From the S&S archives:
Jimmy Stewart 'revisits' Berlin

BERLIN — Movie actor Jimmy Stewart dropped in here the other day and got his first look at a city which he had seen only from the air — as bomber pilot during World War II.

I certainly wasn't sightseeing then," he recalled in his familiar drawl. "I remember they had about 18 blocks of antiaircraft guns and they all seemed to go off at once."

Surveying the rebuilding city, Stewart commented:

"I didn't come here to find out what happened during the war.My wife and I were hunting tigers in India when we decided it would be a good idea to see Berlin. After all, Berlin is really back in the news and we wanted to get a first-hand look."

Stewart didn't know it, but he himself was getting back into the news at that very moment. In Washington, government officials were disclosing that President Eisenhower has recommended that Stewart, a reserve colonel in the U.S. Air Force, be elevated to the rank of brigadier general.

Advised of this, Stewart had only the laconic comment: "It's a great honor to have been nominated."

But on his reaction to Berlin, Stewart was more talkative.

After stepping off his airliner at West Berlin's Templehof Airport, one of the first things he did was tour Soviet-run East Berlin.

"In East Berlin," he reported, "the whole atmosphere was one of grimness. The tremendous destruction is still visible everywhere. In West Berlin, you have to look pretty close to see evidence of the war."

Turning to outdoor sports, Stewart said:

"Seriously, I've come to love fishing and hunting. For somebody in the hectic business I'm in, it's the best way to get real relaxation."

"The idea of taking a vacation and lying in the sun somewhere has never appealed to me. Also, I don't like the idea of dashing from one foreign city to another.

"I have found that the world's big cities are mostly alike these days. They are all packed and all of them have traffic problems. The first thing most American tourists do is look for an American-style restaurant or hotel.

"If you're going to do that, you might as well stay at home. But with hunting and fishing it's different. You really get to know the people."

Stewart and his wife, the former Gloria Patrick McLean, spent four weeks in India, two of them in the jungle.