Jimmy Stewart's WWII Service Explored in New Film 'JIMMY'

Before Jimmy Stewart became George Bailey, he kept a wartime flight log.

In it, according to his daughter Kelly Stewart-Harcourt, the actor and World War II pilot recorded his missions and marked the aircraft that did not return. The detail stayed with her because Stewart, remembered by generations for It’s a Wonderful Life, rarely spoke at home about the war.

“He hated it when planes didn’t come back, when he lost men,” Stewart-Harcourt told Military.com in an exclusive interview.

That quiet burden is at the center of JIMMY, a new film directed by Aaron Burns and starring KJ Apa as Stewart. The movie follows the actor from his Academy Award win for The Philadelphia Story to his enlistment in the U.S. Army Air Corps, combat service over Europe, and return to Hollywood before making It’s a Wonderful Life. The film opens nationwide Nov. 6, ahead of Veterans Day.

For Burns, the story began with his own surprise.

The director said he grew up watching Stewart’s films, from It’s a Wonderful Life to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. But he said he didn't understand the depth of Stewart’s military record until he read an article Stewart had written about the making of It’s a Wonderful Life.

“I got back from the war, and I was like, 'Wait, hold on. Jim Stewart’s in war?'" Burns said. “He didn’t just wear a uniform for some publicity photos.”

Entertaining Before Serving

Stewart was already one of Hollywood’s biggest names when he entered the service.

In February 1941, he won the "Best Actor" Academy Award for The Philadelphia Story. Stewart-Harcourt said he signed up the next month.

“So, right after all [the] recognition for his career as an actor, he signed up,” she said.

The choice was not a foregone conclusion. Burns said MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer had helped get Stewart’s draft notice canceled, but Stewart wanted to enlist anyway.

When Stewart first tried to enter the service, he was rejected for being underweight, Burns said. Stewart gained enough weight to qualify and entered before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

“He was fighting to fight,” Stewart-Harcourt told Military.com, adding that there was “a lot of resistance” from the studio because executives did not want him to be killed.

Stewart’s military life did not begin as a symbolic assignment for a famous actor. Burns said the military initially placed a “static hold order” on Stewart’s file to keep him stateside because of his value to public morale. Stewart, already a licensed pilot before the war, pushed to serve overseas.

According to Burns, Stewart made a simple argument: “Why can’t I serve my country like everybody else can?”

The film explores that insistence as part of a larger family story. Stewart came from a line of men who had served, Burns said, including relatives connected to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World War I. Stewart-Harcourt said her father’s relationship with his own father also shaped his desire to serve.

One of the revelations in Stewart’s wartime diary, she said, was how much his father’s approval mattered.

“A big reason that he did active service was to make his father proud of him,” Stewart-Harcourt said.

That diary became part of the new film’s emotional foundation. After Stewart died, according to Stewart-Harcourt, her sister Judy found a diary he had kept during the war in a drawer by his bed. The family also found the flight log where he tracked missions and losses.

“He talked about his fear during the war,” Stewart-Harcourt said. “He hated it when planes didn’t come back.”

One phrase from the diary stayed with her.

“He refers to this ‘dirty, stinking war,’” she said.

Unanswered Questions

The diary also raised questions she still cannot answer.

Stewart rarely discussed the war with his children, she said. Her mother told them he continued to have nightmares after the war, even in the 1950s after the twins were born.

“I always wonder, why did he keep it next to his bed?” Stewart-Harcourt said of the diary. “Did he read it? Or did he want us to find it?”

Stewart flew 20 combat missions over Europe during World War II, according to the film’s press materials, and rose through the ranks during his service. He later reached the rank of brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve. But Stewart-Harcourt said her father was careful about how the public understood that part of his life.

Channeling the Man Himself

Stewart's history, both in entertainment and war and in his own private thoughts, made Stewart-Harcourt cautious when the filmmakers first approached the family.

“Dad always wanted to keep his Hollywood life separate from his military service,” she said. “He didn’t want his military service to get any glitz on it.”

She questioned whether the family should be involved with a movie that, by its nature, would combine the two. Ultimately, she said she gave the project her blessing because the story felt honest.

“It doesn’t turn war into a game,” Stewart-Harcourt said. “It doesn’t turn it into a big adventure story. It’s true.”

Burns said the filmmakers did not want to move forward without learning whether Stewart’s family wanted to be involved. Stewart-Harcourt, an executive producer on the film, helped shape the treatment, reviewed the script, and shared details about her father’s life that could not be found in standard research.

She also visited the set in Ireland—where much of the film was shot—to stand in for 1940s England.

There, she saw Apa portray her father for the first time. Both Burns and Stewart-Harcourt said the challenge was to avoid making the performance an impersonation. Stewart’s voice and mannerisms have been imitated for decades by comedians, which was something Stewart-Harcourt was well aware of.

“You don’t want to sit there and watch a Jimmy Stewart impersonation for an hour and a half,” she said. “And KJ doesn’t do that. He channels Dad without doing an impersonation.”

Burns said Apa studied Stewart’s dialect, speech patterns and physical presence, and also lost weight to better match Stewart’s famously thin frame during the period depicted in the film. But the director said he was more interested in finding an actor who could capture Stewart’s “heart” than simply copy his voice.

On set, Stewart-Harcourt said, the performance landed.

“He makes a damn fine dad,” she recalled saying.

Making the Final Cut

For Burns, some of the film’s most affecting moments came through the military details.

He said members of the active-duty U.S. Air Force Band volunteered to travel from Germany to the film’s Ireland set for a scene staged as a 1940s Christmas concert for troops. The scene included a performance of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

Burns said the moment hit him because the scene carried the knowledge that many of the airmen portrayed in the film would soon return to combat.

“Tomorrow, these boys are getting back in those planes and half of them aren’t gonna make it back,” he said.

The film eventually follows Stewart back to Hollywood and into It’s a Wonderful Life. Stewart-Harcourt said her father returned from the war unsure of what he was.

“He returned without a job,” she said. “He said, ‘I don’t know if I’m an out-of-work pilot or if I’m an out-of-work actor. I don’t know how to think of myself. All I know is that I’m out of work.’”

That uncertainty gives new weight to the film’s use of It’s a Wonderful Life, a movie now treated as holiday comfort viewing but rooted in despair, financial ruin, and a man on the edge.

Stewart-Harcourt said she has watched the movie many times and still finds something new in it. For her, the scene in Martini’s bar, where George Bailey prays at the end of his rope, remains the most powerful.

“Nothing says desperation like that scene,” she said. “And I wonder if he could have done that without the war.”

She said Stewart came home “a changed, darker person,” and that his acting changed along with him. So did the movies being made after the war, she said, as American audiences moved away from some of the lighter pre-war rhythms.

'Dad is Still Alive'

JIMMY will open nationwide through Fathom Entertainment on Nov. 6, close to Veterans Day. Burns said that timing was deliberate.

The film is also connected to a Vet Tix campaign after Papaian Studios and Commerce Casino presented the veteran-led nonprofit with nearly $1 million to help active-duty military members, veterans and their families see the film in theaters.

Burns said the release window and veteran outreach were tied to Stewart-Harcourt’s view of her father’s legacy.

“She said that’s what her dad was the most proud of, was his military service,” Burns said.

For military audiences, Burns said he hopes the film shows respect for what service members and their families have sacrificed. He also hopes Stewart’s story offers something beyond a historical tribute.

“My prayer is that you find hope for yourself as well as you see Jimmy’s journey,” Burns said.

Stewart-Harcourt described the film as a story about courage, fear and redemption, saying she wants viewers to leave feeling hopeful—not because the film ignores what Stewart endured, but because it shows him continuing after it.

She also hopes it introduces younger audiences to a side of her father they may not know. Stewart is still widely remembered as George Bailey, Jefferson Smith or the tall, gentle presence in decades of Hollywood classics.

But to his daughter, the military service he rarely discussed remained central to who he was. Before he was a Christmas movie icon, Stewart was a pilot who wrote about fear, counted planes and crossed out the ones that did not come back.

And although he tried to keep Hollywood and military service apart, Stewart-Harcourt said she believes the film honors both without cheapening either.

“It was a part of his life he was most proud of,” she said.

At the end of her interview, Stewart-Harcourt turned back to her father’s fans—the public she said he saw as a kind of partner.

She said she never saw him refuse an autograph, recalling one instance of watching him sign for every person waiting outside in the rain after a performance of Harvey in New York.

For her family, that connection still matters.

“Dad is still alive,” she said. “They keep him alive.”