James Stewart flew twenty combat missions over Nazi Germany as a B-24 bomber pilot, earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, and came home to Hollywood a changed man. The aw-shucks small-town persona that defined his prewar career gave way to something darker — Vertigo, Rear Window, and the Westerns with Anthony Mann revealed a rage and psychological complexity that the nice-guy image had concealed. Stewart was two actors in one career.

This episode traces Stewart from his Pennsylvania hardware store family through the prewar classics, the genuine combat heroism, and the postwar reinvention that produced some of the most psychologically complex performances in American cinema.

• Stewart’s small-town upbringing and the early films that made him America’s favorite everyman
• Twenty combat missions over Germany and the Distinguished Flying Cross
• The postwar darkness — Vertigo, Rear Window, and the Anthony Mann Westerns that redefined his image
• The private man behind the public persona and the combat trauma he never discussed