Speaker 1: Something you should go Something you should know is brought
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Speaker 1: should know. You could put your retirement plan on the
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Speaker 1: dot com. What do you know about this amy year?
Speaker 1: You can't flip through the channels without coming across a
Speaker 1: little movie called It's a Wonderful Life. We actually just
Speaker 1: watched it on Amazon Prime for the first time in
Speaker 1: my life. I watched it in color. This movie stars
Speaker 1: a guy by the name of Jimmy Stewart. Now here's
Speaker 1: the wonderful story that you might not know about It's
Speaker 1: a Wonderful Life. Just a few months after winning his
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one Academy Award for Best Actor in a
Speaker 1: movie called The Philadelphia Story, Jimmy Stewart, one of the
Speaker 1: best known actors of the day, left Hollywood and he
Speaker 1: joined the US Army. He was the first big name
Speaker 1: movie star to enlist in World War Two. Now he
Speaker 1: was an accomplished private pilot. He was thirty three years
Speaker 1: old at the time, and he became a US Army
Speaker 1: Air Force aviator. He earned his second lieutenant commission in
Speaker 1: early nineteen forty two. With his huge celebrity status and
Speaker 1: huge popularity with the American public, he was assigned to
Speaker 1: star in recruitment films and go out on AT ten
Speaker 1: rallies and train younger pilots. But Jimmy Stewart didn't want
Speaker 1: to do that. He wanted to fly combat missions in Europe,
Speaker 1: not spend his time stateside.
Speaker 2: I'm shaking the dust of this crummy little town off
Speaker 2: my feet, and I'm going to see the world.
Speaker 1: By nineteen forty four, frustrated and feeling the war was
Speaker 1: passing him by, he asked his commanding officer to transfer
Speaker 1: him to a unit deployed to Europe. His request was granted, Hey,
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. Stuart, now a captain, was sent to England,
Speaker 1: where he spent the next eighteen months flying B twenty
Speaker 1: four Liberator bombers over Germany. Throughout his time overseas, the
Speaker 1: US Air Corps top brass tried to keep the popular
Speaker 1: movie star from flying over enemy territory, but Stuart would
Speaker 1: hear nothing of it. Determined to lead by example, he
Speaker 1: bucked the system and assigned himself to every combat mission
Speaker 1: he could. By the end of the war, he was
Speaker 1: one of the most respected and most decorated pilots in
Speaker 1: his but his wartime service came at a high personal price.
Speaker 1: In the final months of World War II, he was
Speaker 1: grounded for being what's called flack happy. Today we call
Speaker 1: it post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. So when he
Speaker 1: returned to the United States in August of nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart was a changed man. He'd lost so much weight,
Speaker 1: he looked sickly. He rarely slept, and when he did,
Speaker 1: he had nightmares of planes exploding and men falling through
Speaker 1: the air screaming. In one mission alone, he'd lost thirteen
Speaker 1: planes and one hundred and thirty men, most of whom
Speaker 1: he knew. Personally, Jimmy Stewart was depressed. He couldn't focus.
Speaker 1: He refused to talk to anyone about his experiences in
Speaker 1: the war. His acting career was all but over. One
Speaker 1: of Stewart's biographers put it this way. Every decision he
Speaker 1: made during the war was going to preserve life or
Speaker 1: cost life. He took back to Hollywood all the stresses
Speaker 1: he had built up, so in nineteen forty six, he
Speaker 1: got his big break. He took the role as George Bailey,
Speaker 1: the suicidal father in a little movie called It's a
Speaker 1: Wonderful Life. The rest, as they say, is history.
Speaker 2: Alone.
Speaker 1: But what you may not know is actors and crew
Speaker 1: on the set realized that in many of the disturbing
Speaker 1: scenes George Bailey unraveling in front of his family or
Speaker 1: at the bar, Stuart wasn't acting. His PTSD was captured
Speaker 1: on film I'm not a man if europe player and
Speaker 1: you can hear me.
Speaker 2: Going at the end of my rope.
Speaker 1: Despite Stuart's inner turmoil, making the movie was therapeutic for
Speaker 1: the combat veteran. He would go on to become one
Speaker 1: of the most accomplished and loved actors in American history.
Speaker 1: When asked in nineteen forty one why he wanted to
Speaker 1: leave his acting career to fly combat missions over Nazi Germany,
Speaker 1: he said, this country's conscious is bigger than all of
Speaker 1: the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will
Speaker 1: come when we'll have to fight while fighting in Europe.
Speaker 1: Stuart's Oscar statue was proudly displayed in his father's Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: hardware store. Throughout his life, the beloved actor always said
Speaker 1: his father, a World War One veteran, was the person
Speaker 1: who had made the biggest impact on him.
Speaker 2: To my big brother George, the richest man in town.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, and sadly, we lost Jimmy Stewart in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven at the age of eighty nine. So
Speaker 1: as you flipped through the channels this long holiday weekend,
Speaker 1: you'll probably see a little movie called It's a Wonderful Life.
Speaker 2: I dun run. That's right, whether.
Speaker 1: You watch it or not. That's right, in black and
Speaker 1: white or.
Speaker 2: In color a white clay.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll remember the wonderful man who made a sacrifice,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Stewart, and all of the men and women who
Speaker 1: gave up so much to serve their country, many of
Speaker 1: whom are serving right now, and they're missing Christmas with
Speaker 1: their family. To each and every one of them, and
Speaker 1: to you, Merry Christmas from Sunny RADI.
Speaker 2: Hey is something you should know.
Speaker 1: Something you should know is brought to you by Genesis.
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