IT’S A WONDERFUL STORY – THE PARALLEL LIVES OF GEORGE AND JAMES (JIMMY) STEWART

For many people It’s a Wonderful Life is the Christmas movie. George R. Stewart fans will be interested to know that George R. Stewart – and another Stewart – spent their boyhoods in a town that was one of the inspirations for “Bedford Falls.”

George R. Stewart was raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where his mother’s family lived. His maternal grandfather, Andrew Wilson, planned to be a teacher and even helped found a school nearby (which would eventually become the prestigious Kiski School). But he couldn’t earn enough to support his family so he went into the mercantile business. He had a hand in a hardware store owned by another Stewart. That Stewart’s son was James Stewart, who was also raised in Indiana, PA.

George and Jimmy bore a remarkable resemblance to each other. With all their similarities in family history, geography, and physiology, you’d expect they were related. But they shared only one possible distant relative, and lived in different worlds of the town. The George Stewart family went to the middle-class Presbyterian church on the flats; Jimmy Stewart and his parents attended the upper-class Presbyterian church on the hill. GRS went to a public high school out west, Jimmy to a prestigious private school in the east.

Still, the two young Stewarts’ lives paralleled in remarkable ways. GRS and his family moved to Pasadena; he went to Princeton; and after marriage, moved his family to Berkeley, California. Jimmy Stewart also went to Princeton and also moved to Pasadena; then spent his life in Southern California. GRS wrote books, two of which were filmed. Jimmy made films, like the beloved Christmas classic. GRS worked as an consultant to Walt Disney at the Disney studios for a time. Jimmy worked at many studios, creating that characters and stories that touch the hearts of millions.

Their paths apparently never crossed. GRS and his family left Indiana for California when he was 12, in 1905 – the year James Stewart was born. Out West, nothing in their interests or their work brought them together. Since the film we now consider a classic failed in its initial run, it is unlikely GRS would have seen it. (For one thing, GRS didn’t like the mass media and rarely if ever attended movies.)

Yet in the Christmas season we should remember there is one thing they shared – which, thanks to Capra’s film, we share with them: The experience of life in a small Midwestern American town in the early 20th century. For a time, we can walk the streets and meet the people of the town in an earlier time.

From my book (paraphrased and edited):

“George R. Stewart’s boyhood town was so archetypically American that it could pass for George Bailey’s “Bedford Falls” in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life. In fact, the town was “Bedford Falls” – at least for the movie’s male star. Indiana, Pennsylvania, was also the boyhood home of James Stewart, who played “George Bailey” in Capra’s film. … Although the movie’s “Bedford Falls” was built on a studio backlot in the San Fernando Valley, Jimmy Stewart said that when he walked onto the set for the first time he almost expected to hear the bells of his home church in Indiana.”

In fact, Producer/Director Frank Capra probably modeled his set on the upstate New York town of Seneca Falls. But for James Stewart, Indiana, Pennsylvania, was the place he held in his heart as he brought George Bailey to life on the set of “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Each year, Indiana, Pennsylvania, holds an It’s a Wonderful Life Festival, with a parade, hot chocolate, tree lighting, and continuous showings of the film at the Jimmy Stewart Museum. The people in warm winter clothing lining the streets bring life to the snow-bound town, just as the movie brings life to “Bedford Falls.”

So when you watch Capra’s film this Christmas please give a thought to the boyhood town of George R. Stewart, Indiana, Pennsylvania, where he celebrated Christmas. A real town that for Jimmy Stewart was the model for Bedford Falls, a fictional town which brings an American Christmas into many hearts.

Merry Christmas!

Categories: Anecdote, Celebrities, Christmas, Humor, Movies, old movies, reblog

Tags: Bedford Falls, George R. Stewart, humor, its a wonderful life, Jimmy Stewart, Marilyn Armstrong, Movies, reblog