Jimmy Stewart, one of my favorite actors, would have turned 100 years old today. I didn’t even realize it until I got home from work, flipped through the TV listings, saw that Turner Classic Movies was airing Jimmy Stewart movies all day, wondered why, and checked to see if it was his birthday.
Stewart is best known these days for Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life, but he also starred in two of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movies — Rear Window and Vertigo (as well as the less celebrated Rope). Hitchcock famously cast him against type; in Rear Window and Vertigo, Stewart departs from his innocent, aw-shucks persona to play obsessive characters whose fixation verges on creepiness.
Stewart died in July 1997. I remember learning that he had died. Here’s his New York Times obituary.
R.I.P., Jimmy Stewart.
I loved Rear Window; the remake sucks. Didn’t he also have a “friend” named Harvey?
I remember when he died too. I was home from college for the summer, and somehow I had missed hearing it on the news. My boyfriends mom mentioned it casually in passing and when I freaked and started to cry it scared her. He is my favorite actor, probably of all time. I love that old Campbell’s Soup commercial he did, in the 80’s I think.
I personally enjoyed his performance as Charles Lindberg in “The Spirit of St. Louis” That movie showed what a feat it was to cross the Atlantic and how it was a milestone in human history comparable to circumnavigating the globe and landing a man on the moon.