And that makes sense. He obviously knew how to deliver lines in a pleasing way that kept the audience’s ears rapt with attention; so it’s only natural that the man would have churned out a few poems in his lifetime.

And, fortunately enough, Stewart had no problems reading his poems on television. Check ‘em out below. They’re funny at points, but mainly just touching. Note that you’re going to have to really crank up the volume on the second one, as the recording is old and poor.

Since we’ve already covered his listing of fictional movies, it’s time to take a look at Stewart’s appearances in documentaries. A good chunk of them were done during the war years, when Stewart was busy fighting for his country in the Second World War, though quite a few others are on other topics.

1938 Hollywood Goes to Town
1939 Hollywood Hobbies
1942 Fellow Americans, Winning Your Wings
1943 Screen Snapshots: Hollywood in Uniform
1946 American Creed
1947 Thunderbolt!
1948 10,000 Kids and a Cop
1954 Tomorrow’s Drivers
1956 Screen Snapshots: Hollywood, City of Stars
1957 The Heart of Show Business
1961 X-15 Narrator
1971 Directed by John Ford
1974 The World at War, Just One More Time, That’s Entertainment!
1994 A Century of Cinema

Does that sound familiar? It should, if you’ve ever watched a Christmas special in your life. It’s one of the last lines in It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Jimmy Stewart, a movie that’s proven itself an absolute classic and oft-repeated movie over the holidays.

It’s a Wonderful Life is the story of George Bailey, a depressed man on Christmas Eve who’s contemplating suicide. Sent to save George is an angel, Clarence, who tries to persuade the angst-ridden George that his life has not been a failure.

To do so Clarence takes George into his own past, where George relives everything he’s done with his life: and in the doing Clarence reveals a sort of rivalry between George and a villainous businessman named Mr. Potter. Potter tries often to develop the area according to his own whims, and George does his best to stop those plans. Usually he does so by making the area a better place to live for its residents, and he succeeds quite nicely.

But on the eve of Christmas everything goes wrong, and Potter sets George up for a financial fall. George, thinking all is lost, tries to kill himself. Then he is stopped by Clarence, and everything is brought back to the start again.

Clarence then takes George into an alternate reality of sorts, one in which George never existed. The area, once bright and lively, is dingy and miserable without George’s positive influence. Having learned this, George begins to feel better about all he’s done.

And, after heading home, his spirits rejuvenated, George learns that his family and friends have covered the financial shortfall. All is saved, and they have a wonderful Christmas together.

Or is he?

It’s hard to tell, really, because Harvey is invisible. And to most people he’s the product of Elwood P. Dowd’s imagination. Dowd, declared by family members and friends alike to be a friendly, cheerful mental case, travels everywhere with his six-foot, three-and-a-half inch companion in tow.

This is the setting for Harvey, a 1950 movie starring Jimmy Stewart as the doubtful Dowd who faces incarceration at a sanitorium for constantly referring to Harvey. His sister tries to have him committed but he manages to slip away with Harvey, and is eventually found at Harvey’s favorite bar - the place they first met.

Once he’s returned to the sanitorium and is threatened with a needle that would make Harvey disappear from his mind, his sister decides it’s not worth it to rob Dowd of his imagination. She calls off the procedure just in time and lets her brother go free.

So is Dowd mad? Possibly; but there are quite a few hints in the movie that Harvey is something more than just a figment of Dowd’s imagination.

Fortunately there’s a place where all is presented for Stewart’s fans. The Jimmy Stewart Museum, found in Indiana, Pennsylvania, details in depth the vagaries of Stewart’s life, telling not only of his acting accomplishments but his civil leadership skills and his prowess as a pilot during World War II and the Vietnam war. Few people know that Stewart was an excellent pilot with not only several medals to back up his skills but, by the year 1959, the rank of Brigadier General.

All this and more can be learned at the Jimmy Stewart Museum. With memorabilia and old films of Stewart, the museum is the best place by far to study the man behind the actor.

His filmography is extensive; there are almost 92 Jimmy Stewart films in total, many of which he starred in as the lead character. Critically acclaimed films the likes of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Harvey, It’s a Wonderful Life and others earned him numerous chances at academy awards; it wasn’t until Philadelphia Story, however, that he managed to snag one of those coveted golden trophies.

His final movie role was in An American Tail: Fievel Goes West in 1991, where he provided the voice of Wylie Burp. And though he died six years later, the legacy of these and many more Jimmy Stewart movies lives on.

Jimmy Stewart Filmography

1991 - An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
1978 - The Magic of Lassie
1978 - The Big Sleep
1977 - Airport ’77
1976 - The Shootist
1970 - The Cheyenne Social Club
1968 - Bandolero!
1965 - The Flight of the Phoenix
1965 - The Rare Breed
1964 - Cheyenne Autumn
1962 - Mr Hobbs Takes a Vacation
1962 - How the West Was Won
1962 - The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
1961 - Two Rode Together
1959 - Anatomy of a Murder
1958 - Vertigo
1957 - Night Passage
1957 - The Spirit of St. Louis
1955 - The Man from Laramie
1955 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
1954 - Rear Window
1954 - The Glenn Miller Story
1954 - The Far Country
1952 - The Greatest Show on Earth
1952 - Bend of the River
1952 - The Naked Spur
1951 - No Highway
1950 - Broken Arrow
1950 - Winchester ’73
1950 - Harvey
1949 - Malaya
1948 - Rope
1948 - Call Northside 777
1947 - Magic Town
1946 - It’s a Wonderful Life
1941 - Ziegfeld Girl
1940 - The Shop Around the Corner
1940 - The Philadelphia Story
1940 - The Mortal Storm
1939 - Destry Rides Again
1939 - Mr Smith Goes to Washington
1938 - You Can’t Take It With You
1938 - Vivacious Lady
1937 - The Last Gangster
1937 - Seventh Heaven
1936 - After the Thin Man
1936 - Born to Dance
1936 - The Gorgeous Hussy