Jean Arthur

Jean Arthur
from trailer for Public Hero No. 1 (1935)
Born	Gladys Georgianna Greene (1900-10-17)October 17, 1900 Plattsburgh, New York, U.S.
Died	June 19, 1991(1991-06-19) (aged 90) Carmel, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1923–1966
Spouse(s)	Julian Anker ​ (m. 1928⁠–⁠1928)​ annulled Frank Ross, Jr. ​ ​ (m. 1932⁠–⁠1949)​ divorced

Jean Arthur (October 17, 1900 – June 19, 1991) was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. She remains arguably the epitome of the female screwball comedy actress. As James Harvey wrote in his recounting of the era, "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur. So much was she part of it, so much was her star personality defined by it, that the screwball style itself seems almost unimaginable without her." Arthur has been called "the quintessential comedic leading lady."

Arthur is best known for her feature roles in three Frank Capra films: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It With You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), films that championed the everyday heroine. Her last performance was the memorable—and distinctly non–comedic—role as the rancher's wife in George Stevens' Shane (1953).

Arthur was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 for her performance in The More the Merrier (1943).

To the public eye, Arthur was known as a reclusive woman. News magazine Life observed in a 1940 article: "Next to Garbo, Jean Arthur is Hollywood's reigning mystery woman". As well as recoiling from interviews, she avoided photographers and refused to become a part of any kind of publicity.

Early life

Arthur was born Gladys Georgianna Greene in Plattsburgh, New York to Protestant parents Johanna Augusta Nelson and Hubert Sidney Greene. She lived off and on in Westbrook, Maine from 1908 to 1915 while her father worked at Lamson Studios in Portland, Maine as a photographer. The product of a nomadic childhood, Arthur also lived at times in Jacksonville, Florida; Schenectady, New York; and, during a portion of her high school years, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of upper Manhattan. She came from a family of three older brothers: Donald Hubert (1891), Robert B. (1892) and Albert Sidney (1894). Her maternal grandparents were immigrants from Norway who settled in the American West. She reputedly took her stage name from two of her greatest heroes, Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) and King Arthur.

Presaging many of her later film roles, she worked as a stenographer on Bond Street in lower Manhattan during World War I.

Film career

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

Silent film career

Discovered by Fox Film Studios while she was doing commercial modeling in New York City in the early 1920s, Arthur debuted in the silent film Cameo Kirby (1923), directed by John Ford, and made a few low-budget silent westerns and short comedies.

Transition to sound film

With the rise of the talkies in the late 1920s, Arthur was among the many silent screen actors of Paramount Pictures initially unwilling to adapt to sound films. Upon realizing that the crave for sound films was not a phase, she met with sound coach Roy Pomeroy. It was her distinctive, throaty voice – in addition to some stage training on Broadway in the early 1930s – that eventually helped make her a star in the talkies. However, it initially prevented directors from casting her in films. In her early talkies, this "throaty" voice is still missing, and it remains unclear whether it has not yet emerged or whether she hid it. Her all-talking film debut was The Canary Murder Case (1929), in which she co-starred opposite William Powell and Louise Brooks. Arthur only impressed a few with the film, and later claimed that at the time that she was a "very poor actress ... awfully anxious to improve, but ... inexperienced so far as genuine training was concerned."

In the early years of talking pictures, Paramount was known for contracting Broadway actors with experienced vocals and impressive background references. Arthur was not among these actors, and struggled for recognition in the film industry. Her personal involvement with rising Paramount executive David O. Selznick - despite his relationship with Irene Mayer Selznick - proved substantial; she was put on the map and became selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1929. Following a silent B-western called Stairs of Sand (1929), she received some positive notices when she played the female lead in the lavish production of The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929). Arthur was given more publicity assignments, with which she went along, even though she immediately disliked posing for photographers and giving interviews.

Through Selznick, Arthur received her "best role to date" opposite famous sex symbol Clara Bow in the early sound film The Saturday Night Kid (1929). With two female leads, Arthur was thought to have "the better part", and director Edward Sutherland claimed that "Arthur was so good that we had to cut and cut to keep her from stealing the picture" from Bow. While some argued that Bow resented Arthur for having the "better part", Bow encouraged Arthur to make the most of the production. Arthur later praised her working experience with Bow: "[Bow] was so generous, no snootiness or anything. She was wonderful to me." The film was a moderate success, and The New York Times wrote that the film would have been "merely commonplace, were it not for Jean Arthur, who plays the catty sister with a great deal of skill."

Following a role in Halfway to Heaven (1929) opposite popular actor Charles Rogers, Selznick assigned her to play William Powell's wife in Street of Chance (1930). She did not impress the film's director John Cromwell, who advises the actress to move back to New York, because she would not make it in Hollywood. By 1930, her relationship with Selznick was broken off, causing her career at Paramount to slip off. Following a string of "lifeless ingenue roles" in mediocre films, she debuted on stage in December 1930 with a supporting role in Passadena Playhouse's ten-day run production of Spring Song. Back in Hollywood, Arthur saw her career deteriorating, and she dyed her hair blonde in an attempt to boost her image and avoid comparison with more successful actress Mary Brian. Her effort was not paying off: when her three-year contract at Paramount expired in mid-1931, she was given her release with an announcement from Paramount that the decision was prompted due to financial setbacks caused by the Great Depression.

Broadway and Columbia Pictures

In late 1931, Arthur returned to New York City, where a Broadway agent cast Arthur in adaptation of Lysistrata, which opened at the Riviera Theater on January 24, 1932. A few months later, she made her Broadway debut in Foreign Affairs opposite Dorothy Gish and Osgood Perkins. Even though the play did not fare well and closed after twenty-three performances, critics were impressed by her work on stage. She next won the female lead in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, which opened on September 8, 1932 at the Broadhurst Theatre to mostly mixed notices for Athur, and negative reviews for the play caused the production to be halted quickly. Arthur returned to California for the holidays, and appeared in the RKO film The Past of Mary Holmes (1933), her first film in two years.

Back on Broadway, Arthur continued to appear in small plays that received little attention. Critics, however, continued to praise her in their reviews. It was argued that in this period, Arthur developed confidence about her acting crafts for the first time. On the contrast between films in Hollywood, and plays in New York, Arthur commented:

"I don't think Hollywood is the place to be yourself. The individual ought to find herself before coming to Hollywood. On the stage I found myself to be in a different world. The individual counted. The director encouraged me and I learned how to be myself. [..] I learned to face audiences and to forget them. To see the footlights and not to see them; to gauge the reactions of hundreds of people, and yet to throw myself so completely into a role that I was oblivious to their reaction."

The Curtain Rises, which ran from October to December 1933, was Arthur's first Broadway play in which she was the center of attention. With an improved resume, she returned to Hollywood in late 1933, and turned down several contract offers until she was asked to meet with an executive from Columbia Pictures. Arthur agreed to star in a film, Whirlpool (1934), and during production she was offered a long-term contracted that promised her financial stability for both her and her parents. Even though hesitant to give up her stage career, Arthur signed the five-year contract on February 14, 1934.

In 1935, at age 34, Arthur starred opposite Edward G. Robinson in the gangster farce, The Whole Town's Talking, also directed by Ford, and her popularity began to rise. It was Arthur's first time to portray a hard-boiled working girl with a heart of gold, the type of role she would be associated with for the rest of her career. She enjoyed the acting experience and working opposite Robinson, who admitted in his biography that it was a "delight to work with and know" Arthur. By the time of the film's release, her hair, naturally brunette throughout the silent film portion of her career, was bleached blonde and would stay that way. She was famous for maneuvering to be photographed and filmed almost exclusively from the left; Arthur felt that her left was her best side, and worked hard to keep it in the fore. Frank Capra recounted that producer Harry Cohn described Jean Arthur's imbalanced profile as "half of it's angel, and the other half horse."

The turning point in Arthur's career came when she was chosen by director Frank Capra to star in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Capra had spotted her in a daily rush from the film Whirlpool in 1934 and convinced Cohn to have Columbia Studios sign her for his next film as a tough newspaperwoman who falls in love with a country bumpkin millionaire. Arthur co-starred in three celebrated 1930s Capra films: her role opposite Gary Cooper in 1936 in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town made her a star, while her fame was cemented with You Can't Take It With You (1938) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in 1939, both with James Stewart. She was re-teamed with Cooper, playing Calamity Jane in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman (1936), and appeared as a working girl, her typical role, in Mitchell Leisen's 1937 screwball comedy Easy Living opposite Ray Milland. So strong was her box office appeal by 1939 that she was one of four finalists that year for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind; the film's producer, David O. Selznick, had briefly romanced Arthur in the late 1920s when they both were with Paramount Pictures.

Arthur continued to star in films such as Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings in 1939, with love interest Cary Grant, 1942's The Talk of the Town, directed by George Stevens (also with Grant), and again for Stevens as a government clerk in 1943's The More the Merrier, for which Arthur was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress (losing to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette). As a result of being in the doghouse with studio boss Harry Cohn, her fee for The Talk of the Town (1942) was only $50,000 while her male co-stars Grant and Ronald Colman received upwards of $100,000 each. Arthur remained Columbia's top star until the mid-1940s, when she left the studio and Rita Hayworth took over as the studio's reigning queen. Stevens famously called her "one of the greatest comediennes the screen has ever seen", while Capra credited her as "my favorite actress".

Later career

Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur in Shane (1953)

Arthur "retired" when her contract with Columbia Pictures expired in 1944. She reportedly ran through the studio's streets, shouting "I'm free, I'm free!" For the next several years, she turned down virtually all film offers, the two exceptions being Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair (1948), in which she played a congresswoman and rival of Marlene Dietrich, and as a homesteader's wife in the classic Western Shane (1953), which turned out to be the biggest box-office hit of her career. The latter was her final film, and the only color film she appeared in.

Arthur's post-retirement work in theater was intermittent, somewhat curtailed by her longstanding shyness and discomfort about her chosen profession. Capra claimed she vomited in her dressing room between scenes, yet emerged each time to perform a flawless take. According to John Oller's biography, Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew (1997), Arthur developed a kind of stage fright punctuated with bouts of psychosomatic illnesses. A prime example was in 1945, when she was cast in the lead of the Garson Kanin play, Born Yesterday. Her nerves and insecurity got the better of her and she left the production before it reached Broadway, opening the door for Judy Holliday to take the part.

Arthur did score a major triumph on Broadway in 1950, starring in an adaptation of Peter Pan playing the Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up when she was almost 50. She tackled the role of her namesake, Joan of Arc, in a 1954 stage production of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, but she left the play after a nervous breakdown and battles with director Harold Clurman.

Retirement

In 1966, the extremely reclusive Arthur tentatively returned to show business, playing Patricia Marshall, an attorney, on her own television sitcom, The Jean Arthur Show, which was canceled mid-season by CBS after only 12 episodes. Ron Harper played her son, attorney Paul Marshall.

In 1967, Arthur was coaxed back to Broadway to appear as a midwestern spinster who falls in with a group of hippies in the play The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake. William Goldman, in his book The Season reconstructed the disastrous production, which eventually closed during previews when Arthur refused to go on.

Arthur next decided to teach drama, first at Vassar College and then the North Carolina School of the Arts. While teaching at Vassar, she stopped a rather stridently overacted scene performance and directed the students' attention to a large tree growing outside the window of the performance space, advising the students on the art of naturalistic acting: "I wish people knew how to be people as well as that tree knows how to be a tree."

Her students at Vassar included the young Meryl Streep. Arthur recognized Streep's talent and potential very early on and after watching her performance in a Vassar play, Arthur said it was "like watching a movie star."

While living in North Carolina, Arthur made front page news by being arrested and jailed for trespassing on a neighbor's property to console a dog she felt was being mistreated. An animal lover her entire life, Arthur said she trusted them more than people.

Arthur turned down the role of the lady missionary in Lost Horizon (1973), the unsuccessful musical remake of the 1937 Frank Capra film of the same name. Then, in 1975, the Broadway play First Monday in October, about the first female Supreme Court justice, was written especially with Arthur in mind, but once again she succumbed to extreme stage fright and quit the production shortly into its out-of-town run in Cleveland. The play went on with Jane Alexander playing the role intended for Arthur.

After the First Monday in October incident, Arthur then retired for good, retreating to her oceanside home in Carmel, California, steadfastly refusing interviews until her resistance was broken down by the author of a book on her one-time director Capra. Arthur once famously said that she’d rather have her throat slit than do an interview.

Marriages

Arthur's first marriage, to photographer Julian Anker in 1928, was annulled after one day. She married producer Frank Ross, Jr. in 1932. They divorced in 1949. Arthur did not have any children.

Death and legacy

Arthur died from heart failure at the age of 90. Her ashes were scattered at sea near Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. It is unknown if she had heard of the death of Joan Caulfield, who had married Frank Ross, Jr. after Arthur's divorce from him. She had died the day before Arthur at the age of 69.

Upon her death film reviewer Charles Champlin wrote the following in the Los Angeles Times:

To at least one teenager in a small town (though I’m sure we were a multitude), Jean Arthur suggested strongly that the ideal woman could be — ought to be — judged by her spirit as well as her beauty… The notion of the woman as a friend and confidante, as well as someone you courted and were nuts about, someone whose true beauty was internal rather than external, became a full-blown possibility as we watched Jean Arthur.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Jean Arthur has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6331 Hollywood Blvd. The Jean Arthur Atrium was her gift to the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.

Alternative country artist Robbie Fulks included a song titled "Jean Arthur" on his 1999 compilation The Very Best of Robbie Fulks. The track expounds on the actress's unique personality and style.

Selected filmography

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1923	Cameo Kirby	Ann Playdell
1924	Wine of Youth	Automobile Reveler	Uncredited
1925	Seven Chances	Receptionist at country club	Uncredited
1926	Under Fire	Margaret Cranston
1926	The Mad Racer		Short subject
1927	Winners of the Wilderness	Bit Role	Uncredited
1927	The Masked Menace	Faith
1928	Warming Up	Mary Post
1929	The Canary Murder Case	Alice LaFosse
1929	Stairs of Sand	Ruth Hutt
1929	The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu	Lia Eltham
1929	The Greene Murder Case	Ada Greene
1929	The Saturday Night Kid	Janie	Alternative title: Love 'Em and Leave 'Em
1930	Street of Chance	Judith Marsden
1930	Paramount on Parade	Sweetheart (Dream Girl/In a Hospital)
1930	The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu	Lia Eltham
1930	Danger Lights	Mary Ryan
1930	The Silver Horde	Mildred Wayland
1931	The Lawyer's Secret	Beatrice Stevens
1933	The Past of Mary Holmes	Joan Hoyt
1933	Get That Venus	Margaret Rendleby
1934	Whirlpool	Sandra Morrison
1935	The Whole Town's Talking	Wilhelmina "Bill" Clark	Alternative title: Passport to Fame
1935	Party Wire	Marge Oliver
1935	Public Hero No. 1	Maria Theresa "Terry" O'Reilly
1935	Diamond Jim	Jane Matthews/Emma
1935	If You Could Only Cook	Joan Hawthorne
1936	Mr. Deeds Goes to Town	Babe Bennett
1936	The Ex-Mrs. Bradford	Paula Bradford
1936	Adventure in Manhattan	Claire Peyton	Alternative title: Manhattan Madness
1936	The Plainsman	Calamity Jane
1936	More Than a Secretary	Carol Baldwin
1937	History Is Made at Night	Irene Vail
1937	Easy Living	Mary Smith
1938	You Can't Take It with You	Alice Sycamore
1939	Only Angels Have Wings	Bonnie Lee
1939	Mr. Smith Goes to Washington	Clarissa Saunders
1940	Too Many Husbands	Vicky Lowndes	Alternative title: My Two Husbands
1940	Arizona	Phoebe Titus
1941	The Devil and Miss Jones	Mary Jones
1942	The Talk of the Town	Miss Nora Shelley
1943	The More the Merrier	Constance "Connie" Milligan	Nominated—Academy Award for Best Actress
1943	A Lady Takes a Chance	Molly J. Truesdale	Alternative title: The Cowboy and the Girl
1944	The Impatient Years	Janie Anderson
1948	A Foreign Affair	Congresswoman Phoebe Frost
1953	Shane	Marian Starrett

Television

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1965	Gunsmoke	Julie Blane	1 episode
1966	The Jean Arthur Show	Patricia Marshall	11 episodes

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Capra, Frank. Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1971. ISBN 0-30680-771-8.
• Harvey, James. Romantic Comedy in Hollywood: From Lubitsch to Sturges. New York: Knopf, 1987. ISBN 0-39450-339-2.
• Oller, John. 8217-6835668?ie=UTF8&qid=1198652190&sr=8- Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew. New York: Limelight Editions, 1997. ISBN 0-87910-278-0.
• Parish, James Robert. The Hollywood Book of Death: The Bizarre, Often Sordid, Passings of More Than 125 American Movie and TV Idols. New York: Contemporary Books, 2002. ISBN 0-809-22227-2.
• Parish, James Robert. The Hollywood Book of Extravagance: The Totally Infamous... Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2007. ISBN 978-0470052051.
• Sarvady, Andrea, Molly Haskell and Frank Miller. Leading Ladies: The 50 Most Unforgettable Actresses of the Studio Era. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006. ISBN 0-811-85248-2.
• Stenn, David. Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild. Doubleday, 1988. ISBN 0385241259.

External links

• Jean Arthur at IMDb
• Jean Arthur at the TCM Movie Database
• Jean Arthur at the Internet Broadway Database
• Jean Arthur at AllMovie
• Jean Arthur at Find a Grave
• Literature on Jean Arthur
• Turner Classic Movies "Star of the Month" Profile
• Soares, Andre: Jean Arthur on TCM, Alternative Film Guide
• Gouveia, Michele: The Girl with the Croak: Jean Arthur
• Atkinson, Michael: Jean Therapy