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