When America’s Favorite Star Traded Hollywood For The Skies Of World War II

Director Aaron Burns didn’t know screen legend Jimmy Stewart served in World War II.

He’s not alone. Audiences revere Stewart for classics like “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Philadelphia Story,” and “Vertigo.” Over time, his patriotic service took a back seat to his Hollywood legacy.

Not anymore.

Burns’s November 6 film, “Jimmy,” casts KJ Apa as the actor who traded stardom for military service during World War II. The biopic also features Jason Alexander, comic actor Rob Riggle, Neal McDonough, and Christopher McDonald (“Happy Gilmore”).

Stewart could have found a way out of combat duty given his Hollywood ties. He initially considered it before joining the fight against the Axis powers, setting the fact-based story in motion.

“The thought that someone would go and do that is in some ways foreign to our culture today,” Burns says of the actor’s sacrifice. “I feel like Jimmy approached the mess that the world was in a very unique way … raising his hand and saying, ‘I’ll serve.’”

Burns, a Christian filmmaker (“Legacy Peak,” “Birthright Outlaw”), took a page out of another director’s playbook to bring “Jimmy” to life.

“My producer made cups for us emblazoned with ‘What Would Capra Do?’” Burns tells The Daily Wire. Frank Capra’s films captured the soul of America, including his collaborations with Stewart on “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

“We wanted to make this movie almost as if it could have been the last film Frank and Jimmy made together,” Burns says, from the project’s approach to physical comedy to camera blocking and lens selection.

“Frank does such a good job of pulling your heartstrings,” Burns says of Capra, played on screen by Max Casella.

The real Stewart later told the press why he decided to serve, a decision made shortly after earning a Best Actor Oscar for 1940’s “The Philadelphia Story” opposite Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn.

“’Is patriotism too corny of an answer to you? I love my country,’” Burns recalls Stewart’s response. It helped that the actor came from “a long line of patriots” who also defended their country. McDonough (“Tulsa King,” “Band of Brothers”) plays the elder Stewart in the film.

“He was raised with what we call ‘old-fashioned American values,’” Burns says. “He understood what it meant to be an American.”

It’s ironic that Apa, a New Zealand native, got the coveted lead role.

“I needed someone to embrace the spirit of Jimmy and have the same heart,” says Burns of Apa, whom he first auditioned via Zoom. “He had the courage and guts and heart to go after portraying Jimmy and also embodying him.”

The 29-year-old actor, best known for his work on “Riverdale,” watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” 50 times to get the actor’s voice and mannerisms just right.

“I spent very little time coaching him how to be Jimmy,” Burns says.

Stewart lived a wonderful Hollywood life, working through the decades and remaining in the nation’s good graces. Burns & co. could have focused on many aspects of the actor’s career, but he saw Stewart’s military years as a pivot point.

“I was really drawn to this period. This was where all the transformation occurs,” he says of his subject. “It’s a young man dealing with the greatest struggles and trauma he’s ever gonna have.” Part of the film captures how Stewart was haunted by the men lost under his command.

“The Jimmy you meet for the rest of his life is George Bailey,” he says of Stewart’s tormented character from “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

Burns had some help in recreating the early 1940s for today’s audiences.

“It’s 800 people working on this for years,” he says of the expansive production. That includes coordinating with the U.S. Air Force’s entertainment office. That connection led to active-duty military musicians who flew to the set to perform the film’s musical moments.

The director also consulted with Kelly Stewart, the star’s daughter.

“You can see in her eyes, her shoulders, this is definitely Jimmy’s daughter,” says Burns of Stewart, who served as an executive producer on the project. She proved instrumental to the film on several levels, including giving the creative team access to her father’s military journal.

“Her dad never talked about the war,” she says, but after his death in 1997, she found that journal in his nightstand.

“She was able to share stories from that with us,” he says, tales of the star wrestling with his decision to go to war. The pages also showed him fearing soldiers wouldn’t accept him as a fellow warrior.

Kelly Stewart helped the production in another, consequential manner. She gave Apa her official stamp of approval.

“If Kelly loves him …what more can I say?”

Burns threw himself into the project, attending a May 20 birthday party for the late star at his self-titled museum in his Indiana, Pennsylvania hometown. (He was born in 1908) The director sat at the same booth from Chasen’s, the Los Angeles restaurant where the star and his family ate together over the years. The booth is part of the museum’s permanent collection.

“It’s so fun to feel the layers of history and time melt away,” he says, reminding him that the Hollywood icon was, at the end of the day, just a dad and husband.

Burns is in pre-production on “The Mythmakers,” an animated feature about J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, based on the graphic novel by John Hendrix. For now, he hopes audiences who line up for his current film “see a little bit of themselves in Jimmy’s journey.”

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Christian Toto is an award-winning journalist, movie critic and editor of HollywoodInToto.com. He previously served as associate editor with Breitbart News’ Big Hollywood. He’s also the host of The Hollywood in Toto Podcast. Follow him at @HollywoodInToto. 

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