by Liz Locke, Staff Writer

With the ding of an elevator, in they shuffled, with their walkers and canes, their purses full of hard candy and Kleenex, to a little museum perched on top of a little library, in a little town in Pennsylvania. I greeted them with a smile and instructions to take a right at the Pooka. They had come to see Jimmy, but of course Jimmy was already long gone by then. And someday, like my mythical movie godfather, I would be too.

When people ask where I’m from, I usually say, “Outside Pittsburgh.” But if they claim to have even the vaguest sense of Western Pennsylvania geography, I’ll go a little further— “Indiana, PA,” I explain. “Hometown of Jimmy Stewart.”  Depending on the person I’m talking to, this yields either an appreciative smile, or a confused shrug. At the Turner Classic Movies fest, you can guess which one it was. In college? Lots of shrugs. And I get it, because for most of my young life, Jimmy was just the man in the bronze statue outside the Indiana courthouse; a dapper Elwood P. Dowd winking at all the people who had never even heard of the film Harvey, let alone seen it. Before I started volunteering at The Jimmy Stewart Museum at the age of fifteen, I was among them. But all that changed the winter of 1999, with a high school civics class, a polite phone call to the museum director, and a crash course in Classic Hollywood.

When my teacher announced that extra credit would be given for volunteer hours within the community, I jumped at the opportunity. Not possessing a shred of athletic ability, a high GPA was my one ticket out of small-town life, and I clung to it like Scottie to a Vertigo roof. I enjoyed movies, and the museum was only a block away from my house. I figured a stint there would be an easy short-term gig. What I couldn’t have predicted was that I’d stay on for months longer than I’d intended, my mind suddenly craving this weekly hit of classic film dopamine. I was Dorothy dropped into Oz, and suddenly life was in Technicolor. Actually, a lot of Jimmy’s movies were in black & white, but you get the idea—I was hooked.

For four hours every Saturday, I stood behind the counter of the museum gift shop and worked my way through Jimmy Stewart’s filmography on a tiny little television in the corner. That’s how I first saw classics like The Philadelphia Story, You Can’t Take It with You, Vertigo, The Shop Around the Corner, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and on one particularly weird afternoon, Rope. Of course, I didn’t get to watch any of these films all the way through from beginning to end because I usually got busy selling It’s a Wonderful Life bells, but still, it was enough to whet my appetite. I wanted to know more about the precocious little girl who bellowed “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”, or how one minute Jimmy was talking to a blonde Kim Novak, then suddenly a brunette Kim Novak. What were these charming cigarette cases that played music, and why didn’t we sell them? Would they result in an epistolary romance with the exchange student from Cyprus who delicately wrapped the Winchester ’73 mugs in tissue paper while I scraped my knuckles on the manual credit card reader? And what, for the love of Christ, is a Pooka?!

As an adult, I’ve gone back and revisited all these films, learning their subtleties, memorizing their lines. Feeling proud that I played even a miniscule part in keeping Jimmy Stewart’s memory alive in this glorified attic that smelled like dust mites and menthol drops. Today, visitors to the museum are treated to rotating costume collections, room recreations, and weekly screenings of his films. Back then, it was basically a sign from his dad’s hardware store, a bomber jacket, old movie posters, and a clip reel that ended with LeAnn Rimes singing, “How Do I Liiiiiiive Without You??” When LeAnn hit the high note, I knew it was time to take a deep breath, fluff the Harvey sweatshirts, and prepare to sell as many useless tchotchkes as the Matuschek employees on Christmas Eve. 

Although Jimmy officially left Indiana in the 1920s, he didn’t abandon the town completely. There were a few times the movie star came back for public appearances, such as when the local airport was renamed in his honor, and again for a parade in 1983, Stewart waving at the crowds on Philadelphia Street next to his beautiful wife Gloria. My very-pregnant mother was among those greeting his passing car, and who knows, maybe I gave a kick in utero. For the most part, the working-class folks of Indiana were too busy with their own lives to keep tabs on Jimmy’s private comings and goings, which is likely how he preferred it. We knew his family’s home was at the top of a long set of steps up Vinegar Hill, and my dad had good memories of drinking a Nehi soda at the J.M. Stewart & Co. Hardware store with his grandfather. We pretended our little town was Bedford Falls every year at Christmas, and people liked to wring their hands like Jefferson Smith come election time. Indiana was a small town, too far to be considered a suburb of Pittsburgh, and lacking the Bill Murray bragging rights of nearby Punxsutawney. Jimmy was our claim to fame, and whether he continued to reside in Indiana or not, we would still claim him.

Eventually, I had to give up my volunteer hours at the museum to take a job at the local video store. To this day, it still feels like a lateral move. Yes, I finally started earning a paycheck, but there was something much more depressing about shelving VHS copies of The Matrix instead of The Glenn Miller Story.  But I had a goal, and that goal was to get out. I took that extra credit, kept my grades up, socked away my Giant Eagle Video money, and eventually left Indiana. I’ve been gone for more than two decades, and like Jimmy in the twilight years of his life, have only come back for special events. Mostly, funerals. He may have been a “hometown hero” in a way that I will never be, said a lot of nice things in speeches over the years, but I think we can both relate to wanting something different than what we experienced growing up. You see, Indiana was never my home, and in the end, I don’t think it was Jimmy’s either. I made my home in Austin, Texas while he made his on the silver screen. Unlike his It’s a Wonderful Life character George Bailey, Jimmy was never going to stay and take over the family business, and I was never going to be a tired mom with callouses from shoveling snow. But on the rare occasions I’ve been prompted to return, I always make it a point to swing past his courthouse statue. I wave and thank him for the gift of movies.  Thank him for teaching me that it’s okay to dream big; that the people who love you will still be rooting for you, in whatever place you’ve decided to call home.