While May 20th is Jimmy Stewart's birthday, it was also my grandmother birthday. He was born in 1908 (8 years younger than my grandmother). Young Jimmy played the accordion, was in the glee club and choir, and played on the football and track teams. He also enjoyed mechanical drawing and assembling model airplanes, and went on to graduate from Princeton University with a degree in architecture in 1932. His father was a hardware store owner in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Stewart’s Academy Award Oscar stood in the window of his father’s hardware store for 25 years for his role of Macaulay Connor in The Philadelphia Story (1940).
Of course, one the the most humorous Jimmy Stewart imitation is done my Dana Carvey. Of course there's the Carvey's revised ending of It's A Wonderful Life which is a real wheezer, but one of my favorite was Carvey doing Stewart on Mike Myers' Sprockets - reading his poem, Old Rocking Chair. Excerpt:
Dieter: Mr. Shtewart. Critic Graus Greck, in the latest issue of "Verdkunst," described your book as an asylum, vhere man meets his Creator and screams.
Jimmy Stewart: Well, uh, thank you, Dieter. That's, uh... Y'know--y'know, Gloria and I are big fans of YOURS.
Dieter: In your poem, "Old Rocking Chair," you write: "You sit in the corner/Old rocking chair/It makes me feel good/To know you are there."
Jimmy Stewart: Yeah...
Dieter: I feel emotionally obliterated.
Jimmy Stewart: I'm glad--glad--glad to HEAR that, y'see, good poetry is about DESTRUCTION.
Dieter: Under vhat conditions does a man experience such raw truth?
Jimmy Stewart: Well, Dieter, it's no picnic, I can tell you that right now. I was holed up in a Mexico City slum. I hadn't eaten in weeks, and what few pesos I had, I'd spent on alcohol. Some cheap crap called chocho. I was down and out. That's when I wrote "Good Old Rockin' Chair." You see, you've gotta go through the PAIN.
Then there's what I call Jimmy Stewart's imitation of Jimmy Stewart in 1981 reading some poetry he wrote on the Johnny Carson show. Be sure to check out this great clip of Jimmy on What's My Line? in 1963.
Happy Birthday, Jimmy! Oh - and grandma, too!
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