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It WAS a wonderful life.

The Stamp Collecting Report, I'm Lloyd de Vries. 

Music: Easy To Love. Establish :06 and under

Actor Jimmy Stewart -- that's him singing -- is the subject of this year's Legends of 
Hollywood stamp, and he really WAS "easy to love" -- so much so that the only real 
question was whether the Postal Service would issue a stamp for him at the first 
opportunity -- ten years after his death -- or wait until next year, the centennial of 
his birth.

Stewart's best friend, Henry Fonda, was the Legends of Hollywood stamp just two years 
ago. 

The ceremony launching the Stewart stamp will be held in Southern California -- appropriate, 
because once he moved West, he lived there the rest of his life. But there will also be 
ceremonies in his hometown of Indiana in western Pennsylvania, and in Marquette, Michigan, 
where he filmed "Anatomy of a Murder." Nothing is planned for Princeton, where he earned a 
degree in architecture but was bitten by the acting bug.

Stewart joked, when he premiered "Easy To Love" in the 1936 film Born To Dance, that it was 
such a good song even his singing couldn't hurt it, but composer Cole Porter thought he was 
just fine. Although he was a good accordion player and used it in several films, and learned 
a little trombone for "The Glenn Miller Story," "Born to Dance" was his only musical.

Stewart's wasn't a PERFECT life: One of his stepsons, whom he raised as his own, died in 
the Vietnam War. He was ridiculed when he was up for a promotion in the Air Force Reserves. 
He may have suffered what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder after all those combat 
missions in World War Two. And it took awhile for Hollywood to figure just what do with him.

But there was never any doubt he was beloved and would be on a stamp some day.

I'm Lloyd de Vries of The Virtual Stamp Club. For more about stamps and stamp collecting, 
visit virtual-stamp-club-dot-com

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