Credit: Courtesy of the Stewart Family, and the Jimmy Stewart Museum, http://www.jimmy.org/
When he was a child, Jimmy Stewart's family expected him to take over the family hardware store, founded in 1848. Stewart had different ideas, however, and pursued a career in show business after graduating from Princeton, his father's alma mater, in 1932. After Stewart won an Academy Award as Best Actor for his role in The Philadelphia Story (1940), he gave the Oscar to his father, who placed it in the display of the hardware store, where it sat for many years.
