Actor Jimmy Stewart has been increasingly associated...

Actor Jimmy Stewart has been increasingly associated with Christmas in recent years, largely because of the seasonal popularity of the 1946 movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” with its touching Christmastime climax.

“It is very rewarding, a wonderful thing, to think that a film can sort of develop that way over the years. It’s something people look for at Christmas,” Stewart said in an interview.

Although the motion picture fizzled at the box office when it was released, Stewart said that he and producer-director Frank Capra considered it the favorite film of their respective careers. “It was the first picture I made after the (Second World) War and so many people in the cast were people I worked with before I was in the service,” Stewart said.

Stewart is also tied to the holiday in the minds of many Southern Californians because of his two times as grand marshal of the Hollywood Christmas parade and his participation in the annual Christmas concert at Beverly Hills Presbyterian Church, including a TV Christmas special filmed at the church two years ago.

This will be the 12th year the actor has taken part in the congregation’s Christmas concert. He will read Scriptures during the 8 p.m. Thursday performance of the Chancel Choir and orchestra directed by Nick Strimple, the church’s minister of music. Tickets are $20 and proceeds will benefit church programs serving the elderly, homeless and other needy.

Stewart said he grew up in the Presbyterian church in Indiana, Pa., where his mother played the organ and his father sang in the choir. “Back in the 1930s when I lived in Brentwood, there was a church but not a building. I was one of the people who helped build the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, and that’s where my wife and I were married,” he said.

His wife, Gloria, does not attend the Beverly Hills church as much as she did when she taught Sunday School there as their children were growing up. “She just decided to stay home with the dog on Sundays,” he said.

Although the denomination has been caught up in controversy at times, Stewart said he has never felt uncomfortable or embarrassed about being a Presbyterian.

“I consider the church a very private possession of mine, and I guard it and am very proud of it,” Stewart said. “I thank God I have it.”

EVANGELISM

The 1979 movie “Jesus,” now used by Campus Crusade for Christ as a worldwide evangelistic tool, was to make its Soviet Union premiere Friday in Tbilisi, the capital of the Georgian republic, announced Paul Eshleman, director of the Laguna Niguel-based Jesus Film Project of Campus Crusade. The film, based on the Gospel of Luke, has been dubbed in 140 languages. Eshleman said the movie was dubbed in the Georgian language with the cooperation of a film studio in the Soviet republic.

IMMIGRANTS

In response to the influx of Russian and Iranian Jewish immigrants to Los Angeles, the weekly Jewish Journal has begun printing a twice-monthly column in English, Russian and Farsi giving information on special interest programs under the umbrella of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. A council spokesman said copies of this week’s newspaper were being sent to 500 families that arrived in Los Angeles in 1989 and have completed or nearly completed their English course. By next month the free distribution will climb to about 1,500 families.

CORRECTION

The Korean Philadelphia Presbyterian Church undergoing restoration work is not 100 years old, as reported Nov. 25 in a Times photo caption. The building was dedicated in 1926 as a synagogue for Sinai Temple, which moved to Westwood in 1961, according to Stephen J. Sass, president of the Jewish Historical Society of Southern California. The city has designated the building, at 4th and New Hampshire, a Historic Cultural Monument.

PEOPLE

Bishop Jack M. Tuell of Los Angeles, writing as president of the United Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops, declared in the denomination’s Christmas message that “the Cold War as we have known it for 40 years is over” and that recent events “hold the promise of a truly better day for humankind.” Apparently referring to democratic reforms in Eastern Europe and improved U.S.-Soviet relations, Tuell suggested, “The God who is the God of peace and justice and freedom is surely at work in all of this.”