Gloria Stewart, Wife Of Actor James

LOS ANGELES - Gloria Stewart, actor James Stewart's wife who was prominent in animal support groups and other community activities, has died. She was 75.

Mrs. Stewart died Wednesday of lung cancer at her Beverly Hills home. Stewart, to whom she was married for 44 years, their twin daughters and her son from a previous marriage were with her at the time of her death.

She was active on the boards of various nonprofit organizations and was a regular at charity dinners, dances and other events supporting those groups.

Born in Larchmont, N.Y., the daughter of a newsreel executive, the former Gloria Hatrick was educated at private schools and worked briefly as an actress and model. She drove an ambulance during World War II.

She married and later divorced Edward B. "Ned" McLean, whose mother, Evelyn Walsh McLean, had owned the Hope diamond.

After moving to Los Angeles with her two small sons, she met Stewart, Hollywood's then favorite bachelor who had vowed he would remain single because "I could never marry just one and be disloyal to all the others." He proposed on his 41st birthday and they were married Aug. 9, 1949.

"He wasn't too difficult to land," Mrs. Stewart later told Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper. "The first time we met, he told funny stories and I laughed. That was how it all started."

She shared her husband's interests in skeet-shooting, fishing, animals and travel.