VOA慢速英语 2007 1111a

PEOPLE IN AMERICA - James Stewart, 1908-1997: He Starred in Some of the Best-loved American Movies
By Nancy Steinbach / Broadcast: Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:00:00 UTC
VOICE ONE:

I'm Shirley Griffith.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Rich Kleinfeldt with the VOA Special English program, People in America. Today, we tell the story of actor James Stewart. His movies were loved by people around the world.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

James Maitland Stewart was born in the small eastern town of Indiana, Pennsylvania in nineteen-oh-eight. His father had a hardware store that had been owned by the Stewart family since the eighteen fifties.

Jimmy Stewart

During high school, Jimmy played football, and acted in plays. He also learned to play the accordion¹. He took the accordion with him to college at Princeton University, where he joined a musical group called the Triangle Club. Through the club, he met students interested in performing.

Jimmy studied architecture at Princeton. He graduated in nineteen thirty-two. Just before graduation, a friend asked him to join an acting² group for the summer. Jimmy agreed because he thought it would be a good way to meet girls.

VOICE TWO:

Jimmy Stewart said later that if his friend had not asked him to join the summer theater group, he would never have been an actor. He would have returned home to help his father in the store. Instead, he met a number of good young actors while performing that summer in Cape³ Cod⁴, Massachusetts. One was Henry Fonda, who would be a friend throughout his life.

VOICE ONE:

Jimmy Stewart performed in Broadway plays in New York City until the Metro⁵ Goldwyn Mayer movie company gave him an acting job. He moved to California in nineteen thirty-five. He acted in more than twenty-four movies over the next six years. He appeared in all kinds of movies: funny ones, sad ones and musical ones. He even sang a song in the movie Born to Dance. It is called Easy to Love:

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

The movie that made Jimmy Stewart a real Hollywood star was Mister Smith Goes to Washington. It was released in nineteen thirty-nine.

''Mister Smith Goes to Washington''

JIMMY STEWART:

It's a funny thing about men, you know. They all start life being boys. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if some of these Senators were boys once. And that's why it seemed like a pretty good idea to me to get boys out of crowded cities and stuffy⁶ basements for a couple of months out of the year and build their bodies and minds for a man-sized job, because those boys are gonna be behind these desks some of these days.

The next year, he won an Academy Award for best actor in The Philadelphia Story.

The night he won the Academy Award, his father called him on the telephone from Pennsylvania. I hear you won some kind of an award, Alex Stewart said. You had better bring it back here and we'll put it in the window of the store. Jimmy Stewart's Oscar statue stayed in the window of Stewart's hardware store in Indiana, Pennsylvania for twenty-five years.

VOICE ONE:

Jimmy Stewart was already an established and successful actor when World War Two started in Europe. Early in nineteen forty-one, he tried to join the Army. But he was rejected because he did not weigh enough. So he started eating high fat foods and tried again. This time, he was accepted for military service.

The Army put him in the Air Corps⁷ because he already knew how to pilot a plane. In nineteen forty-three, he went to Europe as commander of an Air Force bomber⁸ group. He flew more than twenty combat missions, leading as many as one thousand planes at a time over Germany. He returned to the United States in nineteen forty-five as a colonel.

VOICE TWO:

Jimmy Stewart won several military awards for excellent performance under very dangerous conditions. He remained in the Air Force Reserve after the war. In nineteen fifty-nine he was made a general. Each year, he took part in two weeks of active military duty. In nineteen sixty-six, he requested combat duty and took part in a bombing strike over Vietnam.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

After World War Two, Jimmy Stewart returned to Hollywood. He found that his new movies were not as popular as his earlier ones had been. One example was It's a Wonderful Life. It was released in nineteen forty-six. The movie was not a success at first. But over time it has become one of the best loved American movies.

JIMMY STEWART:

''It's a Wonderful Life''

Can't you understand what's happening here? Don't you see what's happening? Potter isn't selling. Potter's buying! And why? Because we're panicky and he's not. That's why. He's pickin' up some bargain. Now, we can get through this thing all right. We've, we've got to stick together, though. We've got to have faith in each other.

Jimmy Stewart said in later years that It's a Wonderful Life was the movie he liked best. It tells the story of a small town man who feels the world would have been better if he had never lived. An angel comes to him and shows him that this is not true. The movie celebrated⁹ values like loyalty¹⁰ and love of family.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Jimmy Stewart decided¹¹ to play other kinds of parts after what seemed to be the failure of It's a Wonderful Life. He was a reporter in Call Northside Seven Seven Seven the next year. He was a suspicious head of a school in the murder movie Rope in nineteen forty-eight. In the nineteen fifties, he appeared in many western movies such as Winchester Seventy-Three and Broken Arrow.

VOICE ONE:

Jimmy Stewart enjoyed his greatest popularity in the nineteen fifties. In nineteen fifty-nine, he won awards from the Venice Film Festival, the New York film critics and the Film Daily writers. The awards honored him for his performance in the movie Anatomy¹² of a Murder. He was the defense¹³ attorney for an army officer accused of murder. He was nominated for an Academy Award for that movie. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for playing a man who has an imaginary rabbit friend, in the movie Harvey.

Jimmy Stewart is well known for his work with the famous director of mystery movies, Alfred Hitchcock. These movies included The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window and Vertigo¹⁴. Mister Stewart also played real heroes in several movies. He was band leader Glenn Miller¹⁵ in The Glenn Miller Story. And he was pilot Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of Saint Louis.

VOICE TWO:

Jimmy Stewart appeared in fewer films in the nineteen sixties. He was a senator in the Old West in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In The Shootist he was a doctor in a small town. He also appeared on television. But his two television shows were not successful.

Mister Stewart began experiencing health problems as he aged¹⁶. He had heart disease, skin cancer and hearing loss. But he found time to travel. And he published a book of poetry in nineteen eighty-nine. It sold more than three hundred thousand copies.

VOICE ONE:

In nineteen eighty, Jimmy Stewart was honored by the American Film Institute with an award for his lifetime work. Three years later, he received a Kennedy Center Honor for his work. And in nineteen eighty-five, President Ronald Reagan gave him the nation's highest civilian¹⁷ award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

People who knew Jimmy Stewart did not praise him just because he was a good actor and a war hero. They said Jimmy Stewart was one of the nicest people they had ever met. He was a man who lived by the values he was taught as a child in that small town in Pennsylvania.

He went back to Indiana, Pennsylvania, in nineteen eighty-three, for his seventieth birthday. The town held a huge celebration in his honor. President Reagan sent planes to fly over the court house. Parades were held. And a statue of him was placed in the town center.

VOICE TWO:

Jimmy Stewart married Gloria Hatrick McLean in nineteen forty-nine. She had two sons from an earlier marriage. Jimmy raised them as his own. One of the boys was killed during the Vietnam War while serving in the Marine¹⁸ Corps. Jimmy and Gloria also had twin daughters.

Gloria Stewart died in nineteen ninety-four. Friends said Jimmy Stewart was never the same after that. They said he withdrew into his house because he did not know what to do without her. His health got worse. He died on July the second, nineteen ninety-seven.

VOICE ONE:

Jimmy Stewart's daughter Kelly Harcourt spoke¹⁹ at his funeral in Beverly Hills. She reminded mourners of the message of her father's favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life: No man is poor who has friends.

Here's to our father, she said, the richest man in town.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

This Special English program was written by Nancy Steinbach and produced by Lawan Davis. I'm Rich Kleinfeldt.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Shirley Griffith. Join us again next week at this time for another People in America program on VOA.

1 accordion   

n.手风琴；adj.可折叠的

参考例句：

• The accordion music in the film isn't very beautiful.这部影片中的手风琴音乐不是很好。
• The accordion music reminds me of my boyhood.这手风琴的乐声让我回忆起了我的少年时代。

2 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

3 cape   

n.海角，岬；披肩，短披风

参考例句：

• I long for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope.我渴望到好望角去旅行。
• She was wearing a cape over her dress.她在外套上披着一件披肩。

4 cod   

n.鳕鱼；v.愚弄；哄骗

参考例句：

• They salt down cod for winter use.他们腌鳕鱼留着冬天吃。
• Cod are found in the North Atlantic and the North Sea.北大西洋和北海有鳕鱼。

5 metro   

n.地铁；adj.大都市的；(METRO)麦德隆(财富500强公司之一总部所在地德国，主要经营零售)

参考例句：

• Can you reach the park by metro?你可以乘地铁到达那个公园吗？
• The metro flood gate system is a disaster prevention equipment.地铁防淹门系统是一种防灾设备。

6 stuffy   

adj.不透气的，闷热的

参考例句：

• It's really hot and stuffy in here.这里实在太热太闷了。
• It was so stuffy in the tent that we could sense the air was heavy with moisture.帐篷里很闷热，我们感到空气都是潮的。

7 corps   

n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组

参考例句：

• The medical corps were cited for bravery in combat.医疗队由于在战场上的英勇表现而受嘉奖。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

8 bomber   

n.轰炸机，投弹手，投掷炸弹者

参考例句：

• He flew a bomber during the war.他在战时驾驶轰炸机。
• Detectives hunting the London bombers will be keen to interview him.追查伦敦爆炸案凶犯的侦探们急于对他进行讯问。

9 celebrated   

adj.有名的，声誉卓著的

参考例句：

• He was soon one of the most celebrated young painters in England.不久他就成了英格兰最负盛名的年轻画家之一。
• The celebrated violinist was mobbed by the audience.观众团团围住了这位著名的小提琴演奏家。

10 loyalty   

n.忠诚，忠心

参考例句：

• She told him the truth from a sense of loyalty.她告诉他真相是出于忠诚。
• His loyalty to his friends was never in doubt.他对朋友的一片忠心从来没受到怀疑。

11 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

12 anatomy   

n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织

参考例句：

• He found out a great deal about the anatomy of animals.在动物解剖学方面，他有过许多发现。
• The hurricane's anatomy was powerful and complex.对飓风的剖析是一项庞大而复杂的工作。

13 defense   

n.防御，保卫；[pl.]防务工事；辩护，答辩

参考例句：

• The accused has the right to defense.被告人有权获得辩护。
• The war has impacted the area with military and defense workers.战争使那个地区挤满了军队和防御工程人员。

14 vertigo   

n.眩晕

参考例句：

• He had a dreadful attack of vertigo.他忽然头晕得厉害。
• If you have vertigo it seems as if the whole room is spinning round you.如果你头晕，就会觉得整个房间都旋转起来

15 miller   

n.磨坊主

参考例句：

• Every miller draws water to his own mill.磨坊主都往自己磨里注水。
• The skilful miller killed millions of lions with his ski.技术娴熟的磨坊主用雪橇杀死了上百万头狮子。

16 aged   

adj.年老的，陈年的

参考例句：

• He had put on weight and aged a little.他胖了，也老点了。
• He is aged,but his memory is still good.他已年老，然而记忆力还好。

17 civilian   

adj.平民的，民用的，民众的

参考例句：

• There is no reliable information about civilian casualties.关于平民的伤亡还没有确凿的信息。
• He resigned his commission to take up a civilian job.他辞去军职而从事平民工作。

18 marine   

adj.海的；海生的；航海的；海事的；n.水兵

参考例句：

• Marine creatures are those which live in the sea. 海洋生物是生存在海里的生物。
• When the war broke out,he volunteered for the Marine Corps.战争爆发时，他自愿参加了海军陆战队。

19 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。