It's A Wonderful Life

 Just as I do nearly every Christmas, I settled in last night and watched the annual broadcast of Frank Capra's classic movie "It's a Wonderful Life." I just can't help myself. Inevitably, I weep at the end when Clarence, the angel second class, finally gets his wings.

It's a great movie, featuring Jimmy Stewart as everyman George Baily and Donna Reed as his devoted wife Mary. Released in 1946, it's filled with holiday nostalgia and poignant moments of American culture and sensibility that in today's world might be considered both fairly won and achingly lost.

But there's also a terrific backstory to the flick involving Stewart, a Hollywood matinee idol who was Tom Hanks before there was a Tom Hanks. He was that prolific. He was that good, and maybe even better.

And he was a war hero.

Stewart was 33 years old and had just received an Oscar for his role as a reporter in "The Philadelphia Story", which co-starred Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

Then World War II happened. Just weeks after receiving his Oscar, he was drafted into the Army, but was rejected because he was a wispy 138 pounds spread like a wafer over his gangley 6-foot-3 frame. He tried joining again after a dietary regimen of spaghetti, milk shakes and steaks to gain weight, and this time, he was inducted and transferred to the Army Air Force. He'd just received his private pilot's license in the weeks before Pearl Harbor, so flying was perhaps a logical choice.

After spending time as a flying instructor for several months, Stewart was sent to the European Theater. Initially, he was bound to desk work – the Army no doubt didn't want to risk the life of a popular movie star – but Stewart wrangled his way to combat status. The Army relented and by the fall of 1943, Captain Stewart was piloting B-24 Liberators, huge four-engine bombers that each had a crew of 10 men.

The flak damage to Jimmy Stewart's B-24.*

 Most bombers were decorated with risque nose art or bore the names of girl friends. The first Liberator that Stewart flew into combat was a plane his crew inherited, famously named Nine Yanks and a Jerk. 

At any rate, Stewart ended up flying 20 harrowing combat missions over German-occupied territory, none of them easy milk runs, and most of them as a squadron commander responsible for 12 planes and 120 men.

Perhaps his most horrifying moment came on a mission to Furth. Their Liberator was struck by an 88mm antiaircraft (flak) shell just behind the flight deck, but providentially, didn't explode. I can only assume that Clarence, George Baily's guardian angel, rode with Jimmy Stewart that day. There's no other explanation.

Stewart, rattled like the rest of his crew, piloted his crippled plane back to their base in Tibenham, England. After a hard landing, the plane's fuselage buckled, never to fly again.

In an air war where fliers experienced a 77 percent casualty rate – the fabled Eighth Air Force lost 26,000 airmen – Stewart never lost a single man to combat.

Consequently, by the time he was promoted to Lt. Colonel after 20 missions, he'd received the Distinguished Flying Cross with an oak leaf cluster and an Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. He received his first DFC for holding his squadron together following an especially dangerous Big Week mission.

When the war ended, Stewart was uncertain whether or not he wanted to continue making movies, but he found himself on the set of "It's a Wonderful Life." It is said that a conflicted Stewart had discussions – some of them apparently heated – with actor Lionel Barrymore (Mr. Potter) over whether he should continue his career after dropping bombs on people during the war. Barrymore insisted that Stewart continue his acting.

There is some speculation that Stewart was dealing with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) while on the set of the movie. Snopes.com says this is undetermined, but I'm guessing there is some truth to this. The scene where he kisses Mary for the first time is particularly passionate (some editing was required to pass the censors) and his tears were real and unforced.

There are also some scenes where he contemplates suicide and confronting a life that never was that exposed a darker cinematic Stewart that movie goers had never seen before the war. Perhaps he was drawing from his war experience, and perhaps the role was therapeutic for him. I will argue there certainly is more depth to his characters in his post-war films.

At any rate, "It's a Wonderful Life" probably turned out to be the right movie at the right time for Jimmy Stewart. Somehow, I think it works that way for most of the rest of us, too.

•  •  •

Just a sidebar: While researching some of the information for this piece, I found out that Donna Reed – an Oscar winner in her own right for her role as Alma in "From Here to Eternity," died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 65 in 1986. I thought that was sad.

In 1997, Stewart died of a heart attack at the age of 89. Truly, he led a wonderful life.

* Photo by George W. Snook.