart

He had been linked with numerous actresses during his younger days and did not get married till the age of 41.

He married former model Gloria Hatrick McLean in 1949, and adopted her two sons from a previous marriage as his own. He had biological twin daughters with his wife.

He suffered from many ailments like skin cancer, heart disease and dementia during his later years.

James was born in Pennsylvania as the eldest child of Elizabeth Ruth and Alexander Maitland Stewart, a hardware store owner. He had two younger sisters. He was of Scottish and Irish ancestry.

As a child, he dreamt of getting into aviation but abandoned his dreams to attend Princeton University at his father’s insistence. He excelled in architecture, but gradually his interest shifted towards the school’s music and drama clubs, especially the Princeton's Triangle Club, the school's touring theater troupe.

After graduating form Princeton in 1932, he joined University Players, an intercollegiate summer stock company in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. At University Players he met his future friends, Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan.

Stewart made his debut on a Broadway Comedy ‘Goodbye Again’ as a chauffeur. After getting more important stage roles, he was encouraged by Fonda to take a screen test after which he signed a contract with MGM for up to seven years.

He made his debut with the 1935 film ‘The Murder man’. In spite of the film’s box office failure, Stewart’s acting skills were appreciated. After a series of other small roles, he landed his first substantial role as David Graham in ‘After the Thin Man’ in 1936.

He got his first leading role in ‘Next Time We Love’ in 1936 at the insistence of his old friend Margaret Sullavan who played a big role in getting him established in his acting career.

The year 1938 marked the beginning of a successful partnership with director Frank Capra when Stewart starred in his movie ‘You Can’t Take it with You’.

He acted in the 1940 classic ‘The Philadelphia Story’ with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, directed by George Cukor. In the same year, he acted in a series of screwball comedies.

Stewart’s role as an idealist in Frank Capra’s ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’ in 1939 led to his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

His role as a reporter in George Cukor’s 1940 romantic comedy ‘The Philadelphia Story’ is considered one of his finest performances as it won him the Academy Award for Best Actor.

He considered his first movie after the war, Capra’s ‘It's a Wonderful Life’ (1946) as his personal favorite. The movie was nominated for five Academy Awards.

He starred as an eccentric man with an invisible rabbit as a best friend in the 1950 film ‘Harvey’. The film received many Academy Award nominations.

In the 1959 courtroom crime drama, ‘Anatomy of a Murder’, he played the role of Paul Biegler, a lawyer. The film was rated as one of the 12 best trial films of all time by the American Bar Association in 1989.