Jimmy tells James Stewart's war story, which started before America was in the war

Jimmy, the James Stewart biopic starring KJ Apa, opens on November 6, and it already has the approval that matters most to a family story. Kelly Stewart-Harcourt, the actor's daughter, told Entertainment Weekly that seeing Apa in character on set in Ireland, where she filmed a cameo, was "eerie". What pleased her, she said, was that he does not do an impersonation. Her father had such a distinctive way of speaking that it is hard not to, but Apa channels him instead, and she cannot see how anyone better could have been found.

The film's own summary of Stewart's story is simpler than the record, and the gap is where the interesting part of his war is.

The war began earlier, and the combat came later

Deadline describes Jimmy as the story of Stewart enlisting as a combat pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force "at the beginning of World War II", fresh off his Oscar win for The Philadelphia Story. His service record, as set out on Wikipedia, runs differently:

• November 1940: Stewart is rejected for being underweight.
• February 1941: he enlists.
• March 22, 1941: he reports for induction as a private in the Air Corps. The United States is not yet at war; Pearl Harbor is still nearly nine months away.
• January 1, 1942: commissioned as a second lieutenant. At almost 33, he was over the age limit for aviation cadet training and applied for a commission as a college graduate and licensed commercial pilot.
• 1942 to 1943: more than a year training pilots at Kirtland Army Airfield in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
• November 1943: after appealing to his commander, he is sent to England with the 703d Bomb Squadron to fly B-24 Liberators.

So Stewart did not go straight from the Oscars into combat. He was in uniform before America entered the war, and he spent its first two years at home, much of it teaching other men to fly. He was worried, according to Wikipedia, that his fame would keep him behind the lines.

What he did once he got there

From England, he flew from RAF Tibenham and later RAF Old Buckenham. He was promoted to major after a mission to Ludwigshafen, Germany, on January 7, 1944. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions as deputy commander of the 2nd Bombardment Wing, the French Croix de Guerre with palm, and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. On March 29, 1945, he became a full colonel, one of the few Americans to rise from private to colonel in only four years.

Before any of that, the Army used him as a star. He appeared on network radio, and in a recruiting short, Winning Your Wings, which was nominated for an Academy Award and drew 150,000 new recruits. Wikipedia calls him the first major American movie star to enlist in the Army to fight in the war.

The Oscar he was "fresh off"

The Philadelphia Story won Stewart his only competitive Academy Award, for Best Actor. Stewart himself thought his performance in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the year before was better, and believed the Academy was making up for not rewarding it. His Philadelphia Story part was also, by Wikipedia's account, a supporting role rather than the male lead. He gave the statuette to his father, who displayed it in the family hardware store.

Where the film ends

Written by Justin Strawhand and directed by Aaron Burns, Jimmy follows Stewart through the war and home again, to the role of George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. Apa said that film was his main source: after reading the script, he put it on and studied it, and called it "a little ahead of its time". His aim, he said, was an honest performance rather than an impressionistic one, an interpretation with something happening behind it.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946) was the first postwar film for both Stewart and Frank Capra. It earned five Oscar nominations, including Stewart's third for Best Actor, but received mixed reviews and failed to cover its production costs. Its reputation as a classic came decades later.

• Title: Jimmy.
• Star: KJ Apa as James Stewart.
• Director: Aaron Burns.
• Writer: Justin Strawhand.
• Shot in: Ireland.
• Release: November 6, 2026. IMDb lists it as PG-13, at about two hours.

The part of the story the film stops before

Stewart's service did not end in 1945. He stayed in the reserves, transferred to the Air Force Reserve after 1947, and trained on the B-47 and B-52. He was promoted to brigadier general on July 23, 1959, the highest rank of any actor in American military history, flew as an observer on a B-52 mission over Vietnam in February 1966, and retired in 1968. He rarely spoke about the war.

What is still unknown

• How the film handles 1941 and 1942. The pre-war enlistment and the year at Kirtland are not mentioned in its synopsis.
• The distribution plan and how wide the November release will be.
• Who else is in the cast. The coverage so far names only Apa and Stewart-Harcourt's cameo.

Jimmy's synopsis goes from an Oscar to the cockpit to George Bailey. The real Stewart spent more than two and a half years in uniform before he reached the war, more than a year of it training other pilots in New Mexico.