Jimmy Stewart was a wartime pilot who also had an incredible movie career as we look at the Christmas stable 'It's a Wonderful Life'

Continuing our Christmas advent with 16 days until Christmas...

Jimmy Stewart has gone down in the movie history books as one of the favourites. This year is the 76th anniversary of the release of a film which has become synonymous with the Hollywood acting legend, It's a Wonderful Life.

It became a Christmas classic by accident many years after the initial release in 1946.

It was the first movie Stewart made when he returned home after serving as a pilot in World War II, an experience that left him adrift and with a degree of psychological fall-out.

Author Robert Matzen writes about this post-war period in the actor's career in the non-fiction book 'Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe'.He said that during the course of his research, he spoke with "the guys that flew with him, who told me about the fact that he went flak-happy on a couple of occasions — which means shell shock, battle fatigue, what we now know as PTSD. He wasn't afraid of bombs or bullets. He was afraid of making a mistake and causing someone to die. That was his endless stress, and that's what ended up grounding him."

Much of George Bailey's angst was, to some extent, Stewart's own. Before agreeing to do the film with director Frank Capra (recently back from the war himself), he considered quitting acting altogether.

Stewart explained what drew him to the role of George Bailey: "Frank called me one day and said, 'I have an idea for a movie, why don't you come over and I'll tell you?' So I went over and we sat down and he said, 'This picture starts in heaven'. That shook me."

Matzen paints a portrait of what it was like on set with Jimmy Stewart the war veteran: "Now he was running for his life, Jim Stewart, former squadron commander of the 703rd. 'Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls!' he called into the hot air of Encino. 'Merry Christmas, you old Building and Loan!' Suddenly, he wanted to be a part of Hollywood where he felt comfortable and safe."

The premise of the film is that an angel, named Clarence, is sent to help George, and shows him what life would have been like had he not been born.

It is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, nominated for five Academy Awards, and has been recognised by the American Film Institute as one of the 100 best American films ever made.

However, it flopped initially, sparking disagreements between cast members.

The film recorded a loss of $525,000 (£397,359) at the box office, and it was largely forgotten about, until 1974 at least.

An administrative error meant the copyright expired, and Frank Capra’s film fell into the public domain.

Every TV station across America could air it for free — so they did, relentlessly, helping transform the film into a Christmas classic.

It now has a 94 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and continues to air annually during the holidays on NBC, who bought exclusive television rights in 1994.

The initial failure caused James Stewart to never want to work with co-star Donna Reed again. He believed her young age, she was just 25 when she played the role of Mary Hatch, a childhood sweetheart of George Bailey, and the fact the audience wouldn't know her was partly to blame for the release flop.

Ms Reed’s daughter, Mary Anne, once said: “I don’t like to mention this, but Capra and Jimmy Stewart had this whole success together before the war with ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’ and all of that.

“Everyone participated in the war effort, but especially those two and they were gone from Hollywood for four or five years.

“There was a lot of insecurity on set, because Jimmy Stewart wasn’t sure if he wanted to act anymore. He thought it was too frivolous, but Lionel Barrymore and others talked him into it.”

Donna Reed is fantastic in the film and thankfully she lived long enough to see the movie have a huge surge in popularity and become the Christmas classic we love today. Mary Anne said: “By the early Eighties it was on constantly and we always watched at Christmas. She was so happy that it was so popular.”