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rsdsharp

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32. Thank you for posting this. Stewart was less than a year younger than Wayne.

Sun Mar 15, 2026, 05:32 PM

Sunday

He enlisted, and ultimately flew 20 missions as a pilot in command. The scene where he prayed in It’s A Wonderful Life was really an episode of PTSD.

Clark Gable was six years older than Wayne. He also enlisted. Both Stewart and Gable received the Distinguished Flying Cross (among other medals), and both ended the war as field grade officers, despite starting as enlisted men.

Both were far bigger stars in the early 1940s than Wayne, and somehow their studios didn’t sue them for enlisting. No studio would have done so. The negative publicity would have been crushing, and no jury would have sided with them if they had done so.

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