Paul Stewart

Paul Stewart, born Paul Sternberg on March 13, 1908, in Manhattan, New York, was an American actor, director, and producer whose career spanned theatre, radio, film, and television. The son of Maurice D. Sternberg, a salesman and credit agent for a textile manufacturer, and Nathalie C. Nathanson Sternberg, both of whom were born in Minneapolis, Stewart attended public school and completed two years of law study at Columbia University before committing to a career in performance after winning first place in the Belasco Theatre Tournament in 1925. He died on February 17, 1986.

Stewart began his stage career as a teenager in New York, making his Broadway debut in 1930 in Subway Express. His next Broadway appearance came in 1931 in Two Seconds, which was subsequently adapted as a film. Additional Broadway credits followed, including Bulls, Bears and Asses, East of Broadway, and Wine of Choice, with his stage work continuing through 1948.

In 1932, after accumulating several Broadway credits, Stewart relocated to Cincinnati to work at radio station WLW, where he spent thirteen months engaged in every aspect of production, including acting, announcing, directing, producing, writing, and creating sound effects. Upon returning to New York, he joined The March of Time, a nationally broadcast news series that had evolved from Fred Smith's earlier program Newscasting, and became part of what fellow actor Joseph Julian described as an elite corps of radio performers. That company included Kenny Delmar, Arlene Francis, Gary Merrill, Agnes Moorehead, Jeanette Nolan, Everett Sloane, Richard Widmark, Art Carney, Ray Collins, and others who would go on to distinguished careers.

Stewart's professional relationship with Orson Welles proved central to both men's careers. In 1934, Stewart introduced Welles to director Knowles Entrikin, who hired Welles for his first radio job on The American School of the Air. The following March, after seeing Welles perform in Archibald MacLeish's verse play Panic, Stewart recommended him to director Homer Fickett, leading to Welles joining The March of Time repertory company. Welles later credited Stewart as one of the main pillars of the Mercury broadcasts and acknowledged that he could not be given too much credit for his contributions.

Stewart was a founding member and inaugural officer of the American Federation of Radio Artists in August 1937, holding union card number 39 and serving as a frequent delegate at national conventions. He also served as a board member of the Screen Actors Guild and held membership in the Directors Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. During the 1937–1938 season, Stewart performed in multiple roles throughout Welles's run as Lamont Cranston in The Shadow.

When Welles launched his CBS radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938, Stewart became his associate producer. He contributed to the series and its sponsored continuation, The Campbell Playhouse, as actor, rehearsal director, and co-writer. His involvement in the celebrated October 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds was substantial enough that Welles later credited Stewart with deserving the largest share of credit for its quality.

On January 14, 1939, Stewart married actress and singer Peg LaCentra, born in 1910 and died in 1996, a vocalist with Artie Shaw's first orchestra who worked across radio, film, and television. The ceremony took place in Arlington, Virginia.

Later that year, Welles contacted Stewart from California to offer him a role in his debut feature film. Stewart spent eleven weeks on the production, earning five hundred dollars per week against a three-week guarantee. The resulting film, Citizen Kane, released in 1941, featured Stewart as Raymond, Kane's butler and valet, a role that became the most recognized of his career. Actress Ruth Warrick, who played Kane's first wife, recalled Stewart remarking at the film's New York premiere that everyone involved would be identified with the picture for the rest of their lives.

On the stage, Stewart appeared in the Mercury Theatre's production of Native Son, directed by Welles and produced by John Houseman, which ran at the St. James Theatre from March 24 to June 28, 1941. During World War II, Stewart served with the New York-based Office of War Information from 1941 to 1943, narrating documentaries including The World at War in 1942. He subsequently worked under Houseman at the Voice of America from 1942 to 1943, broadcasting news and commentary to European audiences. When Houseman took his oath of allegiance as a U.S. citizen in March 1943, he selected Stewart to serve as his witness.

Stewart was granted leave during the war to appear in Hollywood films, including Mr. Lucky in 1943, and worked as a barker in The Mercury Wonder Show, a magic-and-variety production organized by Welles and Joseph Cotten for U.S. soldiers. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. called upon Stewart's radio expertise to produce programs promoting War Bond purchases. Stewart produced and directed Welles's Fifth War Loan broadcast from the Hollywood Bowl on June 14, 1944, and produced, directed, and acted in patriotic episodes of the Cavalcade of America radio series.

Following the war, Stewart worked for David O. Selznick and Dore Schary as a writer, director, and producer, and directed screen tests for Paramount Pictures. His film acting credits include The Window, Champion, Twelve O'Clock High, Deadline U.S.A., The Bad and the Beautiful, The Juggler, Kiss Me Deadly, King Creole, In Cold Blood, The Day of the Locust, and W.C. Fields and Me, in which he portrayed Florenz Ziegfeld. In 1950, he took over the role of Doc in Joshua Logan's Broadway production of Mister Roberts, starring Henry Fonda. Across his career, Stewart appeared in approximately fifty films and performed in or directed an estimated five thousand radio and television productions.